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A balanced portrait of folksinger Pete Seeger as both a political radical and a fervent, crusading Hudson River environmentalist.
Here, because of his forty-year friendship with Pete Seeger, Ed Renehan delivers the first serious objective account to reveal both the light and dark sides of Seeger's art and politics. Seeger’s lifelong affinity with Communism, and the famous epoch of his blacklisting, inevitably bled into his later environmental activism on the Hudson River. Previous biographers have soft-pedaled the philosophical and political contradictions that defined this complex–but ultimately heroic–icon. In this volume, Renehan provides a stunning rebuttal to these hagiographies while at the same time giving Seeger the honest appraisal he most richly deserves.
"Excellent; a truly enjoyable and informative read." — Steve Buscemi, actor/director
"Seeger inspired me to become involved with the Waterkeeper movement. I am grateful for Renehan’s excellent book on Seeger!" — Charles Scribner IV, Executive Director, Black Warrior Riverkeeper
"So many threads in the story of Pete Seeger are eerily relevant in today’s political and cultural battles. Renehan has created a rich, fully honest portrait of a complex figure who, through his music and his activism, reminds us what it means to be an American." — Annik LaFarge, author of Chasing Chopin, On the High Line, and Composing Olana
Edward J. Renehan Jr., was a close friend of Pete and Toshi Seeger for four decades. He is the author of Deliberate Evil: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Daniel Webster, and the 1830 Murder of a Salem Slave Trader, along with many other books. He lives near Newport, Rhode Island.