Bob Dylan: No Direction Home

This new illustrated edition features key images from across Dylan's remarkable and enduring career, making it an essential addition to every fan's collection.

Robert Shelton met Bob Dylan when the young singer arrived in New York in 1961 and became his friend, champion, and critic.

Originally published in 1986, No Direction Home was hailed as the definitive unauthorized biography of Bob Dylan and remains the only biography written with his active cooperation. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Dylan's parents, brother, childhood friends, fellow musicians and Suze Rotolo, the inspiration behind the iconic cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan , Shelton creates an intimate portrait of the artist's formative years.

Concluding with Dylan backstage during his triumphant 1978 world tour, the book took 20 years to complete. When it was finally published, it received widespread critical acclaim. Following Dylan's Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, his standing reached its highest point since the 1960s, and Shelton's biography is now regarded as a classic.

Robert Shelton was born in Chicago in 1926 and was on the staff of the New York Times for two decades until he went to Europe. Best known as the man who discovered Bob Dylan, he was the principle chronicler of the 1960s US folk revival. His books include the Woody Guthrie collection Born to Win, The Face of Folk Music, The Country Music Story and The Electric Muse. He died in 1995.

Elizabeth Thomson has interviewed Joan Baez numerous times over the course of forty years and was present at the recording of Ring Them Bells. A contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, she is also the revising editor of Robert Shelton's classic biography, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, has been a Visiting Fellow of the Open University Sixties Research Group, and is the author of several books. She is the founder and Executive Producer of The Village Trip, a festival celebrating the history and culture of Greenwich Village, New York City.