WOODY GUTHRIE: A LIFE
On behalf of: Kathy Robbins - The Robbins Office, Inc.
‘A really great book.’ Bruce Springsteen
The classic biography of the hugely influential American folk singer who inspired a generation of songwriters, including Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.
Few artists have captured the American experience of their time as wholly as folk legend Woody Guthrie. Singer, songwriter and political activist, Guthrie drew a lifetime of inspiration from his roots on the Oklahoma frontier in the years before the Great Depression. His music — scathingly funny songs and poignant folk ballads — made heard the unsung life of field hands, migrant workers, and union organisers, and showed it worthy of tribute. Though his career was tragically cut short by the onset of a degenerative disease that ravaged his mind and body, the legacy of his life and music had already made him an American cultural icon, and has resounded with every generation of musician and music lover since.
In this definitive biography, renowned journalist Joe Klein creates an unforgettable portrait of a man as gifted, restless and complicated as the American landscape he came from.
Reviews
One of the finest treatments of an American twentieth-century performer ever written . . . Not merely a biography . . . It is a social history . . . written knowledgeably, in a brilliant style. ― San Francisco Examiner
It is to Joe Klein’s credit that he has shown us the achievement of Guthrie for what it is — an unequalled, unsurpassed outpouring of political and personal songs that say more about America than any Broadway musical, any Hollywood film, any State of the Union address. ― Literary Review
Joe Klein has done us a great service in revealing the true story of someone whose own autobiography reads like a work of fiction, and his account of Woody’s life if as compelling as Bound for Glory itself. — Billy Bragg