Complete Johnny Cash Lyrics Book Coming

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A new book, The Complete Johnny Cash: Lyrics From a Lifetime of Songwriting, is coming this fall. The title, with Cash as author along with his longtime chronicler, Mark Stielper, comes from the Voracious imprint of Hachette. It arrives October 14, 2025, and is available for pre-order in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.

From the publisher’s announcement: “The Man in Black” is one of America’s most prolific and influential songwriters, speaking through his songs to the soul of the nation while capturing the victories and losses that marked his own life. This comprehensive and definitive 720-page book collects—for the first time—every one of his song lyrics alongside never-before-seen reproductions of handwritten pages from his own notebooks.

Readers will revisit such Cash favorites as “Big River,” “Get Rhythm,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and scores more.

Organized chronologically and with critical commentary on themes that appear throughout his work, including a foreword from his son, John Carter Cash, this book catalogs Cash’s range as a poet and storyteller. It traces his evolution from his earliest compositions to his last love song, through periods of personal struggle, political activism, and tests of faith. What emerges is an unprecedented portrait of Johnny Cash as a timeless American artist.

Stielper has chronicled the life of the “Man in Black” for nearly forty years, contributing to a dozen Cash biographies, appearing on screen in documentaries, and speaking at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Cash museum. Johnny Cash himself called Stielper “my friend, the family historian” and said, “He knows more about me than me.”