Biography

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 599 pages. Don't pick up this fascinating, deeply eccentric book expecting to find a conventional biography of Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926). The fiery American labor leader who founded the Socialist Party of America is not so much the subject as the central figure in a group portrait of utopian dreamers--including Karl Marx, Brigham Young, abolitionist Wendell Phillips, poet James Whitcomb Riley, and detective-agency founder Allan Pinkerton--from the time of the French Revolution through the dawn of the 20th century. Author Marguerite Young is a legendary Greenwich Village bohemian who died in 1995. She devoted the last 25 years of her life to this volume, which was intended as a recapitulation of the issues that had engaged Debs - justice for workers, peace for everyone, racial equality - and continued to galvanize America in the 1960s and beyond. Young doesn't provide a lot of straight factual information about Debs's life, but takes instead a snapshot of his soul as it was formed by reading and experience. The narrative closes (sort of) with the national railroad strike of 1877, a bitter defeat for labor that turned railroad worker and union activist Debs toward greater radicalism. Though not a work for the traditionally minded, Young's genre-bending book will thrill students of American social and socialist history. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Persea Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 228 page. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR BELTH ON TITLE PAGE AND DATED August 31, 2007. Otherwise, clean, tight copy with minor rubbing on dust jacket edges.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster , 11th pr., 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. Alexander King, one of the first editors of Life magazine, a collaborator on plays with Clare Booth Luce, and a book illustrator, tells, among other things, of undergoing four "cures" for drug addiction in a ten-year period. Dedicated nonconformist King describes his life and those around him with irony and humor. Paper tanning, clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 255 pages. Hardcover with chipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR AND CHARLES LINDBERGH ON TITLE PAGE. Maps by Charles Lindbergh. Dust jacket has moderate tears and chipping aling spine.

Hardcover. Boston, Lee and Shepard, 1st , 1867, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 273 pages. B&w frontispiece with tissue guard. Green cloth cover with gilt titles and decoration on spine. Soiling, rubbing, and edgewear to cover. Front and rear hinges cracked. Previous owner inscription on front fly leaf. Binding cracked at page 204. Some spotting and staining throughout.

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.

Hardcover. Cambridge, MD, Tidewater Publishers, 2nd pr., 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 295 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Light green cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine. Decorated endpapers. Dust jacket unclipped, has a touch of agewear (see images). Pages clean. Binding tight. Spine straight. By word, painting adn sketch, Mr. Tawes recalls with Bay salt and spice that tiny postage stamp of America he christens "the Creek Country."

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, reprint, 1930, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 373 pages. Black and white frontispiece, 15 black and white photos and illustrations. Reminiscences of the writer's relationship with Theodore Roosevelt with a focus on their early years, family, and acquaintances. Inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 601 pages. B&w photos. The definitive biography of the iconic actor and Hollywood legend ( 1920 - 2014 ) and his extravagant, sometimes tawdry life, drawing on exclusive interviews with those who knew him best. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. Inspired by the twenty-three 'tales', Matthew Dennison takes a selection of quotations from Potter's stories and uses them to explore her multi-faceted life and character: repressed Victorian daughter; thwarted lover; artistic genius; formidable countrywoman. They chart her transformation from a young girl with a love of animals and fairy tales into a bestselling author and canny businesswoman, so deeply unusual for the Victorian era in which she grew up. Embellished with photographs of Potter's life and her own illustrations, this biography will delight anyone who has been touched by Beatrix Potter's work. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, D. Appleton and Company, 1st, 1870, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering on spine, gilt design on front cover. 589 pages, engraved portrait of Webster with tissue guard. VOLUME ONE ONLY. A comprehensive & complete history of Mr. Webster by his literary executor, George Ticknor Curtis. Faint pencil notation to blank prelim page otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Ballantine Books, reprint, 1988, Softcover, 544 pages, b&w illustrations. The Chicago Tribune claimed that this 'the liveliest most astringent and eminently readable biography of Frank Lloyd Wright yet written'. It traces the full span of Wright's career. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Stockholm, P.A. Norstedt & Soners, 1st thus, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. 495 pages, b&w frontis., fold-out map in rear. English translation by Naomi Walford.

Hardcover. NY, Birch Lane Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, white cloth covers with black lettering on spine, no dust jacket. 238 pages with b&w photos. Biography by nephew of Malcolm X. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Kent UK, Telos Publishing, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 383 pages. Hardcover with laminated boards. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, England, Adam & Charles Black, 1st Larger Size Edition, 1909, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 204 pages. Hardcover. Color illustrations throughout. Top edge gilt. Deckled edges. Previous owner's book plate and pen marks on front endpapers. Front hinge cracked, binding still good. Red decorated cover boards, gilt title on spine (faded). Pages have some foxing and tanning from age. Illustrations still very vivid and in excellent condition. Artist memoir and beautiful look at her life in England, painted by her own hand. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Narberth PA, Livingston Publishing, 1st, 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 118 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the front flyleaf. Salmon cloth covers with black cloth inlay & gilt titles, black printed titles to spine. Frontis photograph Woodrow Wilson. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cincinnati OH, Review Printing Co., 1st, 1885, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth with black stamping, 174 pages. B&w frontispiece engraving of Sabin with tissue guard. Green floral pattern on endpapers. First blank page INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR, DATED 1890.

Hardcover. New York, Hudson Hills Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 187 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. green star sticker on front cover, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Essex Junction VT, Battenkill River, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 278 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. An intimate look at the life of Norman Rockwell and his Arlington, Vermont neighbors, the Edgertons. Foreword by Dick Clark. Black-and-white photographs throughout. Bright and clean. A tight copy.

Softcover. Colorado, Westview Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 336 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR. Very slight wear to edges and corners. A few pages slightly turned down. Otherwise, a very nice, clean copy.

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. New York, Viking Press, 1st, 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 95 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Color lithographs by author. Light soil to covers, mild odor, and corners bumped. Previous owner's name and bokplate on front fly leaf. Tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket that's price-clipped, 316 pages. This book is a fascinating combination of literary detection and biography, capturing lives of extraordinary people who inspired memorable characters in ficiton.

Hardcover. New York , E. P. Dutton , 1st U.S., 1913, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 325 pages. Green cloth cover, beveled edges, gilt design,some wear to corners and edges. Light foxing and shadows on front and rear endpages. With an introduction by R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Frontispiece is b&w portrait of William Morris. Binding slightly cocked. Inside pages are bright and clean. A nice copy.

Paperback. East Middlebury, VT, Amandla Publishing , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 165 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Photographic cover by Fred Cray.

Softcover. Boston, The Paul Revere Memorial Association, 1st pbk, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial black wrappers, 191 pages. Issued in conjunction with a 1988-1989 exhibition featuring the silver work of Paul Revere (1735-1818). With illustrated essays by Patrick M. Leehey, Janine E. Skerry, Deborah A. Federhen, Edgard Moreno, and Edith J. Steblecki. Includes a bibliography and many views of Revere's silversmithing capabilities. 236 b&w illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House , 3rd pr., 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 230 pages. This autobiography covers the first eleven years in the life of the distinguished Nigerian dramatist and poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Howell Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 176 pages, b&w illustrations. Between 1917 and 1955, E.L. "Slonnie" Sloniger was a WWI fighter pilot, a barnstormer, a test pilot, a racer, an acrobatic pilot, and a commercial pilot. Here, "Fate is the Hunter's" Old Number One tells the story in his own words, as recorded by his son.

Hardcover. NY, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light green cloth with gilt title on spine, 249 pages., b&w plates. Written in his mid-forties, after four broken marriages and several fortunes spent, Rooney frankly discusses his own personal triumphs, tribulations and out and out disasters. Clean, bright copy. No dust jacket. No printing stated.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, brown cloth boards with small orange cannon illustration on front cover; white and orange lettering to spine. In a very worn and chipped dust jacket. B&w illustrations. An American hero of the French and Indian Wars, Rogers briefly served with the British in the American Revolution before resigning because he did not want to fight against his countrymen. He was court martialed for treason and later died in exile in England. Dust jacket poor to fair, book itself is clean and tight.

Hardcover. Mexico, Fundacion Olga y Rufino Tamayo, Reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 150 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Book text in Spanish. Former price tag residue on back of dust jacket. Color illustrations throughout.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 2nd pr., 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 388 pages, b&w illustrations. A revealing biography of Florence Gould, fabulously wealthy socialite and patron of the arts, who hid a dark past as a Nazi collaborator in 1940's Paris.Born in turn-of-the-century San Francisco to French parents, Florence moved to Paris at the age of eleven. Believing that only money brought respectability and happiness, she became the third wife of Frank Jay Gould, son of the railway millionaire Jay Gould. She guided Frank's millions into hotels and casinos, creating a luxury hotel and casino empire. She entertained Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Joseph Kennedy, and many Hollywood stars-like Charlie Chaplin, who became her lover. While the party ended for most Americans after the Crash of 1929, Frank and Florence stayed on, fearing retribution by the IRS. During the Occupation, Florence took several German lovers and hosted a controversial Nazi salon. As the Allies closed in, the unscrupulous Florence became embroiled in a notorious money laundering operation for Hermann Goring's Aerobank.Yet after the war, not only did she avoid prosecution, but her vast fortune bought her respectability as a significant contributor to the Metropolitan Museum and New York University, among many others. It also earned her friends like Estee Lauder who obligingly looked the other way. A seductive and utterly amoral woman who loved to say "money doesn't care who owns it," Florence's life proved a strong argument that perhaps money can buy happiness after all.

NY, Farrar, Straus and Company, 1st, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a very worn, chipped dust jacket, 312 pages. This autobiography details the struggle of a young Negroe's struggle to rise from a Knoxville slum to reach the ministry in the first half of the 20th century.

Hardcover. New York, Gallery Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 400 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Iconic music and film legend Grace Jones gives an in-depth account of her stellar career, professional and personal life, and the signature look that catapulted her into the stardom stratosphere.

Hardcover. New York, Scribner, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 578 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Pictures in center. Nice copy.

Hardcover. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, First Edition, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 419 pages. Hardcover with photographs, illustrations of woodcuts, engravings in bw. Brown cloth boards & black titles to spine. Light marginal foxing to top edge. Dust jacket with toning to spine & light wear to edges. Clean & tight copy.

Softcover. NY, Harper Design, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 308 pages. Eleanor Dwight delivers the definitive biography of Diana Vreeland, the twentieth century's most influential fashion editor. Lavishly illustrated with exclusive photographs and personal materials from the legendary style maker's private collection, and featuring a new preface from Vogue's Andre LeonTalley, Diana Vreeland is an indispensible look at a grand dame of great couture. Lavishly illustrated with more than three hundred drawings and photographs, many by the best fashion photographers of the time: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Irving Penn, Cecil Beaton, and Brassai. Here, too, are the trendsetters, artists, models, and celebrities with whom Vreeland worked and played, including Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta, Elsie de Wolfe, Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Hardcover. Boston, New Harvest, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 174 pages. Hardcover. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Hoban has written an insightful book into what may have made Lucian Freud the great painter he came to be. From his early days in Germany with his grandfather, Sigmund Freud, to his subsequent life in London, where his family moved before the war, we see Lucian Freud gradually developing from an intense adolescent who often resorted to physical violence in conflicts with others to the powerful figure who changed the face of Realism. His many liaisons with women are described in detail: Hoban offers us a candid sketch of who the most prominent women in his life were, his problems with commitment and other moral conundrums we are forced to consider in his character, such as his questionable demand on his lovers that they use no form of birth control, resulting in at least 14 children, most out of wedlock. Along with that, Freud's gambling addiction and his love of risk are explored by Hoban in a way that allows us a glimpse into Freud's psyche that is invaluable for anyone wanting to understand in a more in depth way the factors that might have contributed to his enormous talents and output.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A major historical biography of George C. Marshall--the general who ran the U.S. campaign during the Second World War, the Secretary of State who oversaw the successful rebuilding of post-war Europe, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize--and the first to offer a complete picture of his life. While Eisenhower Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, MacArthur, Nimitz, and Leahy waged battles in Europe and the Pacific, one military leader actually ran World War II for America, overseeing personnel and logistics: Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army from 1939 to 1945, George C. Marshall. This interpretive biography of George C. Marshall follows his life from his childhood in Western Pennsylvania and his military training at the Virginia Military Institute to his role during and after World War II and his death in 1959 at the age of seventy-eight. It brings to light the virtuous historical role models who inspired him, including George Washington and Robert E. Lee, and his relationships with the Washington political establishment, military brass, and foreign leaders, from Harry Truman to Chiang Kai-shek. It explores Marshall's successes and failures during World War II, and his contributions through two critical years of the emerging Cold War--including the transformative Marshall Plan, which saved Western Europe from Soviet domination, and the failed attempt to unite China's nationalists and communists.

Softcover. Bloomington IN, iUniverse, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 155 pages including epilogue. This is the story of Checiny, the author's hometown in southern Poland, and of the people who lived there between the two world wars of the 20th Century. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Blue Rider Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 336 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white illustrations and pictures throughout.

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.

Mystic CT, Mystic Seaport Museum, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 449 pages, many b&w illustrations. L. Francis Herreshoff (1890-1972) was the most remarkable yacht designer of his time. Beginning his career in the shadow of his famous father, Nathanael G. Herreshoff, he emerged to become a designer who approached the perfection of form in yacht design. His unconventional designs, and his innovative engineering of hull and rig, made him a peer among his more prolific contemporaries. Taylor's book is well researched and documented and brings out many relatively unknown aspects of LFH's life and designs through 1930, the phase in which he was primarily a racing yacht designer. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly soiled. unclipped dust jacket. 325 pages including index. The author explores Sunday's career as the product and expression of his era. A lively account of the famous revivalist's life and the inner workings of mass revivalism. Name stamp on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York , Twayne, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 133 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to edges.

Hardcover. New York, Macmillan Company, 1st US, 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 631 pages. Green cloth, gilt lettering to spine. Dust jacket slightly worn and soiled with small tears to upper edge of spine, in clear brodart cover.

Hardcover. New York, Ammo, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages, many b&w and color photographs. A visual biography accompanied by excerpts from Thompson's work. Introduction by Johnny Depp, edited by Steve Crist and Paul Norton. Illustrated boards, no dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. NY, Nan A. Talese, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 440 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The legendary cartoonist's candid, self-deprecating, and beautifully written memoir describes his childhood in the Bronx, evolution from "smart-ass kid into an enraged satirist" (with inspiration from a stint in the Army) and his later successes as a pioneer of the graphic novel and a collaborator with the likes of film greats Robert Altman, Mike Nichols and Jack Nicholson. SIGNED by Feiffer on title page.

Hardcover. Lincoln NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 146 pages, in a lightly worn dust jacket. Bead on an Anthill is the story of a Lakota girl's experiences growing up in Nebraska and on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1960s and 1970s. Raised in a home without books, Delphine Red Shirt relied on family and friends as her "books" and wove their stories into her own. Like her ancestors, she felt a powerful connection to the openness of the Plains. She participated in coming-of-age ceremonies and learned the special rules for stringing beads together and the messages conveyed by hairstyles. At the same time, Red Shirt became increasingly aware of the distance between her world and that of her ancestors.