Bob Dylan in America - Sean Wilentz

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.

Sean Wilentz is Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the American Revolutionary Era at Princeton University. He is the author of The Rise of American Democracy, which received the coveted Bancroft Prize, and most recently The Age of Reagan. He has also received a Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary and a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan, Live 1964: The Concert at Philharmonic Hall.

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
Literary Review - Christopher Bray