The Political World of Bob Dylan

Reviews / Votes

"I am very, very impressed. I thought I knew a lot about Dylan but I learned a lot more from this very well-done book." (Nat Hentoff, columnist and music critic, author of liner notes for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, present in control room for recording of Another Side of Bob Dylan, interviewer of Dylan for The New Yorker (1964) and Playboy (1966), author of Rolling Thunder Revue story for Rolling Stone (1976))

"This book is a great achievement, and a fine addition to the constantly expanding Bob Dylan library. In fact, I think it may be one of the most insightful and revealing books ever written on Dylan. This is an honest appraisal from someone who's qualified to know what's an insightful book on Dylan and what's just wishful thinking." (Dave Kelly, professional musician and personal assistant to Bob Dylan during the Slow Train Coming tour (1979-80))

"The writing is very engaging and intelligent . . . an entertaining, enlightening, andscholarly work. This book is so well researched, reasoned and rendered, that when I finished it I felt like I had just taken a graduate level course on Dylan at Stanford." (Allen Flemming, friend and biographer of Larry Norman)

"No one should begin to try to discuss the politics of Bob Dylan until they read The Political World of Bob Dylan: Freedom and Justice, Power and Sin. . . . If someone is interested enough to open the book, they absolutely will not regret it." (Chip Jengel, musician and law school student)

"After reading this book I had the feeling that Jeff Taylor and Chad Israelson understand Dylan better than Dylan understands Dylan. They made me aware that I had made Bob Dylan in my own political image, and that he is much more complex than that. This book gets two thumbs up from me." (Tony Campolo, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Eastern University, USA; and author of It's Friday But Sunday's Comin' and Red Letter Christians)

"Bob Dylan rebel, Judeo-Christian anarchist and religious wanderer, lover of freedom, distrustful of the powerful, sympathetic to the poor and vulnerable, and neither Left nor Right is brilliantly portrayed in all his complexity by Jeff Taylor and Chad Israelson in this illuminating and important book." (Murray Polner, Book Review Editor of History News Network and Co-Editor of Shalom (Jewish Peace Fellowship))

"A brave and bold book, Dylan will never sound the same. Finally we have a careful and clear exposition of Dylan's theopolitics, and what a weird but compelling world it is. The political and the spiritual are the keys to Dylan's music, and this book demonstrates how they come together to unlock a remarkably cogent message concerning the nature and destiny of human society." (Stephen H. Webb, former Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Wabash College, USA; and author of Dylan Redeemed)

"By taking the rare step of giving Bob Dylan's evangelical records and their cultural context the serious attention they deserve, Jeff Taylor and Chad Israelson have revealed yet another side of the singer: Dylan the Christian anarchist." (Jesse Walker, Books Editor of Reason and author of Rebels on the Air and The United States of Paranoia)

"In their extensively researched, engagingly written, and carefully argued examination of Dylan's thought and art, Taylor and Israelson portray Dylan as a Christian anarchist. They find this tradition, incorporating elements of both the New Left and the New Right, entirely consonant with Dylan's Jewish heritage and his Iron Range upbringing. Their analysis, sure to be controversial, both extends and sheds new light on previous Dylan scholarship." (David Pichaske, Professor of English, Southwest Minnesota State University, USA; and author of Song of the North Country: A Midwest Framework to the Songs of Bob Dylan)

"Jeff Taylor and Chad Israelson's words are scented with the kind of insights sure to deepen our appreciation of Bob Dylan's gifts. As ably as any writers who have probed Dylan's politics, they clarify the complexities and explain the subtleties." (Colman McCarthy, Founder of the Center for Teaching Peace; Adjunct Professor, American University and Georgetown Law, USA; and former Washington Post syndicated columnist)

"Packed with insight concerning Dylan's oeuvre and its relationship to God and man, Professors Taylor and Israelson go far in scrutinizing this purposely inscrutable man. When two authors are able to cull this much information regarding the political and cultural significance of such an important and enigmatic artist as Bob Dylan, the times really have a-changed." (Christopher Westley, Professor of Economics, Florida Gulf Coast University, USA; and Associated Scholar, Mises Institute)

"Taylor and Israelson carefully and eruditely examine Dylan's conversion, his Christian life and its effect on his politics. . . . The authors have not only provided insightinto this portion of his life and works, they have also given it a value equal to his previous periods. In addition, the arguments they make in these pages create a needed and useful synthesis of these different times in the poet's life and work." (Ron Jacobs, author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies)