In 1824, John Allen and Elisha Rumsey established the first homestead in what is now downtown Ann Arbor. The story goes that the community got its name when the two founders� wives, both named Ann, were seen lounging in a grove of trees. In reality, Ann Allen and Mary Ann Rumsey were never in town at the same time, but how it actually was named is unimportant when considering what Ann Arbor grew into. Early settlers gave the town schools, an expansive courthouse, a beautiful post office, a...

Tucked away in a remote stream valley in Vermont, a dynasty of beavers has nearly completed the restoration of the meadows and ponds that adorned this stream in the days before the beavers of a continent were turned into top hats. Willow, Popple, and their progeny begin the night's work of dam repair, scent marking, tree felling until a soft call alerts them to the arrival of the strange honorary member of their clan, this book's author, Patti Smith. They scramble ashore and poke eagerly a...

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDIt was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people 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 eventuall...

Auguries of Innocence is the first book of poetry from Patti Smith in more than a decade. It marks a major accomplishment from a poet and performer who has inscribed her vision of our world in powerful anthems, ballads, and lyrics. In this intimate and searing collection of poems, Smith joins in that great tradition of troubadours, journeymen, wordsmiths, and artists who respond to the world around them in fresh and original language. Her influences are eclectic and strik...

Ann Arbor has seen many cherished landmarks and institutions come and go - some fondly remembered and others lost to time.When the city was little more than a village in the wilderness, its first school stood on the now busy corner of Main and Ann. Stores like Bach & Abel's and Dean & Co. served local needs as the village grew into a small town. As the town became a thriving city, Drake's and Maude's fed generations of hungry diners, and Fiegel's clothed father and...

A landmark of twentieth-century literature, Virginia Woolf's most daring and visionary novel dissolves the boundaries of narrative convention in a radiant exploration of friendship, memory, and identity—now with a new introduction by Patti Smith.“I love,” said Susan, “and I hate. I desire one thing only. My eyes are hard. Jinny’s eyes break into a thousand lights. Rhoda’s are like those pale flowers to which moths come in the evening. Yours grow full and brim a...

Musician Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s kaleidoscopic foray into collage and poetry, translated and reprinted for the first time in 50 years.Desiderata is a collection of Lizzy Mercier Descloux's poetry, photos, and diaristic fragments from her visit to New York City in the winter of 1975. Only eighteen at the time, Descloux fell into the orbits of the nascent No Wave scene festering in Lower Manhattan, where she befriended Richard Hell, Patti Smith, and ZE Reco...

**This New York Times bestselling memoir is a raw and riveting portrait of a youth spent wild in Los Angeles, from the iconic bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers."Virtuostic vulnerability." —The Atlantic**In Acid for the Children, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years, spanning from Australia to the New York City suburbs to, finally, Los Angeles. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations, and oc...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A radiant new memoir from artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award winner Just KidsA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, THE NEW YORKER**“God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper,” writes Patti Smith in this moving account of her life. A post–World War II childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex where we enter the child’s world of the imagination. Sm...

It's 1941, and the chill of something evil is spreading around the world like a black plague. Suspicion and fear have replaced the trust of innocence of humankind. The news of unheard-of violence and brutality presses heavily on the hearts of mankind. What is tomorrow going to look like? What has happened to the world as we once knew it? World War II begins its escalation, extending its chaos in all directions, including the outer shores of America, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Annie Elizabeth Jo...

Sometimes our best teachers are the ones we least expect.When Patti Smith's first child was born with Down syndrome, her world shifted overnight. What began as fear and uncertainty became a lifelong education in love, patience, and the power of perspective. Unexpected Lessons from Professor Higgins is the heartwarming true story of how one remarkable son became his mother's greatest teacher.Told through 24 unforgettable "lessons," this deeply moving narrative reveals how ...

The first work of long fiction from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright—a tour de force of memory, mystery, death, and life.This searing, extraordinarily evocative narrative opens with a man in his house at dawn, surrounded by aspens, coyotes cackling in the distance as he quietly navigates the distance between present and past. More and more, memory is overtaking him: in his mind he sees himself in a movie-set trailer, his young face staring back at him in a mir...