* The Audio version of this book review will appear in Reading in Bed Episode 53 at the start of May 2022 *
Blurb:
Two
longtime friends share an intimate and urgent conversation about
life, music, and their enduring love of America, with all its
challenges and contradictions, in this stunningly produced expansion
of their groundbreaking Higher Ground podcast, featuring more than
350 photographs, exclusive bonus content, and never-before-seen
archival material.
Renegades: Born in the USA is a candid,
revealing, and entertaining dialogue between President Barack Obama
and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen that explores everything
from their origin stories and career-defining moments to our
country’s polarized politics and the growing distance between the
American Dream and the American reality. Filled with full-color
photographs and rare archival material, it is a compelling and
beautifully illustrated portrait of two outsiders—one Black and one
white—looking for a way to connect their unconventional searches
for meaning, identity, and community with the American story itself.
Strengths:
A written adaption from their award winning Podcast, Renegades is a long form interview / chat book between two people who you would not expect to be friends upon reflection, let alone the great friends they have become – one possibly one of the most interesting American Precidents in my lifetime and one of the greatest singersongwriters over the last 50 years with a grounded focus on the working class man.
Their similarities are truly interesting spread among this book with both of them talking frankly about their upbringing with both of them having frankly hard relationships with their fathers, and the opposites in their relationships with the women in their relationship who became their wives.
I’ve listened personally to both the Podcast and the book version, and surprisingly I got through the book a lot quicker than I thought I was going considering this was quite a lengthy Podcast series.
There is plenty of surprises in it as they don’t just talk about politics - They also center whole broadcasts/chapters around the role of money in American society and the way forward in society post covid.
There is also segments in the book about the role of masculinity and the way it is changing in current society and was very interested in both cases how fatherhood transformed both of their lives.
Weaknessess:
The conversation is expanded slightly and cleaned up syntactically for the sake of clarity, there is also lots of pictures and extracts from speeches / songs which are nice but if I am honest fail to add much to the book and feel on several occasions borderline on padding which I don’t think at least half of them should have being included in the book.
An excellent easy to read book otherwise 9/10
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