Biography

Hardcover. London, Arthur Baker, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with partial fading, 449 pages, b&w illustrations. The definitive biography of the larger-than-life figure of the French Revolution who was found guilty of loyalist inclinations and executed at the guillotine. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 482 pages. William Wells Brown was a Black author and reformer of the nineteenth century, a Kentucky-born slave who became a self-educated writer and advocate of abolition, temperance, and international peace. The author argues for Brown's place alongside that of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Wendell Phillips. There's an extensive bibliography and an index. Name on front fly leaf, dj spine faded.

Hardcover. Westport CT, Greenwood Press, 1st Revised, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering, 402 pages, b&w frontis. portrait. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Thames and Hudson, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 384 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with black and white photographs throughout. Light wear ton dust jacket. The life of Erwin Blumenfeld, one of the century's best-known photographers, was by no means conventional. By turns acerbic, self-mocking, playful, even absurd, his autobiography is a compelling, virtuoso account of an extraordinary man. All his subjects--his Jewish family, the Germans, the Vichy French, his models, New York publishers--are dealt equal measures of wit, mockery, and merciless irony. He spares himself least of all. Born in turn-of-the-century Berlin, Blumenfeld was drafted to serve in the First World War, first as an ambulance driver (although he couldn't drive) and then as a bookkeeper in a field brothel, and he was awarded the Iron Cross for giving his sergeant French lessons. Between the wars he was part of an avant-garde circle that included such artists as Else Lasker-Schler, George Grosz, and members of the Dada movement. During the Second World War, Blumenfeld was interned in a series of French camps but eventually arrived in New York, where he found work with Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, producing many of their most memorable covers and becoming fashion's highest-paid photographer. From the creator of some of the most striking and influential photographs ever taken, Blumenfeld's autobiography--published here in English for the first time--is a biting and iconoclastic take on the century, and the insightful, gripping story of an exceptional life. Remainder line to bottom edge.

Softcover. privately printed, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 375 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY COLE on the title page. Two days are never the same in the life of Billy Cole, a music instrument repairman. Over the course of nearly 50 years in the music business, Billy has become a personal friend and respected repairman to some of the top musicians in the industry. Through his fine craftsmanship and attention to detail, his small music shop is a welcoming haven for musicians to stop by, to gather and be amongst others that share a common interest in music. He has become a friendly face for a musician on the road, year after year. Come with the band, as you're transported to sound stages, studios and shows that tell the story of just another day with the music technician.

Softcover. Woodstock VT, Countryman Press, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 311 pages, b&w illustrations. Kate Austen was a young Australian nurse looking for adventure in the 1920s. She accepted an assignment working in a mission hospital in Labrador, Canada, and fell in love with the local people and harsh wilderness she found there. She also met and married her husband (the author) during her time in Labrador. Throughout the book, Kate relates in a no-nonsense voice the births, deaths, epidemics, injuries, burns and unusual medical cases she treated. She also tells affectionately of the people she served - trappers, wives, children, native Indians, fishermen, sailors, and various visitors. Some of the stories made me chuckle, and some of them made me hold my breath in suspense. She worked day and night to serve the community living around the hospital, which also served as general store and community center. The weather was dreadful most of the year, and they lived without running water, electricity, telephone, or indoor toilets. Kate reveled in the experience, often traveling hundreds of miles by dog-sled to treat sick people in out-lying homesteads. She loved the snow, ice, wind, and the dangerous ocean, and rarely complained about the primitive conditions or workload. Previous owner's inscription otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. John L Caulon, 1st, 1880, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 87 pages, brown cloth covers with gilt lettering on front. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf otherwise clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 376 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. George Sand was the most famous and most scandalous woman in nineteenth-century France. As a writer, she was enormously prolific. She wrote more than ninety novels, thirty-five plays, and thousands of pages of autobiography. She inspired writers as diverse as Flaubert and Proust but is often remembered for her love affairs with such figures as Musset and Chopin. Her affair with Chopin is the most notorious: their nine-year relationship ended in 1847 when Sand began to suspect that the composer had fallen in love with her daughter, Solange.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 272 pages, b&w photos. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, Harper, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 720 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout.

Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 49 pages, Hardcover with dust jacket. Includes b&w photos. Clean, tight copy. Spine lightly sunned.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 374 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket with short tape repaired tears along edges, fading to spine. Clean, unmarked pages.

Softcover. New York, Pocket Books, First Edition, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 413 pages. Softcover with black, white & red graphic illustrations throughout. Full color illustrations to covers. Clean, bright copy, unmarked.

Hardcover. Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, new, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 234 pages, b&w illustrations. Light green top edge. Edge wear, light rubbing to dust jacket, spine faded. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Los Alamitos, CA, Art Bagnall Publishing, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 379 pages, with photographs throughout and illustrated cover. Minor corner and edge wear, previous owner's embossed stamp on title page, otherwise, very clean and tight copy. Richter was a professional auto racer in Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s who then founded Bell Auto Parts and devoted his life to creating specialty safety products for auto and motorcycle sports, including the Bell helmet, which quickly became an essential and popular part of driving gear.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 454 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown , 1st US, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 1st published in the UK 1971.

Hardcover. New York, HarperCollins, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 652 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Gilt title on spine. Dust jacket unclipped. In excellent shape, binding tight, looks barely read. Clean and unmarked inside and out.

Hardcover. New York, WW Norton & Company, Inc, 1st Edition, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 678 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. A few specs of foxing to front flyleaf and back page, otherwise pages clean. Dust jacket has some agewear with a touch of chipping and foxing, one small tear on back dj. Decorated endpapers. Red cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine, some spots to covers.

Hardcover. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1st Edition, 1895, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 150 pages. Hardcover. B/w frontispiece with tissue guard. Fore and bottom edges rough cut, gilt top edge. Green decorated cover boards, gilt title on spine and front cover board. Binding very good. Spine straight. Pages have some tanning, but unmarked and clean. Tight first edition. A heartfelt reflection on life, family, and community beneath the towering elms of Newton, Massachusetts. Claflin's evocative prose paints a vivid picture of a bygone era, capturing moments of joy, sorrow, and timeless memories in the shade of ancient trees that stood as silent witnesses to generations of American history.

Hardcover. New York, Bloomsbury, 1st US , 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 359 pages, hardcover. 16 pages of color illustrations. Extensive b&w illustrations and photographs. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Softcover. London, National Portrait Gallery, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Softcover. Color and B/W photographs throughout. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition.

Hardcover. US, Atlas & Co, 6th, 2008, 240 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout.

Softcover. New York, Billboard Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 656 pages. Softcover with no dust jacket. Remainder mark on top edge, otherwise, clean, unmarked copy. Light edgewear to wrappers. Black and white pictures throughout. Mann, a novelist and author of books on film history, presents this biography of director John Schlesinger (1926-2003), based on interviews with the director and his family following his stroke in 2001, in addition to other primary source documents, articles, and reviews. He describes Schlesinger's childhood; his early days as a documentary director at the BBC; his films during the era of New Hollywood; and Midnight Cowboy, which won an Academy Award. His other films, such as Billy Liar, Darling, Cold Comfort Farm, and The Day of the Locust, are discussed, as well as his accurate depictions of homosexuality, and his personal and professional relationships.

Softcover. New York, ILR Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 170 pages. Softcover with light edgewear to wrappers. Color pictures throughout. "Career waitresses do more than just serve food. They are part psychiatrist, part grandmother, part friend, and they serve every walk of American life: from the retired and the widowed, to the wounded and the lonely, and from the working class to the wealthy. The classic diner waitress is an icon of American culture.... This book takes a moment to honor and recognize waitresses' contribution to our communities. Doing this project has helped me to redefine my perspective on life, work, and happiness. It has made me reevaluate the myth of the American dream that says you need to have an 'important' job to be happy."

Hardcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, 221 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Yellowing to top edge of dust jacket. Rubbing to rear. An otherwise clean, unmarked copy with minor wear to dust jacket edges. Jack Delano's "Photographic Memories" include the struggles of migrant workers and the homefront contributions of ethnic and minority groups living in the shadow of the Depression. Employed as a photographer by the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Delano later settled in Puerto Rico, where he has been a constant participant in the island's cultural life. This memoir includes rare photos from his FSA years, along with cartoons, personal snapshots and film stills.

Hardcover. New York, Harper Entertainment, 1st, 2007, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 280 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY STOTTLEMYRE on title page. Dust jacket and front cover board beneath on front has scratches (small tears) and groves to bottom. Remainder mark on bottom page block.

Hardcover. New York, Harper, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 672 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 188 pages, b&w photos. An account by a Kenya African of his experiences in detention camps in the 1950s. Foreword by Margery Perham. In a lightly worn dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 342 pages, b&w photos. Alexander Walker draws on the memories and anecdotes of her family, friends and fellow players as well as on his own conversations with Vivien Leigh just before her death to create a fascinating picture of a complex and unique woman. Clean copy in a very good dust jacket.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, His Children, 1st, 1853, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 645 pages. Hardcover in calf. Red title label on spine with gilt lettering. Heavy foxing to pages, abrasions to leather. Tight copy. Moderate soil.

Hardcover. London, Sampson Low Son & Co, 1st, 1860, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 492 pages. Hardcover with 3/4 leather spine and marbled surfaces on all sides. First English edition published same year as first American edition. A clean, tight copy. moderate chipping to cover edges. and some rips to dry leather. Gilt title paste-down gone from spine.

Hardcover. Philadephia, PA, J.B. Lippincott Comapny, 6th pr., 1913, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 page. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout. Gutter cracked on title page with fabric showing through. Spine lettering faded. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Austin TX, University of Texas Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY MEDINA on title page. A happy, middle-class childhood lived in the shadows of sweeping social change and oncoming revolution -- such was the experience of novelist Pablo Medina. In this memoir, Medina revisits his curious double world, recalling the pre-revolutionary Cuba of his first twelve years, 1948-1960. His recollections move easily from his childhood adventures to warm remembrances of family and friends to his growing awareness of the social conflicts that would ultimately send his family into exile in the United States. Medina also draws on the memories of his elders to extend his memoir back to the Cuban War of Independence and forward through the twentieth century to the fall of the Batista regime, the victory of the Revolution in 1959, and the family's growing disillusionment with the Castro regime. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Fort Lee NJ, Barricade Books, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY ALLEN on the title page. An autobiography covering Allen's fifty years in radio and T.V. Allen was the creator and first host of the Tonight Show. B&w illust., 308 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Seven Dials , 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 427 pages, color illustrations. From Gavin Thurston, the award-winning Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II cameraman with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough comes extraordinary and adventurous true stories of what it takes to track down and film our planet's most captivating creatures. Gavin has been a wildlife photographer for over thirty years. Against a backdrop of modern world history, he's lurked in the shadows of some of the world's remotest places in order to capture footage of the animal kingdom's finest: prides of lions, silverback gorillas, capuchin monkeys, brown bears, grey whales, penguins, mosquitoes - you name it-he's filmed it. No dj issued.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Book Four of Robert A. Caro's monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Times of London to acclaim it as "one of the truly great political biographies of the modem age. A masterpiece." This volume follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career. It tells the story of his volatile relationship with John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy during the fight they waged for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president and through Johnson's unhappy vice presidency. It gives us for the first time the story of the assassination from the viewpoint of Lyndon Johnson himself. And with the depth of insight, the profound grasp of both the life and times of his subject that Robert Caro has consistently brought to this mesmerizing biography, it reveals what it was like to suddenly become president in a time of great crisis.

Hardcover. Hoboken NJ, Wiley Publishing, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The Last Samurai traces Saigo's life from his early days as a tax clerk in far southwestern Japan, through his rise to national prominence as a fierce imperial loyalist. Saigo was twice exiled for his political activities - sent to Japan's remote southwestern islands where he fully expected to die. But exile only increased his reputation for loyalty, and in 1864 he was brought back to the capital to help his lord fight for the restoration of the emperor.

Hardcover. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. With the '1' in a full number line. The definitive biography of this noted anthropologist, with an excellent bibliography. 360 pages, b&w illustrations. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons , 1st, 1899, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. 199 pages. Biographical notes by Douglas Taylor. the subject was an American actress, friend of Fanny Kemble, Edwin Booth, Edwin Forrest (all 3 pictured in the book) and many others. Illustrations, hardcover bound in coarse tan cloth with mounted leather spine label. Previous owner's bookplate, inscription on front endpapers, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown and Company, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and rubbed dust jacket, 548 pages. A biography of the famous CBS radio and television newsman Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965). Much of what Americans knew about the events in Europe during World War II were learned from Murrow's broadcasts. After the war, Murrow was a regular on prime-time television. B&w illustrations, index and bibliography. Spine faded. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Little Brown, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This is a biography of C.L. Franklin, one of the black preachers in American history. It tells the story of black migration and activism, alongside the rise of gospel, blues, and soul music, with a cast of characters including Martin Luther King, Jr., B.B. King, Art Tatum, and Coleman Young.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer John Matteson, an account of the "Susan Sontag" of nineteenth-century America.A brilliant writer and a fiery social critic, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was perhaps the most famous American woman of her generation. Outspoken and quick-witted, idealistic and adventurous, she became the leading female figure in the transcendentalist movement, wrote a celebrated column of literary and social commentary for Horace Greeley's newspaper, and served as the first foreign correspondent for an American newspaper. While living in Europe she fell in love with an Italian nobleman, with whom she became pregnant out of wedlock. In 1848 she joined the fight for Italian independence and, the following year, reported on the struggle while nursing the wounded within range of enemy cannons. Amid all these strivings and achievements, she authored the first great work of American feminism: Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Despite her brilliance, however, Fuller suffered from self-doubt and was plagued by ill health. John Matteson captures Fuller's longing to become ever better, reflected by the changing lives she led. 28 black-and-white illustrations. Smallbump to top corner otherwise like new.

Hardcover. NY, Lyle Stuart, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in dust jacket with a faded spine, 320 pages. b&w illustrations. Biography of the famous white-collar criminal who became a multi-millionaire by manipulating financial markets. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cloud Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 526 pages. Based on nearly 40 hours of interviews, Escaping from Reality Without Really Trying is the memoir of a 61-year-old, life-long merchant seaman re-counting his fantastic, hilarious, and politically incorrect exploits. He's a sailor-scholar and an individualist anarchist; he's read Voltaire and The Egyptian Book of the Dead. He admits to working at his hobby, sailing, to keep up his real occupation, drinking.He's lived 40 years of adventures around the world, including an incursion into Cambodia during the Vietnam War; a prison break from a Ceylon jail; a dockside fistfight in the Philippines in 1977; a 2-week stowaway run on a British merchant ship sailing around South Africa; meeting Omar Sharif in Aqaba, Jordan; an around-the-world trip (with Greg Cousins, the third mate on the Exxon Valdez, and we learn what really happened!) that ends in Alang, India and the beaching of the ship to be cut up for scrap metal; seeing the rise and fall of communism and capitalism in Africa and the newly independent states after the Soviet Union's collapse and division; and an ammunition delivery to Kuwait on the eve of the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 362 pages, 16 pages of b&w illustrations. Who was Vivian Maier? Many people know her as the reclusive Chicago nanny who wandered the city for decades, constantly snapping photographs, which were unseen until they were discovered in a seemingly abandoned storage locker. They revealed her to be an inadvertent master of twentieth-century American street photography. Not long after, the news broke that Maier had recently died and had no surviving relatives. Soon the whole world knew about her preternatural work, shooting her to stardom almost overnight. But, as Pamela Bannos reveals in this meticulous and passionate biography, this story of the nanny savant has blinded us to Maier's true achievements, as well as her intentions. Most important, Bannos argues, Maier was not a nanny who moonlighted as a photographer; she was a photographer who supported herself as a nanny. In Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife, Bannos contrasts Maier's life with the mythology that strangers-mostly the men who have profited from her work-have created around her absence. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2nd imp., 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 635 pages. Contains black and white illustrated plates, and a pull out family tree. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2nd pr., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with fading to spin, 530 pages. After the composition of the Decameron, and under the influence of Petrarch's humanism, Giovanni Boccaccio(1313-1375) devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopedic works in Latin. Among them is Famous Women, the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted exclusively to women. The 106 women whose life stories make up this volume range from the exemplary to the notorious, from historical and mythological figures to Renaissance contemporaries. In the hands of a master storyteller, these brief biographies afford a fascinating glimpse of a moment in history when medieval attitudes toward women were beginning to give way to more modern views of their potential. Famous Women, which Boccaccio continued to revise and expand until the end of his life, became one of the most popular works in the last age of the manuscript book, and had a signal influence on many literary works, including Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Castiglione's Courtier. This edition presents the first English translation based on the autograph manuscript of the Latin. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, F.A. Stokes Company, 1st, 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with bright gilt stamping, 137 pages. Top edge gilt. Ribbon marker, photographic frontispiece portrait of actor John Drew, as well as numerous photographs of John Drew (and other actresses) in various dramatic productions. Clean copy.

Softcover. Woodstok VT, The Woodstock Foundation, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 123 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED BY JANE AND WILL CURTIS on the front fly leaf. This work was published in observance of the 100th anniversary of Marsh's death in 1882. It graphically portrays the many-faceted career of this extraordinarily versatile Vermonter. Marsh is best known for his pioneering environmental study, Man and Nature, which was first published in 1864. Marsh was a lawyer, linguist, businessman, farmer, designer, Congressman, and diplomat (he was Minister to Turkey and to the newly-united Kingdom of Italy, where he spent the last twenty-one years of his life, a tour of duty unprecedented in American diplomacy). In Congress he supported creating of the Smithsonian Institution.