After the more deferential, less personal politesse of his first album [Bob Dylan],… Freewheelin' Bob Dylan throws open all the windows and tears the sheets off the furniture…. [There is] an immortal spiritual anthem which made him famous everywhere and opens up this album: "Blowin' in the Wind."

"Blowin' in the Wind" has withstood the test of time. It stands as a song not just for a special period or generation but for all time and every generation. (p. 15)

The range of Freewheelin' is tremendous: humor, anger, bombast, wit; loveliness, loneliness, irony, and spit…. His ability to reflect not only his own feelings but some simpler, more general emotions he felt around him, was uncanny. And however mythic, two-dimensional, or adolescent these feelings were, he was usually able to rescue them with the brilliance of his music and his performance. (p. 19)

Most of the songs on [The Times...