For more than a century, from its construction in the late 19th century to its current state of legal limbo in the early 21st century, New York's Chelsea Hotel has been a home, a refuge, an asylum, a cocoon for dozens of American and international artists, writers, poets, composers, film-makers, bohemians and assorted eccentrics. Over the years it has offered - crucially very cheap - shelter to, among many others: Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Arthur C. Clarke, Edie Sedgwick, Dylan Thomas, Mary McCarthy, Patti Smith, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. Sherill Tippins has spent several years immersed in the Chelsea's rich, colourful and at times violent history, and the result is this book, which chronicles the extraordinary life of the hotel and the no less remarkable lives and deaths of those who passed through its doors.