A richly illustrated edition of Patti Smith’s classic memoir Just Kids with new material and never-before-seen photographs

It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led tow young poeple on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street; and in 1969, the pair set up camp at the infamous Hotel Chelsea. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is aportrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.