Woody Guthrie: A Life

A biography of the influential American folk singer, Woody Guthrie, who lived a life on the edge of tragedy but 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 organizers, 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, Joe Klein, nationally renowned journalist and author of the bestselling novel Primary Colors, creates an unforgettable portrait of a man as gifted, restless, and complicated as the American landscape he came from.

Praise for Woody Guthrie: A Life

“One of the finest treatments of an American 20th-century performer ever written . . . Not merely a biography . . . it is a social history . . . written knowledgeably, in a brilliant style.”—San Francisco Examiner

“A really great book.”—Bruce Springsteen