After launching a successful podcast together on Spotify, former President Barack Obama and rock ‘n’ roll icon Bruce Springsteen are bringing those conversations to a forthcoming book. Released through Penguin Random House, in partnership with Higher Ground, former First Lady Michelle Obama’s production company, Renegades: Born in the USA will feature illustrations, Springsteen lyrics, and annotated Obama speeches.
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“Over the years, what we’ve found is that we’ve got a shared sensibility. About work, about family, and about America. In our own ways, Bruce and I have been on parallel journeys trying to understand this country that’s given us both so much,” Obama pens in the book’s opening. “Trying to chronicle the stories of its people. Looking for a way to connect our own individual searches for meaning and truth and community with the larger story of America.”
Springsteen also shares a few thoughts. “There were serious conversations about the fate of the country, the fortune of its citizens, and the destructive, ugly, corrupt forces at play that would like to take it all down. This is a time of vigilance when who we are is being seriously tested,” he writes. “Hard conversations about who we are and who we want to become can perhaps serve as a small guiding map for some of our fellow citizens…. This is a time for serious consideration of who we want to be and what kind of country we will leave our children. Will we let slip through our hands the best of us or will we turn united to face the fire? Within this book, you won’t find the answers to those questions, but you will find a couple of seekers doing their best to get us to ask better questions.”
The 320-page book will also include photographs from personal collections and never-seen archival material, among other artifacts.
With Renegades: Born in the USA, “readers are invited to sit alongside these two longtime friends, in a recording studio stocked with dozens of guitars and during at least one Corvette ride, as they discuss marriage and fatherhood,” reads a statement from the publisher, “race and masculinity, the lure of the open road and the call back to home, some of the most inspiring American heroes of all time, and music…. They talk a lot about music.”
Renegades: Born in the USA releases October 26.
Check out the book trailer below.
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