Citizen Cash

The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash

By: Michael Stewart Foley

Narrated by: Michael Stewart, Greg Littlefield

A leading historian argues that Johnny Cash was the most important political artist of his time.

Johnny Cash was an American icon, known for his level bass-baritone voice and somber demeanor, and for huge hits like “Ring of Fire” and “I Walk the Line”. But he was also the most prominent political artist in the United States, even if he wasn’t recognized for it in his own lifetime, or since his death in 2003.

Then and now, people have misread Cash’s politics, usually accepting the idea of him as a “walking contradiction”. Cash didn’t fit into easy political categories - liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, hawk or dove. Like most people, Cash’s politics were remarkably consistent in that they were based not on ideology or scripts but on empathy - emotion, instinct, and identification.

Drawing on untapped archives and new research on social movements and grassroots activism, Citizen Cash offers a major reassessment of a legendary figure.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Michael Stewart Foley (P)2021 Basic Books

Critic reviews

“This is an important reassessment of one of American music's greatest performers, revealing a complex artist of the first magnitude who used his art and empathy to parse for him the contradictory times he immortalized in his work.” (Ken Burns, filmmaker)

“Michael Stewart Foley has written a book about Johnny Cash, and I cannot think of a better match of an author and subject. Foley shows how Cash’s deep reserves of empathy and insight made him an artist for his time (and ours). This book will change how you think about Johnny Cash.” (John McMillian, professor of history at Georgia State University and author of Beatles vs. Stones)

“What does it mean to be a political artist? For an artist to ‘be political’? In a timely and finely researched meditation on Cash’s takes on incarceration, Native rights, racism, and the war in Vietnam, Foley embraces the messiness of politics in public. We get Cash the researcher, Cash the documentarian, Cash the curator, and Cash the empath. We get a book that re-establishes Cash as a fascinating prism for looking though some of the most urgent issues still haunting American political life.” (Josh Kun, author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America)

Amazing book

The book is super detailed an amazing history lesson on Cash and America and narrator does an amazing job I fully recomend.

Wasn’t a particularly big Johnny Cash fan…

…but the title was intriguing, so I bought this. Really enjoyed it, and because of my lack of prior awareness, I appreciated that the book didn’t assume the reader (well, listener) was already well aware of his back story. Well read, and a great voice for the subject.