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Just Kids

by Patti Smith

Artistic lives in a changing New York

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Regular price $55.30 USD Sale price $33.18 USD
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Hardcover New English

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Awards & Recognition

  • Award recognition

    National Book Award winner

    The memoir is identified as a National Book Award-winning book.

  • Critical praise

    Praised by People as “quirky and spellbinding”

    People describes the account as “Quirky and spellbinding.”

AlbakiReads Editorial

Artistic lives in a changing New York

Patti Smith’s memoir brings her early years alongside photographer Robert Mapplethorpe into view through the places and creative circles that shaped their lives. Brooklyn, Times Square, Max’s Kansas City, and the Hotel Chelsea anchor an account of two young artists building their paths in New York. This illustrated edition adds photographs, drawings, and ephemera, including previously unpublished material, giving the memoir a visual dimension alongside Smith’s recollections. The book also features figures who crossed their orbit, among them Sam Shepard, Harry Smith, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in Patti Smith’s life and early artistic career.
  • Readers drawn to memoirs about friendship, love, and creative partnership.
  • Readers interested in New York’s artistic circles and cultural history.

Themes

Memoir and coming of ageArtistic ambitionFriendship and loveNew York creative communities

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Patti Smith's National Book Award-winning memoir, now richly illustrated with new material and never-before-seen photographs

"Reading rocker Smith's account of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, it's hard not to believe in fate. How else to explain the chance encounter that threw them together, allowing both to blossom? Quirky and spellbinding." -- People

Patti's Smith's exquisite prose is generously illustrated in this full-color edition of her classic coming-of-age memoir, Just Kids. New York locations vividly come to life where, as young artists, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe met and fell in love: a first apartment in Brooklyn, Times Square with John and Yoko's iconic billboard, Max's Kansas City, or the gritty fire escape of the Hotel Chelsea. The extraordinary people who passed through their lives are also pictured: Sam Shepard, Harry Smith, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. Along with never-before-published photographs, drawings, and ephemera, this edition captures a moment in New York when everything was possible. And when two kids seized their destinies as artists and soul mates in this inspired story of love and friendship.

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