Find Steel Drivin Man: John Henry, The Untold Story Of An American Legend Imagined By Scott Reynolds Nelson Shown In Document

serviceable history of the John Henry mythos, The first half, the better half, is about the author's search to find the truth about John Henry, It reads wonderfully because it's about a journey of discovery, My favorite section is Nelson's description of the freewheeling Reconstructionist Virginia, I would pay to see that movie,
The second half of the book recontextualizes this new reality of John Henry against the sociopolitical mythology that has grown around his life and it reads like an academic thesis.

An altogether worthwhile read, for what it's worth, Nelson does a pretty good job of convincing the reader that he is gotten to the root of the John Henry question who was he really.


This is a rather enjoyable and very quick read that examines not only what Nelson believes to be story behind the legend but also a study of how the story was used in America.


Nelson's writing is engaging, and he talks not only about John Henry but about American ballads and folklife.
Admittly, Nelson seems to go into too much detail about trains, but it is John Henry we're talking about,

Though, Nelson, you could've mentioned he had a racehorse, a very famous one, named after him, John Henry, the horse, was great too, Hands down the best nonfiction title I read in, I really loved this book when I started it, because it sets out to be both about the historical John Henry and about the way historians "do" history in a way that captured the puzzlesolving feel of it and the click when things fit together quite well.


But the second half of the book was sort of a different book, one about the legacy of John Henry, or the story of his legend, perhaps, written with a much broader brush.
I know, they're related, and they sound like they should go together, but they're very different flavors and approaches, Not that the legacy story isn't a perfectly legitimate history book, it just wasn't the one I started reading,

As a whole, though, this is a very approachable book that traces an American tall tale both directions: back to its roots and forward to see how it's been appropriated, and by whom, and to what purpose, for the lastyears.
Worth reading if you're interested in the history of folk lore, race relations, railroads, convict labor, music, the WPA, art deco, Communism, superheroes, or any combination thereof.
Reynolds using the John Henry American Myth to unite American industrial, social and ethical consciousness in one brilliant study, This book is about more than trying to unearth a man behind a legend although Reynolds asserts to literally do just that it explains how the nexus of reconstruction, railroad construction, and southern resurrection affected American culture and stratified the nation in several ways: ultimately giving birth to the industrial revolution, the civil rights conflicts and perhaps rock and roll.
John Henry is a microcosm of American History with a theme song, Fantastic book. Natural man to man of steel
Nelson does the near impossible: He finds the real, documented man in the folk song, places him in his actual geographical setting not where all the roadside markers are by the way and tells us his history in life and death.


I was surprised to learn that John Henry did actually exist, and did actually compete against a steam drill in demonstrating the value of human labor over the mechanized variety in digging railroad tunnels through the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia and its newlynamed neighbor West Virginia in the decade after the Civil War.
, This part of the story reads like a coldcase mystery as Nelson tracks down old government archives, railroad engineering studies and project documentation, Civil War records, and archeological findings that helped him find the living John Henryand the site of his death and burial after that famous contest.


Then Nelson brings John Henry the legend up to date, showing how the legend became song, spread across the country and oceans during World War I, was coopted into early "folk" entertainment and then politics, and finally even became part of the stream through the graphicarts work of the Depressionera WPA that became comicbook superheros like the "Man of Steel" Superman.


Unlike some books in this genre, Nelson sticks to his sources, letting them tell the story without trying to make it seem mystical or hip.
This gives this short history a true power and makes it worthy of five,

Another book in this genre that I found similarly worthy and maybe of interest to readers who liked Steel Drivin' Man: Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song Excellent read! I liked the historical aspects of the legend too! I expected to know more about John Henry when I finished the book but sadly I didnt.
SIX WORD REVIEW: Apparently a real chain gang worker, Immediately after the Civil War, white southerners found a way to get back some of

their power and some of their slaves.
They simply arrested and imprisoned newly freed blacks, then rented them out, They invented the chain gang,
What does this have to do with John Henry In searching for the man behind the legend, writer Scott Reynolds Nelson demonstrated this pattern of abuse as he came to believe that the real John Henry was one of these convictslaves.
He does an excellent job reconstructing the life of John Henry really, the lives of black convict laborers and their exploitation in the New South he loses me with his last two chapters, especially the one tracing the visual image of John Henry into comic books.
However, his description of how John Henry became an important iconic image in print and song for the Left during thes was new to me.
Surprised he didn't talk about John Henry in children's books and films isn't there a Disney cartoon from thes in the postwar era.
Disclaimer: Scott was my advisor in grad school

It still impresses me, even after my third time reading Steel Drivin' Man, how solid this book is.
Centered on the John Henry of both reality and legend, it is a political, cultural, and social history that covers a lot of ground in under two hundred pages.


Nelson takes you along on his journey of discovering the prisoner/worker John Henry, placing the fivefoot, oneinch teenager squarely in the context of the Redemption South's reliance on convict labor to expand its "railroad octopus" in the pursuit of greater speeds, efficiencies, and profits.
Just as importantly, he shows how "infinitely mutable" the song and legend of John Henry have been over time, A chant/song regulating trackliners' work tempo that eventually influenced blues, country, and folk performers of various stripes, the myth of John Henry became a touchstone for Depressionera public art, leftist radicals, and beyond.


This tension between a human worker and his largerthanlife legacy is striking and makes for great reading, but I think Nelson is right when he closes the book: if anything, John Henry would want us all to slow down.
This in an excellent, excellent book, Like a steam engine pulling cars uphill from a cold start, this small but mighty book starts out slow, Don't put it down because as this "train" gains speed, you will NOT want to put it down,
Yes a John Henry possibly THE John Henry of legend DID exist his photo graces these pages, His betrayal as a black man in Richmond VA during the early days of Reconstruction, his imprisonment, his work laying track, and his ultimate burial near "the White House" amounts to a fascinating story of hard work, brutal treatment of Henry and his fellow man and women convicts many wrongfully convicted who were forced to build the railroads, lay track, and sleep in miserable little huts.

John's demise is described, The songs that honor him are also in this book some of which can be heard on You Tube, the beautiful yet sad and bleak painting of "the Gandy Dancer's Gal" and the actual location of "the White House" with a mass grave bring more mystery, tragedy and sadness to this excellent narrative Read for history class.
Steel Drivin Man tells the story behind the well known figure of John Henry, When the curtain is pulled aside, we see parts that are shown in pop culture but also deep roots of injustice that are hidden.
I wouldve never known such historical value and understanding could be derived from a folk tale and workers song, initial thoughts
The topic of this book is fascinating, and I commend the author's hard work researching and discovering who most likely was the real original John Henry and revealing his tragic even more so than the song end of life.
But in spite of finding the topic interesting, I still kind of thought of this as "the neverending John Henry book" while I was reading it.
I'm not sure what about the writing didn't work for me, but something didn't,

I also found the ending to really pale in comparison to the beginning of the book, While the book follows first the real John Henry then the path of the song and John Henry in American popular culture the post World War II part fizzles out, relying on anecdotes of the author and his friends rather than sound research with the entirety of posts America summed up in one paragraph.


Also, after the entire rest of the book is devoted to how John Henry demonstrates racial injustice in America, I thought it was very odd that the final sentence of the book suggests that John Henry's bones would simply tell us "slow down.
" What an odd luddite message to end a book about racial injustice with! This book starts with a story the author's academic hunt for The Real John Henry: the truth behind the man, and the circumstances that brought him to the famous steam drill battle and death.
The reader gets a slice of life look at trackliners, how they used song in their work, and the initial dirgelike, cautionary tone of 'John Henry' a tale of a man working too hard, and the impending danger of machines.


Next, the author traces the groups and individuals along with their motivations social, political, business, personal that brought the song and the mythic figure to widespread cultural popularityand how John Henry's legend evolved into what it is today.
While I am not surprised to discover that the real John Henry was nothing at all like the legendary John Henry, it is interesting to learn just how different the two men were.
I mean, how did a guy who wasfrom the north that was a prison convict become the hero he was.
This book tries to answer that, though it spends a lot of time discussing what an historian has to go through to get a decent story.

A good book, but honestly speaking, only a small portion of it is about John Henry, The rest of it is about how people have viewed Henry, changed him over time, and why,
Unique and creative interweaving of myth, history, social analysis, and cultural critique, I had no idea how much the story/legend of John Henry has been appropriated, convolved, misappropriated, reappropriated, and given new life throughout the lastyears of US history.
Yet, I know of the story like it is my own, unaware that it is Americana in a way that, perhaps, no other legend is or can be.
This book told that story and it is one that I would recommend to anyone invoking John Henry, John Henryism, comicbook superheroes, the evolution of American folklore, and many other relics of the cultural development of the US since reconstruction.
On top of all of that, it was a fun read! This is one of my favorite historical research genrestaking a well known popular culture pieces in this case, John Henry of folksong and reconstructs the real storythe south during Reconstruction, the easy way a corrupt government agent could make sure many ablebodied men went to jail for minor or fabricated offenses, and the bribes to be had from renting out prisoners tos railroad projects.
Nelson tracks down the real person on whom the story is based, a Virginia prisoner working on the Lewis tunnel for the CampO railroad and the chain gang DID work more efficiently than the steam drill and then follows the spread of the story and differing lyrics as they adapted to the particulars of the audience.
The companion book, meant for children, is a model of historical methodology and would be a good piece for an undergraduate classAin't Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry.


I enjoyed this book, but I found it unsatisfying, possibly because it's trying to do too many things in a very short space aboutpocketsized pages of actual narrative.
I was looking for a book that would examine the history of "John Henry," the folk song, and its dissemination across America.
I got thatmostly in one chapter, with little fragments of various versions of the songbut that portion of the book is told in very broad overview, sometimes froghopping across whole decades in a single page.
It's interesting, but it isn't thorough, Nelson's examination of "John Henry" in popular culture after thes is even broader and shallower, lightly touching on children's books and superhero comics: I wanted a whole lot more.
The section on the early communist movement coopting the image of John Henry for their posters and magazine covers was the most interesting part of the whole book to me, and probably the only time I really felt like I was reading the book I wanted.


The better portion of the book is about Nelson's theory of "the real John Henry," who he may have been, and the conditions in which he would have lived.
I wasn't terribly taken in by the maybe he was this guy! aspect, but fortunately, Nelson abandons the individual fairly quickly to provide a deeper examination of what all Black "steeldrivin' men" on the CampO line would have experienced and why.
He explains the significance of specific references in early versions of the song and relates them to other hammer songs of the period.
It's probably more of a history lesson in Reconstructionera politics than I was looking for, but it was extremely comprehensive, unlike the later portion.


I think this book will be very appealing to people who are interested in looking at "John Henry" as documenting a realth century event, either specific or idealized.
In that regard, it's very successful and well worth reading, I'll just have to continue looking for a more dedicated look at "John Henry" as ath century cultural legend.
I read this for myReading Challenge and the prompt was an AnisfieldWolf Book Award Winner, I was not a big fan of this book, A fascinating work of reallife detection, showing an expert historian at work, Nelson makes a strong and persuasive case for having discovered the identity of the real John Henry, He sets this tale of personal tragedy against the backdrop of the Reconstructionera South and then traces the evolution of the song in its many permutations through theth century as it came to hold different meanings in radically different communities.
Full of interesting tidbits, such as the influence of old Welsh mining songs on John Henry and Nelson's own personal background and connection to the legend, this is a book worth reading for those interested in the American South, African American history, civil rights, and the study of folklore.
I also highly recommend the young people's version of this book, "Ain't Nothing But A Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry," for shattering the misconception that history is a dull pursuit.
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