Presentation & Signing: Tonight In Jungleland by Peter Ames Carlin

Please join us for this incredible addition to our roster of book events!

A $30 ticket includes your RSVP and a copy of the book. Purchasing a $5 ticket is to reserve your seat and you will recieve a $5 coupon to use at the time of the event!

Hope to see you there!

ABOUT THE BOOK:

From the opening piano notes of “Thunder Road” to the final outro of “Jungleland,” with American anthems like “Born to Run” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” in between, Bruce Springsteen’s seminal album, Born to Run, established Springsteen as a creative force in rock and roll. It is indisputably his crowning achievement, which launched him to international superstardom—but it almost never happened. By the spring of 1974, the situation at Columbia Records had become dire for Springsteen. His first two albums had been highly praised but had gained almost no commercial traction. Columbia was not going to pay for a full third album. They agreed to give him enough money to record just one more song; if it sounded like a hit, or even something with a chance of radio play, they’d consider financing a full album. Bruce was determined to craft a song powerful enough to stake the rest of his career on, so he sat on his small bed near the Jersey Shore and picked up his guitar. He listened to the traffic outside his window and envisioned the muscle cars he saw roaring around Asbury Park. Then he pulled some chords out of the air and wrote the words, “Baby, we were born to run.” With his back against the wall, Springsteen wrote what has been hailed as a perfect album, a defining moment, and a roadmap for what would become a legendary career. TONIGHT IN JUNGLELAND details the writing and recording of every song on the album, a tortuous process that betrayed the fault lines in Springsteen’s psyche and career, even as it revealed the depth of his vision and the power of his determination. It’s a journey and a story—from the first harmonica notes of “Thunder Road” and its opening lyric, “The screen door slams, Mary's dress sways,” to the “Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge” in “Jungleland," with its massive, theatrical finale of raised and crushed dreams against a backdrop of Springsteen’s hopeful and melancholic New Jersey (“There’s an opera out on the Turnpike / There’s a ballet being fought out in the alley. . . Tonight, in Jungleland”)—that combines Carlin’s signature narrative style, trademark energy, lush music writing, and intellectual style, with unprecedented access to Springsteen, his bandmates, and his longtime collaborators.A must-read for any music fan, TONIGHT IN JUNGLELAND takes us inside a hallowed creative process and lets us experience history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Peter Ames Carlin is a cultural writer and journalist who has written several books about music and musicians, including Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records; Paul McCartney: A Life; Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon; Bruce, the internationally bestselling biography of Bruce Springsteen; and the critically acclaimed 2024 biography The Name of This Band is R.E.M. Carlin has also been a freelance journalist, a senior writer at People in New York City, and a television columnist and feature writer at The Oregonian in Portland. A regular speaker on music, writing, and popular culture, Carlin lives in Seattle with his partner, the writer Claire Dederer.

BOOK REVIEWS:

“You can toss those other tomes; Peter Ames Carlin has just penned the definitive biography of Bruce Springsteen.”―Asbury Park Press “Carlin gets across why Springsteen has meant so much, for so long, to so many people.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times“There are probably more books about Bruce Springsteen than there are about any other rock star of his generation. But until one comes out with the words ‘by Bruce Springsteen’ on the cover, Bruce will be the definitive one.”―The Newark Star-Ledger“Interviews with bandmates, family members, and exes paint an unflinching portrait of the rock icon. . . No previous biographer has uncovered as much about Springsteen’s family.”―Rolling Stone“Carlin’s exhaustively researched portrait of rock and roll’s working-class hero delivers everything a fan could wish for.”―People“Unless Springsteen decides to pen a memoir, this is as close as we’ll get to Springsteen unmasked.”―Atlanta Journal-Constitution“Springsteen is biographical big game: majestic, fugitive, offering the unwary chronicler the possibility that he might get trampled. But Carlin has brought him down, with empathy and shrewdness. Here is Bruce, stylishly captured in all his Brucedom; the everyman, the unknowable; the anointed one, the loner; stadium swagger and dull, private pain. Are these contradictions, or just the span of a man’s soul? Read Bruce and find out.”—James Parker, The Atlantic

ABOUT THE MEDIATOR:

Nick Corasaniti is a domestic correspondent covering national politics for the New York Times. He has covered four presidential cycles, along with countless congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral races in more than 15 years at the Times. He was once the Times’s Jersey correspondent, tracking the politics, policy, people, trains, beaches, and eccentricities that give the Garden State its charm. He is a born and raised—and exceptionally proud—New Jerseyan, who splits his time between Asbury Park and Brooklyn.

Host or Publisher Asbury Book Cooperative