Biography

Softcover. London, Illustrated London News , 1954, Original printed red card wrappers. Light rubbing of the covers, some thumbing of the leading edge; overall, this book is in good to very good condition. 68 pages. Gilt decorated red cover, color frontispiece portrait, gravure and color plates, photographs, illustrations, genealogical table. Contributors include Cyril Falls (Sir Winston Churchill in War), E.D. O'Brien (Sir Winston Churchill- the Man), Charles Petrie (Sir Winston Churchill's Place in History), Edward Winterton (Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament). Frontispiece by Yousuf Karsh.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 361 pages. During the Cold War years of the 1950s, William F. Knowland was one of the most important figures in American politics. As the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, the wealthy California newspaper heir was recognized and respected by millions. His influence with President Eisenhower led to Earl Warren's appointment as chief justice, and Knowland set in motion a U.S.-China policy that remains part of our international direction today. Yet he committed suicide in 1974, following a personal decline that included political humiliation, a ruined marriage, and the loss of his family fortune. This is the first full-scale biography of Bill Knowland, written by two journalists who came to know him after he left Washington in 1958. Gayle B. Montgomery was a political editor at the Oakland Tribune, the newspaper owned by Knowland's father, the power-wielding Joseph R. Knowland. James W. Johnson was a Tribune editorial writer. Both men worked with Knowland when he returned to the newspaper after giving up his Senate seat in a failed bid to become governor of California. Knowland lost the governorship race to Edmund G. (Pat) Brown; had he won, many observers felt Knowland would have had a clear shot at the White House. This is a book not only about Mr. Republican, but also one that illuminates the strengths and deficiencies of Republican party politics during the years when the party was at its zenith. In portraying the life of Bill Knowland, the authors cast a glaring light both on the machinations of political power and on the Republican establishment's aspirations in the Warren-Eisenhower era. Clean copy.

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.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 3rd pr., 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 1167 pages, illus., bibliography, notes, index, Clean copy. In this third installment of Caro's epic biography he carries Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done. It was during these years that all Johnson's experience--from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine--came to fruition. Small scar to front fly leaf where sticker was removed, otherwise a clean copy.

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.

Hardcover. Ames IA, Iowa State University Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 180 pages. The author wrote a column for a Des Moines newspaper for 25 years. Collected here is a wide selection of her writings along with a narrative account of her life in rural Iowa. Light soil to dust jacket.

Hardcover. Boston, D. Lothrop and Co., 1st, 1879, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, terra cotta cloth stamped in gilt and black, b&w plates, 335 pages plus publisher's ads in rear. Light shelf wear otherwise clean, very good. A shiphand's account of life in the early merchant marine.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Adult, 1st, 1996, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 282 pages, with photographs of the artist and her work. Slight foxing on top edge and small stain on fore edge, otherwise, very clean and tight copy. Twenty years after the publication of her autobiography, Through the Flower, the renowned artist and feminist continues the story of her life and takes a provocative look at late twentieth-century American culture and the allocation of our resources.

Hardcover. London, Aurum Press Ltd, 1st, 1989, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 294 pages. Dog-ears and light tearing to 10 or so pages. Faint foxing to edges. Light edgewear, sun-fade to spine of dust jacket.

Softcover. New York, W. W. Norton, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 509 pages. Softcover with minor wear to edges. Otherwise clean, unmarked copy. Color and black & white images throughout. Heavily illustrated throughout. Chapters explore Edward Hopper's career as an illustrator and his mature style. Much of the catalogue comprised of color plates. Includes magazine covers, short story illustrations and advertisements. xii, 54 pages plus 110 leaves of plates.

Hardcover. New York, Macmillan, 1st, 1917, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 467 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR - ("SPECIAL AUTOGRAPHED EDITION"). Previous owners notes and related clippings adhered to inside front cover and front endpaper. Illustrations by Alice Barber Stephens. Covers show light wear, with some rubbing to cloth at top and bottom of spine. Clean, unmarked text.

Hardcover. New York, Scribner, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 287 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black and white pictures in center. Clean, tight copy with light edgewear to cover boards.

Hardcover. Albany, CA, Rowena Godding Ruggles, 2nd, 1972, Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on second front end-paper. 96 pages of text. Includes 213 plates of b&w illustrations of Kewpies. Biography of Rose O'Neill and her work, including the development of the Kewpie dolls. In very good condition. The pages are clean and book neatly and tightly cloth-bound in red covers. dust jacket clean, with minor edge-wear.

Hardcover. Cambridge, Mass., Charlotte C. Coates, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 250 pages. Ex-library stamp on title page. Ex-library residue and envelope on back endpaper. Otherwise, a very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York & London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, reprint, 1905, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 442 pages, b&w illustrations. Maroon cloth, gilt titles to front and spine. Light wear to edges and boards, faint foxing to a few pages. Neat, tight copy.

Softcover. New York, Doubleday, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 297 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear to paper wrappers. Faded spine. A Livingston descendant once called the Hudson Valley, Livingston Valley, and with good reason. The original 1686 Royal patent of 160,000 acres on the east side of New York's Hudson River to Scottish merchant Robert Livingston grew within two generations to nearly one million acres and included vast portions of the Catskill Mountains as well. Intermarriages with other wealthy and influential Hudson Valley families, the Roosevelts, Delanos, Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, Astors, and Beekmans, to name a few created a dynasty and a landed aristocracy on the banks of the new republic s most important river an irony embedded at the core of the American experiment. At one time forty Livingston mansions lined the east shore, and the family s reach into NYS and American politics, economics, and social scene was profound and enduring. Their influence on early American politics was pervasive, with Livingstons on the Provincial Assembly, as members of the Continental Congress, on the committee to draft a Declaration of Independence, as first Chancellor of New York State and co-drafter with John Jay of the state s Constitution, justice of the NYS Supreme Court, Minister to France the list goes on. And, of course, there was the patron of Robert Fulton who brought a revolution to commerce with the world s first steamship, known as the Clermont after the Livingston estate in Columbia County that is now a State Historic Site Text includes a map of the Hudson Valley showing Livingston family land holdings, and a family genealogy from 1654 to 1964.

Hardcover. NY, Argosy-Antiquarian, reprint, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Ltd to 750 w/ new material edited by Abraham Nasatir, 1st pub in 1911 by the Missouri Historical Society, b&w Illustrations 207 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to boards. Decorative staining to top edge. Previous owner's signature on end paper (in pencil).

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 416 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket unclipped. B/w illustrations throughout. Gilt title on spine. Binding tight, in excellent shape. Clean inside and out.

Hardcover. New York, University Books, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 312 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations. Marble cover boards, red quarter cloth, gilt title on spine. Red endpapers. Top edge dyed. Previous owner's inscription on title page. Some slight tanning to a few pages from age. Dust jacket unclipped, has some chipping and agewear (see images). Binding good. Spine straight. Pages unmarked. The biography of the European eighteenth century occultist and Mason, Count Allesandro di Cagliostro.

Hardcover. Self published, 1st Edition, 2013, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, 442 pages. Very large hardcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. Vibrant, decorated glossy cover boards with black quarter cloth, gilt title on spine. Pages unmarked, clean and bright. Spine straight, binding tight. A beautifully photo-illustrated biography about a gifted photographer's life and career, including his distinguished time with the National Geographic Magazine. Scarce. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

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.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. 274 pages 210 illustrations in color. David Dawson"s photographs create an intimate portrait of the man. The final images are of the hanging of Preud"s work in his posthumous London exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

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.