Steel Drivin’ Man was a really good book. not just a tale about American folklore or folk songs, but about race relations in Reconstruction Era south, the beginnings of American Big Business and Capitalism, the adolescence of the black rights movement, American cultural theory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, political upheaval and Communist propaganda around WWII… and so many other things.

when I started reading it I sadly suspected it would become “One Man’s Search for the Real John Henry But Really a Pithy Memoir About His Coming of Age in Middle Class America Trying To Lay Claim To African American Cultural Heritage to Embellish his Leftist Political Sympathies.”

I’m very glad I was wrong.