Praised by Robbie Robertson of The Band as a classic & a ticket to ride, The Rose & the Briar assembles an astonishing group of writers and artists: Paul Muldoon, Stanley Crouch, R. Crumb, Jon Langford of the Mekons, Sharyn McCrumb, Luc Sante, Joyce Carol Oates, Dave Marsh, and more than a dozen other novelists, essayists, performers, and critics; to explore the ineffable power of the American ballad. From Barbara Allen through The Wreck of the Old 97 to contemporary ballads by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, The Rose & the Briar is, as Geoffrey O'Brien hailed in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, a book full of internal echoes and provocative coincidences, featuring historical investigation, shamanistic trance-journey, memoir, novella and cartoon, where names and costumes change, soldiers become cowboys, demon lovers become backwoods murderer; the voices are unmistakably distinct but they share a common ground.

Wilentz and Marcus have assembled an astonishing group of writers and artists--more than a dozen novelists, essayists, performers, and critics--to explore the ineffable power of the American ballad in words and in drawings.

THE BALLAD has been part of American history since before the country had a name. In this book, Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus have assembled an astonishing group of writers and artists--Paul Muldoon, Stanley Crouch, R. Crumb, Jon Langford of the Mekons, John Rockwell, Luc Sante, Joyce Carol Oates, Dave Marsh, and more than a dozen other novelists, essayists, performers, and critics--to explore the ineffable power of the American ballad. In words and in drawings, the collaborators have tapped the veins of America's most imaginative and expressive form. From Barbara Allen, one of the earliest, through The Wreck of the Old 97, to contemporary ballads by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, The Rose & the Briar presents a rich new patch of art and commentary--like the ballads, no two the same, but all of a piece, about stories, storytellers, and American death, love, and liberty.