From his earliest work, Bruce Springsteen proved himself to be a natural dramatist with a knack for crafting memorable, fleshed-out characters—none more elaborate than himself. Few artists from the classic rock era take as much care in accurately telling their own story; it’s hard to imagine Bob Dylan or Neil Young refining their memoir into a digestible Broadway show, let alone performing it themselves night after night, as Springsteen is doing right now. Starting in the 1970s, one of his most effective habits in concert set a precedent for this intimate kind of storytelling, when he preceded already-intimate songs like “The River” or “Growin’ Up” with long monologues about his childhood. It was his way of assuring that we didn’t misunderstand him.

Maybe this is why Springsteen has been written about so extensively: We’re all following in the tradition he began. Books on Bruce started arriving before he was a stadium-filling superstar. One of the first, Dave Marsh’s Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story, was published the same year the scruffy songwriter turned 30. Since then, Springsteen’s career has been reviewed, re-assessed, and ranked to sometimes ridiculous degrees. (A sketch by comedy duo Scharpling & Wurster once satirized this long-winded phenomenon with a fictionalized biography entitled Darkness on the River’s Edge in the U.S.A.: From Greetings to the Promise: Bruce Springsteen: The Story Behind the Albums.)

But the best writing on Springsteen remains thrilling. These eight selections manage to find new insights into his career and question assumed narratives in ways that can be enlightening to both the obsessed and the intrigued.