Book Review: “Steel Drivin’ Man – John Henry – The Untold Story of an American Legend” by Scott Reynolds Nelson.

Many Americans know of John Henry from the song, we sang it in school, heard recordings, in the Persepectives case by Harry Belafonte. So the overlong title sounded intriguing. The author starts out telling how he did the research, this self gratifying part is not in keeping with how histories are usually written. The actual biographical part about John Henry is very short and sketchy, which is the part that the reader selected for. The bulk of the book deals with the song, in many versions, which is known.

The Perspective says leave this one on the shelf of your library, and pick another book. Sometimes things aren’t as good as they seem at first glance, like being sucked in by the hype of a movie, at least you only wasted two hours.