Robert Dean Lurie's biography is the first completely researched and written since R.E.M. disbanded in 2011. It offers by far the most detailed account of their formative years--the early lives of the band members, their first encounters with one another, their legendary debut show, early tours in the back of a van, initial recordings, their shrewdly paced rise to fame. The people and places of the American South are crucial to the R.E.M. story in...