Bob Dylan
 Bob Dylanīs much anticipated autobiography hit the bookstores, offering a rare, first-hand insight into the reclusive singerīs life, the genesis of his career and struggle with celebrity. However, any fan seeking a sensational tell-all confessional in the style of most rock music memoirs will be sorely disappointed.
Chronicles: Volume One wanders far from the normal autobiographical path, eschewing any chronological structure and providing instead snatches of a life, filled with anecdotes about anyone from the boxer Joe Dempsey to U2 frontman Bono. There is nothing of his shocking switch from acoustic to electric sound, his conversion to Christianity, or the breakdown of his marriage to Sara Lowndes, which spawned the highly acclaimed 1975 album Blood on the Tracks. His near-fatal motorbike crash in 1966 gets only the most cursory mention. "I had been in a motorcycle accident and Iīd been hurt, but I recovered," he writes.
The 293-page book is split into five chapters, three dealing with his early adult days in Minnesota and New York City, and two with the making of two of his lesser-known albums: New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The memoirs offer an atmospheric portrait of the Greenwich Village scene of the 1960s and the first rumblings of the social and political upheavals to come. "America was changing. I had a feeling of destiny and I was riding the changes," Dylan says.
Dylan, who spent three years punching out the book on a manual typewriter !?
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