In the early 1980s, the artist Tim Rollins initiated a curriculum for high schoolers in the South Bronx to engage their creativity with art and literature activities, embarking on what proved to be an enduring collaborative venture. The initial group of students--who dubbed themselves the K.O.S., or Kids of Survival--made art by drawing and painting on books, while others read a novel out loud (anything from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Franz Kafka’s Amerika).

Perhaps unusually for such a venture, the painted book works that arose from this collaboration entered the art mainstream, and Rollins and K.O.S. have since participated in Documenta, the Venice Biennale, two Whitney Biennials and numerous other museum shows.

Published on the occasion of a major touring exhibition in Europe, and examining each book work individually, this volume gathers the entirety of the group’s output.