About Us

Heavenacid is primarily dedicated to radical ruptures in thought: insurgency, urgency, genuine firsts, histories neglected in the bibliographical record, revolutions actual & intellectual, the undercommons, the avant-garde, and their intersections with the technology of the book and print. Or whatever else we think is good and know a thing or two about. The phrase “Heavenacid” is Pierre Joris’ translation of Paul Celan’s neologism, Himmelssäure.

Heavenacid is owned by Daniel Baker, who first got his start in the book trade working in used and rare bookstores in New York. He then joined the Books and Manuscripts Department at Sotheby’s, where he was responsible for cataloguing and selling a number of significant items, including the manuscript currently holding the world auction record for Charles Darwin material. At Sotheby’s he worked on several high-profile sales, including The Collection of Dorothy Tapper Goldman, the Ricky Jay Collection, From the Vault: Property from the Grateful Dead and Friends, Books and Manuscripts from the Collection of Jay I. Kislak, and Bibliotheca Brookeriana, among others. From 2024-2026 he served as the managing director of a New York-based rare books & archival firm dedicated to twentieth-century counterculture, before setting out on his own. He has extensive experience handling, appraising, cataloguing, and selling a wide range of material spanning the 15th century to the present, as well as in archival processing. He is a member of the Bibliographical Society of America.