By Ron Wynn
NASHVILLE, TN — Former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen are expanding their joint activities into the book world. They’re already been partners on a podcast, and that is now being converted into a book. Penquin Random House is joining forces with former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground production company to publish “Renegades: Born in the USA,” a collection of conversations that Obama and Springsteen began in their Spotify co-produced podcast of the same name.
The book will chronicle the candid conversations Obama and Springsteen began in their Spotify co-produced podcast. The two sat down and discussed everything from race to fatherhood to modern manhood and the state of America today in the eight-episode podcast. The book will be 320 pages, and feature more than 350 full-color exclusive photographs and illustrations from both Obama and Springsteen’s personal collections. It will also showcase never-before-seen archival material, including the former president’s annotated speeches and the musician’s handwritten lyrics.
“In 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, 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,” Penguin Random House described in the book’s announcement.
Springsteen wrote in the introduction: “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 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.”
Obama also wrote, “The conversations Bruce and I had in 2020 feel as urgent today as they did back then. They represent our ongoing effort to figure out how it is that we got here, and how we can tell a more unifying story that starts to close the gap between America’s ideals and its reality.”
“Renegades: Born in the USA” will be published globally Oct. 26.
