Allen Ginsberg came to national attention when his poem "Howl" was the subject of a San Francisco obscenity trial in 1956. Since then, millions of copies of the poem have been read on college campuses and elsewhere all over America. His powerful imagination, political agitation, and magnetic charisma have made him a symbol of the cultural transformation of the past fifty years.

Jane Kramer's book is an incisive and passionately human portrayal of Ginsberg's world and the people in it, whirling across America from San Francisco to Midwest college towns, from New York's East Village to California be-ins. Since his passing in 1997, Ginsberg has come to be recognized as a key figure in the American literary pantheon.