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The Ballad of Bob Dylan by Daniel Mark Epstein
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The Ballad of Bob Dylan

A Portrait

$20.99

Retail price: $29.95

Discount: 29%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Bronson Pinchot
Length 15 hours 25 minutes
Language English
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The Ballad of Bob Dylan is a vivid, full-bodied portrait of one of the most influential artists of the 20th century—a man widely regarded as the most important lyricist America has ever produced.

Acclaimed poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein frames Dylan against the backdrop of four seminal concerts—all of which he attended: Lisner Auditorium, Washington, D.C., 1963; Madison Square Garden, New York City, 1974; Tanglewood, Massachusetts, 1997; Aberdeen, Maryland, 2009. Recreating each performance song by song, Epstein places them within the larger context of Dylan's life, from his meteoric rise as a young folk singer through his reemergence in the 1990s and his role as the ├®minence grise of rock-and-roll today. He explores the star's private side, including marriage and fatherhood, and his struggle to overcome substance abuse. Epstein also traces the influences that shaped Dylan's career and offers a thoughtful analysis of his work and fresh interpretations of his lyrics. Here, too, are anecdotes and insights from those closest to the man, including D. A. Pennebaker, Allen Ginsberg, Nora Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and Dylan's sidemen throughout the years.

Daniel Mark Epstein has written more than fifteen books of poetry, biography, and history, including Lincoln and Whitman, which received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, named one of the top ten books of 2008 by the Wall Street Journal and Chicago Sun-Times.

Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.

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Reviews

“If you like Keith Richards’ Life, then read The Ballad of Bob Dylan. Just in time for the musician’s 70th birthday, Daniel Mark Epstein’s biography offers a vivid portrait of the visionary artist.”

“What sets Epstein’s book apart is its accessibility…Epstein is refreshingly direct and approachable, and while the author, also a folk musician, makes much of his extensive quotes from Dylan’s lyrics, it is his own clear, emotional enthusiasm that carries the tale.”

“Historian and poet Epstein structures his loose-jointed chronicle around exegeses of iconic Dylan concerts he attended, analyzing the songs and the shifting persona of the singer: in 1963, the visionary twenty-two-year-old folkie; in 1974, the bristling thirty-something rocker; in 2009, the hoarse old man growling at Fate…Epstein’s wallow in the master’s words and moods will entrance hardcore Dylanophiles.”

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