Satan Is Real Has the Best-Designed Book Cover of 2012

Sure, we're likely a smidge premature in naming Charlie Louvin and Benjamin Whitmer's Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers the Best-Designed Book Cover of 2012, but even two days into this new year, we're pretty sure nothing else can top the masterpiece pictured above. Designed by George McWilliams at Meat and Potatoes, the cover is a to-a-tee replica of a '50s pulp novel, and features the doomed country duo belting it out in the fiery depths of hell. Here's the blurb from the back of the book:

"The beautiful and tragic saga of the Louvin Brothers -- one of the most legendary country duos of all time -- is one of America's great untold stories. Charlie Louvin was a good, god-fearing, churchgoing singer, but his brother Ira had the devil inside of him, and was known for smashing his mandolin to splinters onstage, cussing out Elvis Presley, and trying to strangle his third wife with a telephone cord. Satan is Real is the incredible tale of Charlie Louvin's sixty-five-year career, the timeless murder ballads of the Louvin Brothers, and an epic tale of two brothers bound together by love, hate, alcohol, blood and music."

Uh, this book sounds awesome. Whoever wants to read it with us in our just-formed "Papermag Timeless Murder Ballads Book Club " should definitely do so.

Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers is out tomorrow, January 3rd, via It Books/Igniter Books. (Here's a video of the brothers performing their hit "I Don't Believe You've Met My Baby.")