Folk singer and icon of 1960s flower-children, Joan Baez sang anthems and ballads that gave voice to the frustrations and longing of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights years. Baez was seen as a Madonna with a guitar, a virginal mother of a new folk movement. As much a political activist as a musician, Baez founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence in Carmel Valley, California. Music and politics have gone hand-in-hand for Baez throughout her long career.

Joan Chandos Baez was born on January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York, to Scottish-American Joan Bridge Baez and Mexican-American Albert Baez. She was the second of three daughters in this multi-ethnic, politically liberal, Quaker family. Her father was a physicist who, on principle, turned down a well-paying military job to work as a professor. The family moved around a great deal, living in several towns...