Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York

Award-winning designer and writer Steven Heller comes of age in New York's youth culture in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, becoming the youngest art director for The New York Times OpEd page at 23.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 13 October 2022
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Award-winning designer and writer Steven Heller comes of age at the center of New York's youth culture in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

Steven Heller has written a memoir. This is no chronological trek through the hills and valleys of his comparatively "normal" life, but instead, a coming-of-age tale whereby, with luck and circumstance, he found himself in certain curious places at critical times during the early to late 1960s and later throughout the 80s in New York City.

This story is both entertaining and enlightening and follows Heller between the ages of 16 and 23 as he solidified his work as art director, graphic designer, cartoonist, and writer, through stints at the New York Review of Books, Sex, Screw, and The New York Free Press, until becoming the youngest art director (and occasional illustrator) for The New York Times OpEd page at age 23.

Dimension: 216 x 140 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781648960567