Nashville is built on songs, but it has a strong literary culture too — it is the birthplace of the Southern Agrarians (the 1930s Vanderbilt writers' circle), home of Ann Patchett's Parnassus Books in Green Hills, and the setting for some of the best country music memoirs ever written.
- Robert K. Oermann, A Century of Country (1999) — the most readable single-volume history of country music as an industry, much of it set in Nashville.
- Marshall Chapman, They Came to Nashville (2010) — interviews with songwriters about their first arrival in the city. Funny, vivid, and the best book on the songwriting tradition.
- Peter Cooper, Johnny's Cash and Charley's Pride (2017) — collected pieces by the Tennessean's long-time music critic, full of dispatches from Music Row.
- Robert Hicks, The Widow of the South (2005) — historical novel set just south of Nashville at the Battle of Franklin, useful background to the Civil War history of the area.
- Ann Patchett, State of Wonder (2011) — not set in Nashville, but written there by the bookseller and novelist who has done more than anyone to keep independent literary life alive in the city.