Most guitarists today think of the USA as the land of the guitar. Classical guitars come from Spain but rock, jazz and folk guitars must surely be American? They know the 'great' names - Gibson, Epiphone, Fender, Gretsch, Martin. How many of them know that Christian Friedrich Martin was born in Markneukirchen, Germany, in 1796 and emigrated to the USA at the age of thirty-seven? The area Martin came from produced a massive proportion of the world's stringed instruments for over three centuries, yet its history has been overlooked by all but a few musicians. Authors Cameron Brown and Stefan Lob are two of the world experts on these instruments, and this book, the first in the English language, is informed by many years of research. The Bate Collection is a museum of musical instruments at the University of Oxford and it owns a collection of 110 guitars donated by Cameron Brown. Half of them were made by German-speaking Czech craftsmen expelled from their homeland after the Second World War before resettling in Bavaria, the other half by their former neighbours in Saxony, with whom they had worked closely for three centuries but who now found themselves behind the Iron Curtain. This lavishly illustrated book shows the complete collection (and more), offers a summary of the socio-political background and the way it led to the decline - and almost the extinction - of what was once the most productive centre of stringed-instrument making in the world, plus a unique guide to help collectors identify the makers of their instruments.