The international Number One bestseller. Over a million copies sold in the English language.
Published in 23 foreign languages. ‘A heartfelt memoir . . . there is a fearlessness to his
prose a willingness to engage with his past that chimes with his songwriter’s desire to give
voice to the people around him’ Sunday Times “Writing about yourself is a funny business…But
in a project like this the writer has made one promise to show the reader his mind. In these
pages I’ve tried to do this.” — Bruce Springsteen from the pages of Born to Run In 2009
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The
experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this
extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years Bruce Springsteen has privately
devoted himself to writing the story of his life bringing to these pages the same honesty
humor and originality found in his songs. He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold New
Jersey amid the poetry danger and darkness that fueled his imagination leading up to the
moment he refers to as “The Big Bang”: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show .
He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician his early days as a bar band
king in Asbury Park and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor he also tells
for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work and shows
us why the song “Born to Run” reveals more than we previously realized. Born to Run will be
revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen but this book is much more than
a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers parents and children
lovers and loners artists freaks or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy
river of rock and roll. Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep.
Like many of his songs (“Thunder Road ” “Badlands ” “Darkness on the Edge of Town ” “The River
” “Born in the U.S.A. ” “The Rising ” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad ” to name just a few) Bruce
Springsteen’s autobiography is written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the
wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences.
