3 Bob Dylan In America

Sean Wilentz (VINTAGE)

You say: “A proper historian on Dylan’s context and impact. Impeccable.” Tim Vernon, via e-mail

There are dry books by scholars and intellectuals about Dylan, and there is Wilentz’s dazzling portmanteau. Amid explorations of Dylan topics as diverse and chronologically polar as Blonde

On Blonde and Christmas In The Heart, the author (a professor of US history at Princeton) dives majestically into his influences and context, makes the claims for Dylan as a historical figure stick, and sets out a compelling case for 1964 as a bigger watershed than ’65 or ’66. Laser-eyed, insightful and elegant.