Enlarge By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY Inauguration concert: Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen perform This Land Is Your Landat the Lincoln Memorial in January. NEW BOOKS SOUND OUT THE 'PROTEST SINGER' NEW BOOKS SOUND OUT THE 'PROTEST SINGER' Pete Seeger has revised his 1993 autobiography, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, to be released in the fall. Meanwhile, he's a subject of three new books and an updated biography. Three are admiring; one is not. USA TODAY's Bob Minzesheimer takes a look. The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson (Knopf, $22) is a loving profile, told mostly through Seeger's storytelling. "Too much has been written about me, at too great length," Seeger told Wilkinson. "What's needed is a book that can be read in one sitting." This is that book, supplemented with a 27-page transcript of Seeger's 1955 testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee, a fascinating slice of Cold War history. "To Everything There is a Season": Pete Seeger and the Power of Song by Allan M. Winkler (Oxford University Press, $23.95) is by a historian at Miami University in Ohio who not coincidentally plays the guitar. Winkler weaves his interviews with Seeger with background from previously published works. He doesn't break new ground but does justice to Seeger's songs and his wife of 66 years, Toshi. It's dedicated to her. How Can I Keep from Singing? The Ballad of Pete Seeger by David King Dunaway (Villard paperback, $18), published last year, updates and corrects -- with Seeger's help -- a 1981 version. It's the closest thing to a definitive biography. It makes use of 1,600 government documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act suit and includes a 14-page Seeger discography. Inventing American History by William Hogeland (Boston Review paperback original, $14.95) offers a contrarian view of Seeger in one of its three essays challenging how popular history celebrates its subjects by whitewashing their pasts. In an unlikely pairing, Seeger is bracketed with William F. Buckley Jr., the conservative writer and publisher. Hogeland contends both were extremists -- Buckley on the right, Seeger on the left as a "cheerleader" for Stalin -- but that unlike Buckley, "Seeger suffered for his beliefs." NEW YORK  Three months after Bruce Springsteen persuaded Pete Seeger to sing This Land Is Your Land with him at President Obama's inaugural concert, they'll be back together on stage Sunday — on Seeger's 90th birthday. A sold-out benefit concert at Madison Square Garden will celebrate Seeger, the folk singer/songwriter who was banished from commercial TV for 17 years. Seeger says a party for 15,000 isn't his idea of a birthday celebration, even with more than 40 musicians, including Dave Matthews, Eddie Vedder and Arlo Guthrie, whose dad, Woody, taught Seeger how to jump freight trains 60 years ago. But he agreed to it because it will benefit his Hudson River environmental group. Or, as Seeger puts it, "wooden boats don't last forever." The boat is a 106-foot sloop, the Clearwater, a floating symbol for the group of the same name that Seeger started in 1966 when the Hudson was an open sewer. It's healthier now, repopulated by eagles, shad and osprey. But, Seeger says, "a lot remains to be done," including "thousands of dollars of repairs to the boat." Seeger, who says "small is beautiful," plans to remind the crowd: "It's not always the big things that make a difference, but all the small things done by people who don't get attention." As the subject of three new books and an updated biography, Seeger says, "I've had too much publicity," even as he talks by phone to a reporter. He says he's encouraged by Obama's willingness to experiment and "to remind us he can't do it all. We have to help." He recalls how another president, Herbert Hoover, told Rudy Vallee: "If you can sing a song that makes people forget the Depression, I'll give you a medal." Says Seeger: "Too many singers have been trying to get that medal." He's the only star in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to discuss past membership in the Communist Party. His 1955 conviction was overturned on appeal in 1961, but Seeger's blacklisting lasted from 1950 to 1967. Even then, CBS censored his anti-Vietnam War allegory, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. The man who wrote If I Had a Hammer and Turn, Turn, Turn and helped popularize We Shall Overcome plans to sing one solo Sunday — he won't say which one — and join some choruses. Asked about being called "a saint" by Bob Dylan, he laughs. "What a terrible thing to call someone. I've made a lot of foolish mistakes over the years." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more