Bob Dylan and John Lennon are two of the most iconic names in popular music. Dylan is arguably the twentieth century's most important singer-songwriter. Lennon was founder and leader of the Beatles who remain, by some margin, the most covered songwriters in history. While Dylan erased the boundaries between pop and poetry, Lennon and his band transformed the genre's creative potential. The parallels between the two men are striking but underexplored. This book addresses that lack. Jon Stewart discusses Dylan's and Lennon's relationship; their politics; their understanding of history; and their deeply held spiritual beliefs. In revealing how each artist challenged the restrictive social norms of their day, the author shows how his subjects asked profound moral questions about what it means to be human and how we should live. His book is a potent meditation and exploration of two emblematic figures whose brilliance changed Western music for a generation.

"Bob Dylan and John Lennon are two of the most influential figures in popular music history. Dylan is arguably the twentieth century's most important singer-songwriter. His works have been covered more often than any other solo composer, and sales of his own records put him comfortably in the thirty most popular performers in United States' history. Lennon was founder and erstwhile leader of the Beatles who remain, by some margin, the most covered songwriters ever and the all-time top-selling popular music entertainers worldwide"--

Ground-breaking dual biography that explores pop music's two most influential songwriters, offering new insights into their creative thinking.

Teaching Bob Dylan offers educators practical, adaptable strategies for designing or updating courses (or units within courses) on the life, music, career, and critical reception of Bob Dylan. Drawing on the latest pedagogical developments and best classroom practices in a range of fields, the contributors present concrete approaches for teaching not only Dylan's lyrics and music, but also his many-and sometimes abrupt or unexpected-changes in musical direction, numerous creative guises, and writings. Situating Dylan and his work in their musical, literary, historical, and cultural contexts, the essays explore ways to teach Dylan's connections to African American music and performers, American popular music, the Beats, Christianity, and the revolutions of the 1960s, and more, and offer strategies for incorporating, and analyzing, not only documentaries and films about or featuring Dylan, but also critical and biographical studies on multiple dimensions of an American icon's long and complex career.

About Man and God and Law is the story of how Bob Dylan sparked a revolution of the spirit and why it matters today. Many of our assumptions about empathy, sensual pleasure, and the essence of work, community, country, race, and the divine have germinated in Bob Dylan’s need to know what’s blowing in the wind and how it feels. Tracing his work and vision through themes that have shaped religious and cultural history for millennia, Stephen Daniel Arnoff uncovers how Bob Dylan has re-enchanted ancient questions of meaning and purpose throughout popular culture, inspiring a pantheon of prophetic musicians along the way. This field guide to Dylan's spiritual wisdom aims to make good on the promise that if we look closely enough at his body of work—precisely at a moment when the world we thought we knew seems like uncharted territory—we can open up our eyes to see not only where we really are, but where we need to go.