I don’t usually write about topics beyond marketing and behaviour, but I recently read two books on Bob Dylan that dove deep into cultural history and found new ways to present biography.

In Bob Dylan: A Biography in Seven Songs, Greil Marcus writes a life of Bob Dylan through his songs (and not the ones you might expect). The approach is insightful and reveals some sides of the songwriter that I hadn’t realized.

In Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, which was written much earlier but I read later, Greil Marcus gives a fascinating history of the development, writing and influence of one Dylan song. As one reviewer writes, “part social history and part biography” and I would add part musicology. It’s a fantastic read (especially if you are a Bob Dylan fan), and also an important social history, placing this one song in the context of Dylan’s life, the history of music, and, most importantly, the social history of America.

Even if you are not a big fan of Bob Dylan, but know some of the songs, these books, and especially the second, will give you deep insights into the interactions between music and broader cultural history.