...[a] big, loose, rangy and intensely satisfying memoir ... The book is like one of Mr. Springsteen’s shows — long, ecstatic, exhausting, filled with peaks and valleys ... Born to Run is, like his finest songs, closely observed from end to end. His story is intimate and personal, but he has an interest in other people and a gift for sizing them up.
...a 508-page offering that, like his four-hour concerts, delivers enough punch and laughter, sorrow and succor, to satisfy your soul and still, somehow, leave you wanting more ... Throughout the book, Springsteen brings moments such as these to life with memories that put you in the room, whether it’s a whispered aside from Bob Dylan at the Kennedy Center Honors, arguments with record company executives over what to do with an album, or a rare guitar-throwing tantrum directed at his friend and longtime manager Jon Landau ... these chapters reveal many new sides, not all flattering, of a person who has been telling his story for nearly a half century.
It helps that Springsteen can write — not just life-imprinting song lyrics but good, solid prose that travels all the way to the right margin ... Oh, there are a few gassy bits here and there, a jot too much couch-inspired hooey about the 'terrain inside my own head'...But nothing in Born to Run rings to me as unmeant or punch-pulling. If anything, Springsteen wants credit for telling it the way it really is and was. And like a fabled Springsteen concert — always notable for its deck-clearing thoroughness — Born to Run achieves the sensation that all the relevant questions have been answered by the time the lights are turned out.
