Biography

Softcover. Electric Radio Press, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Hiram Percy Maxim (September 2, 1869 - February 17, 1936) was an American radio pioneer and inventor, and co-founder (with Clarence D. Tuska) of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). Hiram Percy Maxim is credited with inventing and selling the first commercially successful firearm silencer, and also with developing mufflers for internal combustion engines. This is the only biography of this very remarkable man. He was a great inventor, writer, movie maker and is recognized as the father of Amateur Radio. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & World, 2nd pr., 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with mild fading to the spine. Photo frontispiece. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on the half-title page. The Johnny Appleseed Bookshop became one of the most beloved bookstores in the state. Started by Ruth Hard the daughter of Walter and Margaret it soon attracted a following of from Vermont and nearby New York and Massachusetts. Major literary figures of the day, Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Alexander Woollcott, Pearl Buck, all part time residents of the state, quickly became regulars. The store closed in 1980 after almost 50 years in business in Manchester, Vermont. Her bookshop sticker on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 144 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy in publisher's shrinkwrap. Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) achieved overnight fame in the late 1920s with the first publication of his photographs of plants. Those photographs, which revealed the inner structures of the organic forms, immediately made him a pioneer of New Objectivity-an innovative movement in art and photography of the 1920s and 1930s. Blossfeldt, however, was neither a trained photographer nor a botanist. He was a sculptor and art professor who did his photographic work to generate teaching material for his students.The publication of this book is the result of an extraordinary event-the 1997 discovery in Blossfeldt's estate of sixty-one previously unknown collages, in virtually mint condition, of photographic contact prints arranged on large cardboard sheets. Blossfeldt apparently used these to study the relation and similarity of the photographs and to compare them graphically and aesthetically. On some, Blossfeldt had made marks or handwritten notations. Others show lines for cropping. The collages, published here for the first time, unveil a hidden treasure of modern photography and cast fresh light on the systematic approach Blossfeldt used in his photographic studies. All collages are reproduced in four colors. Introducing the book is an essay by Swiss art historian Ulrike Meyer-Stump, a Lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts. Not for sale in France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria

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.

Hardcover. Jefferson NC, McFarland & Co., 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering. Part 1: A Korean Childhood in Japan, 1930-1944; Part 2: Growing Up in Korea, 1944- 1951. No Dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. NY/Chicago, Fleming H. Revell, 10th pr., 1915, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover. Black & white frontis photograph of Muir (repeated on dust jacket). 11 other plates plus map. Dust jacket worn, chipped (about half of spine missing).

Hardcover. San Juan, P.R., Fundacion El Nuevo Dia, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 375 pages, Spanish text with copious photographs throughout. Volume 1 only. Light dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. Caldwell, Idaho, The Caxton Printers, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 265 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. Scarce. Illustrated by Anton Otto Fisher. A frank and detailed description of the life of a English deep-sea fisherman. Moderate edgewear to dust jacket, chipping most pronounced along top edge. Chipping to dust jacket spine as well. Foxing to all edges. Unmarked. A tight copy.

Hardcover. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday and Co., 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 189 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. 1st edition after limited edition. Black and white pictures, some in color. Cloth covers with gilt lettering. Edge wear and fraying to top of dust jacket spine, small closed tear to back dust jacket. Remainder spray on bottom edge page block.

Hardcover. Woodstock NY, Overlook Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with minor edge wear. Over 300 photographs (many in color), most never-before published, chronology, select recordings and videotapes, index. Text taken from Lenya's interviews, private conversations, letters, and other writings provide captivating glimpses into her on-stage and off-stage world. Married to Kurt Weill, the pair brought their talents to American theater when they left Nazi Germany in the 1930s. She gave unforgettable performances on stage and screen ('Threepenny Opera', 'Cabaret' etc) and established herself as one of the twentieth century's most enduring and talented performers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1922, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 131 pages. Hardcover with scarce dust jacket. Light edgewear to covers, and pages. Light foxing throughout. Tight copy.

Hardcover. New York , Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR, AND CONTAINS SIGNED LETTERS AND NOTES. 456 pages. Blue cloth cover, some fading and wear to edges. Dust jacket has bumped bottom edge, small chip missing from top edge of spine. Light foxing on fore edge, but inside is very bright and clean, with b&w illustrations throughout.

Hardcover. NY, Meredith Press, 2nd pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 214 pages, b&w photos. INSCRIBED on half title as follows " ___________, I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did living it" and signed Toots. Tight binding text unmarked, closed tears repaired internally to back panel of jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 553 pages. The compulsively readable and sometimes jaw-dropping story of the life of a notorious madam who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the twenties roar--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America. Simply put: Everybody came to Polly's. Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld--and had a good time doing it. B&w illustrations, clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Playbill/ Applause Thetre& Cinama Books, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 357 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. Minor wear to dust jacket. Minor rubbing to top spine. Light soil on rear. This is the ultimate backstage tour of Broadway! AT THIS THEATRE tells the complete history of Broadway in the 20th century, theatre by theatre. This gorgeous book is now updated, revised and with a larger format, covering 1900 to 2001. PLAYBILL's columnist, Louis Botto, along with Robert Viagas, opens the doors and lets readers explore the 40 active Broadway theatres in New York. From the conception and design of the buildings, to their original creators, and on to the theatres' transformation, often under duress, from legitimate houses to vaudeville and Burlesque, to movie houses and then back to their original purpose, this book captures the magical world of Broadway. It is a complete and authoritative history that only Botto, the curator of PLAYBILL's incomparable 116-year-old archives, can tell.

Hardcover. London, William Hinemann, reprint, 1897, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Half leather bound, with gilt titles and top edge, marbled gilt cover and endpaper and raised leather spine. Previous owner's embossed stamp on half-title page of volume I, binding loose on pages 55-58 on volume I. Minor edge wear, otherwise, clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Spiegel & Grau, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 720 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor dust jacket wear. Black and white images throughout. A tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 597 pages, b&w illustrations. Demagogue is a masterful portrait of a human being capable of immense evil, yet beguiling charm. McCarthy was a tireless worker and a genuine war hero. His ambitions knew few limits. Neither did his socializing, his drinking, nor his gambling. When he finally made it to the Senate, he flailed around in search of an agenda and angered many with his sharp elbows and lack of integrity. Finally, after three years, he hit upon anti-communism. By recklessly charging treason against everyone from George Marshall to much of the State Department, he became the most influential and controversial man in America. His chaotic, meteoric rise is a gripping and terrifying object lesson for us all. Yet his equally sudden fall from fame offers reason for hope that, given the rope, most American demagogues eventually hang themselves.

Hardcover. London, Edward Moxon, 1st, 1849, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Three hardcovers bound in polished calf, gilt rules to covers, black leather labels on spine with orate gilt decorations. Pages: xx+480+viii+464+viii+460, appendix, index. Marbled endpapers and text edges. Aside from previous owner's bookplate on inside cover of each volume, a bright, clean set. Biography of the Scottish poet, incorporating many of his letters.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Ignatius Press, Reprint, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 452 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A brilliant and feared critic, Kenneth Tynan was a nabob of the National Theatre alongside Laurence Olivier, and he was also the daring impresario who created "Oh Calcutta". He was a notorious eccentric, a louche sophisticate: connoisseur of cuisine, wine, literature and women. Where else could you find such a judicious blend of aesthetics, theatre lore, love, marriage, sex and politics? These sizzling diaries will remind older readers of a man whose reputation as the greatest critic of the twentieth century is still unchallenged and introduce younger readers to an electrifying writer who simply could not be boring. B&w photos, 439 pages. Clean copy.

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.

Softcover. Guilford, CT, Lyons Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 352 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Color illustrations throughout. With his life's work, and in All Told, LeRoy Neiman captured sports heroes, movie stars, presidents, dishwashers, jet-setters, jockeys, and more than a few Bunnies at the Playboy Mansion.

Softcover. Los Angeles, CA, Green Integer, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 185 pages. Softcover with light edgewear to paper wrappers. Small stain on rear wrapper, otherwise clean, tight copy. Small book; 6"x4".

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.

NY, Random House, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An advisor to presidents, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and tireless champion of progressive government, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., was also an inveterate letter writer. Indeed, the term "man of letters" could easily have been coined for Schlesinger, a faithful and prolific correspondent whose wide range of associates included powerful public officials, notable literary figures, prominent journalists, Hollywood celebrities, and distinguished fellow scholars. The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. reveals the late historian's unvarnished views on the great issues and personalities of his time, from the dawn of the Cold War to the aftermath of September 11. Here is Schlesinger's correspondence with such icons of American statecraft as Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, and, of course, John and Robert Kennedy (including a detailed critique of JFK's manuscript for Profiles in Courage). There are letters to friends and confidants such as Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Gore Vidal, William Styron, and Jacqueline Kennedy (to whom Schlesinger sends his handwritten condolences in the hours after her husband's assassination), and exchanges with such unlikely pen pals as Groucho Marx, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bianca Jagger. Finally, there are Schlesinger's many thoughtful replies to the inquiries of ordinary citizens, in which he offers his observations on influences, issues of the day, and the craft of writing history.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Algonquin Young Readers, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 113 pages. Hardcover. Extensive color illustrations by James McMullan throughout. Illustrated paste downs and end papers. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

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. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1st, 1984-09-01, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 316 pages, b&w illustrations. Light edgewear and rubbing o dust jacket. Small stain to fore edge, else a clean, tight copy.

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, McGraw-Hill , 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 547 pages. Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR 0N PRELIMINARY PAGE. Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. Illustrated with 8 pages of black & white photographs. Related article laid-in. No dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. US, Nan A. Talese, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 384 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Color and black and white pictures throughout.

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, Harrap, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 200 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light soil on top page block, otherwise clean, tight copy. Moderate chipping/rubbing to dust jacket edges now covered in plastic protective sleeve.

Softcover. New York , Random House, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 279 pages, b&w photos. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. This book exposes Chanel's anti-Semitism and her long affair with 'Spatz' Baron von Dincklage, a Nazi spy who ran an intelligence ring and reported to Goebbels. It explains how she became a German intelligence operative, how she lived in exile, how Winston Churchill supported her and how she reinvented herself in the early 1950s.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 246 pages. Light rubbing, soiling to price-clipped dust jacket. Light foxing to edges. Else a clean, tight copy. The author of This House of Sky provides a magnificent evocation of the Pacific Northwest through the diaries of James Gilchrist Swan, a settler of the region. Doig fuses parts of the Swan diaries with his own journal.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages. This stylish book re-creates the charmed life of two American expatriates in France at the turn of the 20th century-the noted artist Walter Gay and his wife, Matilda, whose glittering social circle included John Singer Sargent, Edith Wharton, Henry James, and many other artists and aristocrats. Narrated by witty excerpts from Matilda Gay's recently discovered journal, and richly illustrated with Walter Gay's remarkable, sought-after paintings of the rooms in which they and their friends lived, in Paris, Fontainebleau, Venice, and elsewhere, A Charmed Couple offers an intimate glimpse of a long-gone social milieu whose hold on the popular imagination continues to this day. WILLIAM RIEDER is a curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Author of numerous articles, most on European furniture, in such journals as Architectural Digest, Connoisseur, and Antiques, he lives in New York City. 128 illustrations, 55 in full color, 81/2 x 101/2".

Hardcover. London, Phaidon Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 190 pages. Hardcover. Extensive b&w photography throughout. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New Haven, Conn, Yale University Press, 1st, 1926, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth, 139 pages. Gilt title on spine. Slight corner and edge wear, previous owner's signature on front end paper. Otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Arthur L Humphreys, 2nd pr., 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt staping. 261 pages including index. 261 pages. Written almost 80 years after the Emperor's death, the author attempts to bring together all the contemporary biographies and memoirs relating to the sojourn on St Helena. Mild foxing, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Charleston SC, Privately Published, 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt. 211 pages, b&w frontispiece group portrait. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR/COMPILER on the title page. The chronicle of a group of families associated for many generations with the Low Country of South Carolina. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 624 pages, black and white illustrations. The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy and one of its most complex. Drawing on many previously untapped sources, Frank Costigliola's authoritative biography offers a new picture of a man of extraordinary ability and ambition whose idea of containing the Soviet Union helped ignite the Cold War but who spent the next half century trying to extinguish it. Clean copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Encounter Books, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 222 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON HALF TITLE PAGE. Clean, unmarked copy. Black and white pictures in center. Goodyear was an entrepreneur who actually made good on the ever-popular claim that his company would change the world. Korman, senior editor of Engineering News-Record, dryly traces the life of the rubber pioneer and American industrial legend in this part scientific history lesson and part American business story. Goodyear (1800-1860) became an inventor not out of any great scientific thirst; he was self-taught and wanted to make money. He earned success, but endured continual patent monopoly battles and numerous trips to debtors' prison as he steadfastly and compulsively held onto his dream of using rubber to change just about every aspect of life. (According to Korman, Goodyear frequently wore a coat made of rubber in his early inventing days to underscore the versatility of his product.) Korman waxes scientific at times, offering in-depth descriptions of how Goodyear cooked rubber and sulfur compounds, yet his technical discourses are not so esoteric that they will turn away amateurs. His book is also valuable for its accurate portrayal of factory life in the 1830s and '40s; his accounts of the aproned men who chopped rubber with axes and knives and the machines that ground it are lively examples of industrial age America. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Baltimore, MD, Butternut & Blue, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 335 pages. Hardcover. b/w illustrations throughout. Blue cover boards, black title and design on spine and covers. Dust jacket is unclipped, some scratches/rubbing to back cover, otherwise excellent.

Hardcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 439 pages, illustrated with 108 black & white halftones. A critical study of this key figure and the works of his contemporaries-including Borelli, Swammerdam, Redi, and Ruysch-opens a wonderful window onto the scientific and medical worlds of the seventeenth century. A clean, bright copy lacking the dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 216 pages. World-class athlete, playboy, war correspondent, and heir to a Greek shipping fortune, Taki has over the last three decades moved among the rich, the powerful, the titled and the celebrated in London, New York, Gstaad, the Riviera?wherever fun or stimulation was to be had. But in 1984, while passing through Heathrow Airport, Taki was arrested for possession of cocaine and summarily sent to jail. Nothing to Declare is the hilarious and surprisingly wise account of the three months Taki spent in prison, a story filled with perilous day-to-day events as well as reflections on the glamorous life he has led. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Toronto, The Ryerson Press, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 272 pages. Map endpapers, frontispiece, illustrations, bibliography, index. Black and white frontispiece portrait of Grenfell. Endpapers feature a map of Newfoundland and Labrador. The first full biography of the founder of the Grenfell Mission in Labrador and Newfoundland. Lacks dust jacket, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, David McKay, 2nd pr., 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 247 pages. For Gibbons the good life is sharing & enjoying nature & maintaining an environment where natural thing can flourish. Camping without polluting or plundering. Memorable journeys into the wild. Creative specific solutions to ecological poblems. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Funk & Wagnalls , 1st, 1893, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth. b&w frontis. portrait, 541 page biography, works of the great nineteenth century American preacher, lecturer, orator, and journalist. From the American Reformers Series. Spine is sunned, gilt lettering on the cover. Ex-lib with endpapers marked, stamped. Interior clean.