Obama and Springsteen Team Up Again For Renegades: The Book
Will it be as good as the podcast? Better?
Former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, who teamed up earlier this year for the Spotify podcast, Renegades: Born in the USA, are reuniting for a book based on their podcast. Crown/Penguin Random House/Higher Ground will publish Renegades: Born in the USA on October 26, and it’ll be an oversized, 320-page volume rendered in the illustrated format. Readers can expect annotated Obama speeches, handwritten Springsteen lyrics, 350 previously unseen photos, and additional archival material. The publishers describe Renegades: Born in the USA as “a collection of candid, intimate, and entertaining conversations.”
Springsteen and Obama appear together in a trailer for Renegades: Born in the USA in which they settle into a car that’s too small for either of them, especially the former president. Try not to laugh when the rock legend calls the ex-leader of the free world… “B.”“Over the years,” Obama notes in the opening pages, “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. 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.”
“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,” Springsteen adds. “This is a time of vigilance when who we are is being seriously tested. 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.”
Renegades: Born in the USA hits booksellers on October 26, 2021.
