At thirteen, when he first heard Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” Wolff recognized the sound of anger. When he later discovered “Song for Woody,” Dylan’s tribute to Guthrie, Wolff fixed on it as a clue to a distinctive mix of rage and compassion. That clue led back to Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre”—a memorial song about the horrific conclusion to a union Christmas party in Calumet, Michigan.

Following the trail from Dylan to Guthrie to a tragedy that claimed seventy-four lives, Wolff found himself tracing a century-long line of anger. From America’s early industrialized days up to the present, the battle over economic justice keeps resurfacing: on a freight car in California, on a joyride through New Orleans, in a snowy field in Michigan. At the stunning conclusion—as the mysteries of Dylan, Guthrie, and the 1913 tragedy connect—the reader discovers a larger story, purposely distorted and buried in time.

Daniel Wolff’s Grown-Up Anger chronicles the struggles between the haves and the have-nots, the battle to organize American workers, and the way two musicians used their fury to illuminate injustice and spark hope.