"Johnny Cash: The Life"
available in hardcover, ebook, audio and paperback

Lovely words from Rosanne Cash:

It's a rare gift to be given the opportunity to step far back from the confusing miasma of one's own childhood to see the entire soaring arc of a parent's life, and to be able to look clear-eyed at the puzzle of his character and the kaleidoscope of pain and beauty. 
  
This is the breathtaking gift Robert Hilburn has given me in a definitive biography of my father that is excruciatingly honest, rigorously researched, and has the depth and integrity that his subject demands.

I had to take many breaks while reading this book to assimilate all the stories I knew, but had never put in a narrative context, being claustrophobically close to not only the events themselves but the resonance of those events. I felt dizzy from the sense of time travel and from the odd notion that Hilburn's masterful organization of the paradoxes and the fullness of who Johnny Cash was--and is--satisfies not only my father's family and fans, but himself as well. 
 
To those who fiercely cling to a one-dimensional view of my father to satisfy their own ideals--dark or light, saint or sinner, right or left--I challenge them to read this book and begin to understand a far, far more interesting and complex man: a truly great, visionary artist, a deeply flawed human being capable of experiencing inconceivable amounts of both love and pain, and a huge spirit who now belongs to the ages.

More generous words:

I listened to that stark unrelenting country as a kid. He was a hero of mine. I met him, finally, in a john at the Waldorf Astoria. He was taking a pee and I broke out into "Loading Coal." We both zipped up and sung the final chorus together. One of my most cherished moments. You don't get much closer than that. Hilburn has written a brilliant story about an even more brilliant songwriter, warts and all.
   -- Keith Richards 

Johnny Cash was a man both extraordinary and ordinary. Every man could relate to him, no man could be him, and only one man could get inside his head like Robert Hilburn.
   --Bono

Robert Hilburn displays a deeply felt affinity with his subject, illuminating Johnny Cash as the moral compass of country music.
   --Patti Smith

Between his love of music, his experience as one of the nation's leading music critics, and his long personal friendship with the subject, there is no one on earth more qualified to write this definitive book on the roller-coaster life of Johnny Cash than Robert Hilburn. Between the amount of research and the degree of detail he's put into this book, even Johnny would have learned something about himself if he were here to read it. Highly recommended!
   --Rick Rubin

Johnny Cash and Robert Hilburn are two of the true blessings of my life. Both the best at what they do and each a gifted artist. It's a killer combination.
   --Kris Kristofferson
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Praise for "Johnny Cash: 
The Life"

Robert Hilburn's new biography…gives us a thorough and thoughtful portrait of the Man in Black and a deep appreciation of his artistry…Mr. Hilburn writes most powerfully about Cash's trajectory as an artist—about his place in a changing country music scene, the evolution of individual songs and the eclectic influences on his work…[Hilburn's] writing is as authoritative as it's engaging when he's discussing the singer-songwriter's music. He deals out a stack of sharp-edged snapshots of Cash's friends and colleagues…And he leaves us with a visceral feel for the grueling demands of life on the road…
   -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times 

A comprehensive and thoughtful biography, cognizant always of how hard it is for heroes to make it in America.... Hilburn does an artful, enviable job of reconciling all the facets [of Cash]...[and] writes with a remarkably steady hand...JOHNNY CASH is measured and mindful, allowing of all the paradoxical bits that constitute a human life. 
   -– Amanda Petrusich, Los Angeles Times

"As fascinating as it is honest."
-NPR’s Great Reads of 2013
 
“Hilburn…masterfully separates fiction from fact in an exhaustive, but never exhausting, biography of the legendary musician…The personal knowledge aided by extensive archival research and always compelling, accessible writing makes this an instant-classic music biography with something to offer all generations of listeners.”
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
 
“The result of Hilburn’s wrestling with his subject’s life and with his own moral compass is perhaps the richest biography of a musician I have ever read, and one of the best biographies I have read, period…Hilburn knows how to organize a life in print skillfully…a first-rate stylist. His sentences often sing.”
-Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 
“A spellbinding storyteller…[he] exhaustively chronicles, almost year by year, Cash’s rise to fame.”
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“How do you write an interesting biography of such a beloved figure? First, hire Robert Hilburn. He is a prodigious researcher, but he keeps a steady hand on the tiller, and never allows his research to swamp his narrative.”
-The Economist
 
“Covers Cash's monumental highs and bottomless lows in unprecedented detail…The book is stuffed with warts-and-all revelations that might surprise you, and will certainly boost the singer's profile as a man of many contradictions.”
-Rolling Stone
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