Paperback, 272 Pages: Music is fundamental to human existence—a cultural universal embedded in our evolution and essential to our survival. While academics offer abstract explanations, journalist Richard Manning takes a different path, using his guitar and banjo to explore music’s deeper meanings. What he finds is a celebration of music that’s rough, raw, and revolutionary. American roots music didn’t come from elite leisure classes but from the explosive creativity of slaves, field hands, hillbillies, drunks, and hustlers—poor and working-class people who birthed gospel, jazz, blues, bluegrass, rock ’n’ roll, and country. Manning pulls this thread to reveal deeper truths about inequality, slavery, addiction, neuroscience, and spirituality. This book is both a personal journey and a bold argument: that music not only shapes our culture, but sings the American body, electric.