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Bob Dylan In America

Sean Wilentz author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:26th May '11

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Bob Dylan In America cover

A brilliantly written and groundbreaking book about Dylan's music and its musical, political and cultural roots in early 20th-century America.

A brilliantly written and groundbreaking book about Dylan's music – now the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2016 – and its musical, political and cultural roots in early 20th-century America

Growing up in Greenwich Village in the 1960s Sean Wilentz discovered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager.

A brilliantly written and groundbreaking book about Dylan's music – now the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2016 – and its musical, political and cultural roots in early 20th-century America

Growing up in Greenwich Village in the 1960s Sean Wilentz discovered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager. Almost half a century later, now a distinguished professor of American history, he revisits Dylan's work with the critical skills of a scholar and the passion of a fan.

Drawing partly on his work as the current historian-in-residence on Dylan's official website, Sean Wilentz provides a unique blend of biography, memoir and analysis in a book which, much like its subject, shifts gears and changes shape as the occasion demands.

A panoramic vision of Bob Dylan, his music, his shifting place in American culture, from multiple angles. In fact, reading Sean Wilentz' Bob Dylan in America is as thrilling and surprising as listening to a great Dylan song -- Martin Scorsese
Among those who write regularly about Dylan, Wilentz possesses the rare virtues of modesty, nuance and lucidity. If I may extend the Moby-Dick metaphor just a little here, Wilentz is a whale watcher rather than a whale hunter. He is content to observe rather than possess * Scotland on Sunday *
Wilentz combines his deep musical knowledge with the skills of a fine historian to write one of the most important, insightful and revelatory books about America, its culture and its people as interpreted through the works of one of its greatest artists * Irish Times *
All the American connections that Wilentz draws to explain the appearance of Dylan's music are fascinating, particularly at the outset the connection to Aaron Copland. The writing is strong, the thinking is strong - the book is dense and strong everywhere you look -- Philip Roth
Bob Dylan in America is vital reading -- Christopher Bray * Literary Review *

ISBN: 9780099549291

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 29mm

Weight: 343g

400 pages