Matthew Shipe in The Common Reader:
The lead singer and primary lyricist of the long-running rock band U2, Bono has never exactly been the shy type. Outside of Elvis posing with Nixon, no rock star has seemed so comfortable posing with so many politicians, and Bono has perhaps set the record for the most Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction speeches given.3 A preacherly ambition propels Bono’s memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, as the book chronicles U2’s forty-odd-year career, and the book’s impact hinges on your openness to Bono’s expansiveness. While no fruit is thrown at rock royalty, Surrender as a whole offers a smart and charmingly self-deprecating portrait of Bono and his three friends from Dublin as they propel themselves from scruffy post-punk band to one of the last of the great rock ’n’ roll acts, one of the few bands from their era that can stand with the Stones and the McCartneys in the cavernous sports arenas around the world. If a talking head is needed to wax poetic on America, rock ’n’ roll, debt relief, religion, sex, life, death—I am sure he has an opinion on cross-stitching—Bono is the person to turn to.
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