With the release of his 2007 album, Magic, Bruce Springsteen again proved his status as one of the greatest songwriters in American history. For over three decades, Springsteens musicwith his trademark poetic lyrics and his ability to find glory in the struggles of everyday lifehas attracted fans and critics from across the globe. In this book, author Jeffrey Symynkywicz shows that a large part of Springsteens enduring popularity is the deep sense in which his music connects to something essential to human experience. Springsteens music, Symynkywicz suggests, helps make sense of the many threads of our livesincluding our experiences of sin and redemption and of faith and hope. With a clear and inviting style, Symynkywicz treats each of Springsteens albums as a chapter, exploring the history and context of Springsteens music and the ways in which his songs express these spiritual themes.

The first comprehensive analysis of the biblical and theological themes in Bruce Springsteen's music.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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. It includes: • Original introductions by President Obama and Bruce Springsteen • Exclusive new material from the Renegades podcast recording sessions • Obama’s never-before-seen annotated speeches, including his “Remarks at the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Marches” • Springsteen’s handwritten lyrics for songs spanning his 50-year-long career • Rare and exclusive photographs from the authors’ personal archives • Historical photographs and documents that provide rich visual context for their conversation In a recording studio stocked with dozens of guitars, and on at least one Corvette ride, Obama and Springsteen discuss marriage and fatherhood, race and masculinity, the lure of the open road and the call back to home. They also compare notes on their favorite protest songs, the most inspiring American heroes of all time, and more. Along the way, they reveal their passion for—and the occasional toll of—telling a bigger, truer story about America throughout their careers, and explore how our fractured country might begin to find its way back toward unity and global leadership.

Packed full of insightful stories from Springsteen's long career, Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs takes a detailed look at each and every one of Springsteen's album tracks, providing a unique look at this rock legend's method, as well as some of the many anecdotes and tales that are prolific in his long music history. Deeply researched, laced with insight from decades of fandom and original reporting, this book is an exhaustive and unique look at the writing, recording and significance of Springsteen's singular catalog of songs. Each album is discussed and then each song is examined in terms of lyrical meaning, placing in historical context where necessary or relevant. It's the first book to cover every officially released track, from hits to obscurities, from 1974's Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. to 2014's High Hopes.

Long considered "the devil's music," secular recok-n-roll may actually help us hear the voice of God.

Commemorating Bruce Springsteen's twenty-five years as a recording artist, here is a panoramic view of his career in a form never seen before. This is the complete collection of Bruce Springsteen's recorded lyrics, illustrated with hundreds of never-before-published images from some of rock & roll journalism's greatest photographers, including Annie Leibovitz, David Gahr, Lynn Goldsmith, Bruce Weber, and many others. From Jim Marchese's informal backstage shots during the European leg of the 1980 The River tour to Neal Preston's amazing documentation of the Born in the U.S.A. days to Pam Springsteen's portraits showing a side of the musician rarely seen by the public, this is the most intimate look at Bruce Springsteen ever published. The photos and lyrics are accompanied by original commentary by Springsteen, in which he reflects on the songs, the performances, and the quarter-century career that for many defines the American dream. In words and in pictures, here is the one book no Bruce Springsteen fan can afford to be without.

"Greeley has written a lively, controversial and stimulating book in which he describes a Catholic imagination which is different from (not better or worse than) a Protestant imagination. Going beyond his own position, I believe Protestants have much to learn not just about the Catholic imagination but from it as he describes it."—Robert Bellah, coauthor of Habits of the Heart "Andrew Greeley is the most vivid sociological writer of our time. By studying artists and artisans directly, he brings David Tracy's theory of religious imagination to life. The survey data show that ordinary people have imaginations too, and that the lay person's imagination is also framed by religious tradition. This book is a tour de force."—Michael Hout, University of California, Berkeley