You could say of course, and again you’d be right, that this is nothing very remote from a lot of lives. Mine. Yours. Mid­century American Gothic. A “crap heap of a hometown that I loved.” But therein lies at least a hint to the magic in the Springsteen mystery: the muscular rise to the small occasion, taking forceful dominion over your poky circumstance and championing your own responses to what would otherwise seem inevitable.

For over 40 years, Springsteen has chronicled the lives of myriad American characters as they face life, love, economic hardship, and the search for community and home, and now he limns his own life story to create an exuberant, sprawling, double album of a memoir. Springsteen writes eloquently about his youth, family, and hometown while detailing his complicated relationship with his father and the singer's own quest to reconcile his past and explore the roots and meaning of what he does. Springsteen describes in abundant detail his musical coming of age with various bands, playing the clubs and bars of New Jersey as he finds his own voice, struggles with early success, and eventually records the 1975 masterpiece Born To Run with the E Street Band and reaches superstardom in the 1980s. Springsteen's prose ranges from honest and self-deprecating to poetic and deeply analytical as he writes about his life, his music, his place in the world, and his movingly deep ties to his family, his band, and his audience. Verdict Like a classic Springsteen and E Street Band show, the book takes readers on a rollicking ride from the glorious and the emotional to the fun and soaring; one of rock's finest and most memorable memoirs.-James Collins, Morristown-Morris Twp. P.L., NJ