If a good ol’ boy such as Garth Brooks can fill Central Park, clearly the world needs a book (or two) that dismantles the machinery of Nashville, pokes around and finds out exactly how it operates. With his Unwritten Rules, Billboard scribe Dan Daley ponders the schizophrenia of Music City: Just how does it balance [...]

Laurence Leamer doesn’t give up easy. While researching this gossipy country music tell-all, he turned up in Dublin, hoping, somehow, that Emmylou Harris would let him tag along as she and the Hot Band crisscrossed Europe. Amazingly, the reclusive Harris agreed. This doggedness typifies Leamer’s obsession with getting to the heart of his subject (Leamer [...]