Dale Maharidge (born 24 October 1956) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist best known for his collaborations with photographer Michael Williamson.

Maharidge and Williamson's book And Their Children After Them won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1990. It was conceived as a revisiting of the places and people depicted in Walker Evans's and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Also with Williamson, Maharidge wrote Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, which singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen has credited as an influence for songs such as "Youngstown" and "The New Timer".

Reared in Ohio, Maharidge was a staff writer for The Plain Dealer and the Sacramento Bee. It was while at the Bee that he formed his partnership with Williamson, who was a news photographer for the paper. The pair have traveled and lived among the rural poor as they documented the underside of American prosperity. Maharidge has also contributed to publications ranging from Rolling Stone to the New York Times.

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.

Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.

Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone. His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.