A frank, funny, and inventive blend of biography, music criticism, and memoir told in thirteen tracks.

As he enters his sixties, Bruce Springsteen remains a paragon of all that is cool in the world of rock. He’s a genuine voice of the people, the bastard child of Woody Guthrie and James Brown, and an elder statesman who has inspired generations of bands. He’s won twenty Grammy Awards, an Oscar, and two Golden Globes and is a double hall-of-famer.

There are dozens of books about the Boss. What’s left to say? Nothing objective, perhaps. But when it comes to music, objectivity is highly overrated. Robert Wiersema has been a Springsteen fan since he was a teenager, following tours to see multiple shows in a row, watching set lists develop in real time via the Internet, ordering bootlegs from shady vendors in Italy. His attachment is deeper than fandom, though: he’s grown up with Springsteen’s music as the soundtrack to his life, beginning with his youth in rural British Columbia and continuing on through dreams of escape, falling in love, and becoming a father.

Walk Like a Man is the liner notes for a mix tape, a blend of biography, music criticism, and memoir. Like the best mix tapes, it balances joy and sorrow, laughter seasoning the dark-night-of-the-soul questions that haunt us all. This is Wiersema’s journey into adulthood (with all the wrong turns and false starts life throws at us), and of the man and the music that have accompanied him along the way.