HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: A dynamic, experiential, and intimate portrait that explores the many sides of the legendary Southern city and country music capital, from award-winning writers Ann Patchett, Jon Meacham, and acclaimed photographer Heidi Ross.

Nashville is a creative collaboration that awakens the senses, providing a virtual immersion in this unique American city hailed as the Athens of the South. Patchett, Ross, and Meacham in his introduction, at once capture both the city’s iconic historical side—its deep, rich Southern roots, from its food and festivals to its famous venues, recording studios, and style—and its edgier, highly vibrant creative side, which has made it a modern cultural mecca increasingly populated by established and upcoming artists in art, film, and music.

Nashville celebrates Nashvillians’ beloved locales and events, both established and new, that are the heart of the city’s character including:

Bobbie’s Dairy Dip
Broadway
Cumberland River
Buchanan Arts District
Bolton’s Chicken and Fish
Dino’s
East Nashville Tomato Arts Festival
Germantown
The Gulch
Grand Ole Opry
Pie Town (SoBro)
Pride Festival
Prince’s Hot Chicken
Schermerhorn Symphony Center
Stanley Cup Playoffs
Tennessee Performing Arts Center
Tennessee State Fair
Third Man Records
WXNA Independent Radio

Here, too, are engaging vignettes spotlighting the diverse talent that makes the Tennessee city a significant cultural incubator and influencer, including singer-songwriters Marty Stuart, Gillian Welsh, and Dave Rawlings; film director Harmony Korine, textile designer Andra Eggleston, country music fashion designer to the stars Manuel, chef Margot McCormack, acclaimed pastry chef Lisa Donovan, and model and musician Karen Elson.

Blending exceptional narrative, evocative photography—including 175 black-and-white and color photographs—and a bold graphic design, Nashville is an intimate, textured panorama that brilliantly illuminates one of America’s most remarkable treasures.

HerKentucky review: Nashville is my very favorite city. I loved living there. I visit as often as I can. It just sparks the creative process for me in a way that no other place can. It’s the perfect mix of small-town and big-city. Trends arrive there about a year after they hit Brooklyn, and a good 18 months before they make it to Louisville — just in time for me to have a firm opinion on them!

Because I love Nashville so very much, i spent a good chunk of last autumn waiting for the release of Nashville: Scenes from the New American South by Heidi Ross and Ann Patchett. Of course, I waited to purchase it from Parnassus Books, author Ann Patchett’s bookstore, on my annual Christmas shopping trip to the Music City. I wanted a signed copy, of course, and I never pass up an opportunity to visit Parnassus.

If you love any aspect of Nashville — the music scene, the meat and threes, the history, or anything else — then you’ll love this coffee table book. The foreword by journalist/Presidential biographer Jon Meacham touches on the city’s role in the civil rights movement, popular culture, and Southern life. Ann Patchett’s accompanying essay intersperses these themes with her own experiences of growing up in 1960s Nashville. While I never miss a chance to read what either of these folks have to say, the true star of this work is the stunning visual spread of Heidi Ross’s photographs. You’ll see everything you love about Nashville in this work. The Nashville I love — the Pancake Pantry line, musicians like Margo Price and Sturgill Simpson, the iconic hot chicken restaurants — is well-represented. So are everyday sights like high school cheerleaders and street musicians, art galleries and parks, diners and farmers’ markets. It’s a gorgeous reminder that Nashville is far more than the Disney-like strip of celebrity-inspired bars and bachelorette parties offered on SoBro. If you love Nashville, you’ll love this book.

Purchase Nashville: Scenes from the New American South on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

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