Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 1874. At Radcliffe College she studied under William James, who remained her lifelong friend, and then went to Johns Hopkins to study medicine. Abandoning her studies, she moved to Paris with her brother Leo in 1903. At 27 rue de Fleurus, Gertrude Stein lived with Alice B. Toklas, who would remain her companion for 40 years. Not only was she an innovator in literature and a supporter of modern poetry and art, she was the friend and mentor of those who visited her at her now-famous home: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and Guillaume Apollinaire. Her body of work include Three Lives, Tender Buttons, The Making of Americans, and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

"THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS will have you itching to hop a plane to CDG . . . Stein captures both the voice of her partner, Alice Toklas, and the shimmering energy of the time. Kalman brings that world further to life with expressive illustrations of the couple, their home and travels, and contemporaries like Matisse and Cezanne. Her work has a wry, witty quality that lends a sense of immediacy to words written nearly a century ago. It's just the thing to tote on your next vacation-need we say where to?" - Travel & Leisure

"Whimsical illustrations meet quirky prose in this tag-team reinvention of the iconic 1933 book. An award-winning New Yorker illustrator, designer and author, Kalman takes on the challenge of illustrating Stein's iconic 'auto' biography of her longtime companion Toklas . . . Kalman's 70-plus color illustrations, rendered in her distinctive playful and Fauve-esque style, perfectly reflect the artistic and intellectual world of Paris in the 1920s and '30s . . . A sparkling, imaginative rendition of a literary classic." - Kirkus, starred review