Hardcover. Chapel Hill , University of North Carolina, 1st, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth, gilt lettering, design on spine, 280 pages. "The story of a Confederate childhood, a Reconstruction boyhood, and the education of a medical pioneer in the new South." This book is first of all a personal narrative that is alternately dramatic, thoughtful, and hilariously funny. It is also a vivid picture of plantation life before and during the Civil War and the beginnings of the building of a New South. Clean copy, spine a bit darkened.
Hardcover. NY, Boni And Liveright, Ltd. Ed., 1928, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, top edge gilt. Limited Edition. Number 569 of 650 copies. Facsimile signature of Duncan on front free endpaper. This book was published posthumously on the basis of Duncan's handwritten text and illustrated with 24 black and white photographs of her (two by Arnold Genthe). As one of the great free spirits of the early 20th century, Duncan's account of her life was as uninhibited as her career. This is one of the "presentation copies" published as a limited edition for authors and other friends of Boni and Liveright. Red leather label missing from spine, bookplate inside front cover, light wear to beveled covers.
Hardcover. Sydney AU, Pacific Publications, 1st, 1968, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, black cloth covers, gilt titles on spine, b&w illustrations. Covers worn, tattered dust jacket. Australian George Wilfred Lambert Townsend (1896-1962) spent twenty-five years in New Guinea during which he battled head-hunters on the Sepik River, battled the Rabaul bureaucracy and finally the Japanese. There is some marking and highlighting to the text. A reading copy of a scarce title concerning Australia's administrative rule in New Guinea.
Hardcover. London, Hodder and Stoughton, reprint, 1891, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt flower design on front cover. 480 pages, with a frontispiece portrait + a folding color map in rear. Appears to be INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on a bookplate inside front cover with a New Year's greeting and dated Dec 31 1891. Alexander Murdoch Mackay was a missionary, a teacher and an engineer who contributed tremendously to Christianity and education in Uganda. As a youth, he left Scotland and committed his life to preaching the word of God to the people of Uganda. He introduced vocational training, taught practical skills and laid the foundation of education in the Church of Uganda. He introduced a printing press which he used to print the Luganda version of the Holy Bible. Light shelf wear, fraying to top of spine.
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.
London, John Murray, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 229 pages illustrated in b&w by Victor Ambrus. The early (1914-34) and very readable Kenya memoirs of an administration official. Seaton presents his own particular vision of East Africa as it was from 1913 to 1926, the unsophisticated Africa with its peoples and wild life, before the golden age came to an end. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. London, Hutchinson, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket, 190 pages, 5 b&w illustrations. A true account of the author's adventures as a young man prospecting for gold in Africa, and the region that he believes is the legendary Ophir, famous in Old Testament times for it's fine gold. Name on inside front cover otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Dodd Mead, 3rd pr., 1943, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bright red cloth stamped in black. Endpapers map, b&w photographs. 410 pages. The widow of Carl Akeley, naturalist, tells the story back of the exhibits for which he was responsible in the Natural History Museum in New York. This is virtually a biography, with that as a focus; it is a record of the uphill struggle to get the chance to do the thing for which he was gifted and trained; the experiences securing his speciments, adventures in the wilderness, African jungles, the Belgian Congo, the Uganda frontier -- and the immense concentration on details to get the exhibits together and to present them with complete fidelity. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Chatto & Windus, reprint, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. A classic account of settler life and experiences in the early days of Kenya, by one of Kenya's most prolific and readable authors. Inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
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. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This intimate, revealing portrait of Frank Sinatra--from the man closest to the famous singer during the last decade of his life--features never-before-seen photos and new revelations about some of the most famous people of the past fifty years, including Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, Madonna, and Bono.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Schenkman Publishing, 1st US, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly faded dust jacket. Written in 1936, long before his fame as a archeologist and anthropologist. He tells the story of his life as an African in White Africa from the time he left his family in search of a new life until he returned as a successful scientist. Leakey vividly describes his experiences as a hunter, gatherer, and farmer, and his encounters with the natural world and the people he met there. He also describes the challenges he and his fellow Africans faced in trying to establish themselves as a minority community in a hostile environment. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 304 pages, b&w illustrations. Acclaimed journalist Robert Timberg's extraordinary, long-awaited memoir of his struggle to reclaim his life and find his calling after being severely burned as a young Marine lieutenant in Vietnam In January 1967, Robert Timberg was a short-timer, counting down the days until his combat tour ended. He had thirteen days to go before he got to go back home to his wife in Southern California. That homecoming would eventually happen, but not in thirteen days, and not as the person he once was. The moment his vehicle struck a Vietcong land mine divided his life into before and after.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INITIALED BY ELLROY on blank prelim page. In 1958 Jean Ellroy was murdered, her body dumped on a roadway in a seedy L.A. suburb. Her killer was never found, and the police dismissed her as a casualty of a cheap Saturday night. James Ellroy was ten when his mother died, and he spent the next thirty-six years running from her ghost and attempting to exorcize it through crime fiction. In 1994, Ellroy quit running. He went back to L.A., to find out the truth about his mother - and himself. In MY DARK PLACES, our most uncompromising crime writer - author of AMERICAN TABLOID and WHITE JAZZ - tells what happened when he teamed up with a brilliant homicide cop to investigate a murder that everyone else had forgotten - and to reclaim the mother he had despised, desired, but never dared to love. What ensues is an epic of loss, fixation, and redemption, a memoir that is also a history of the American way of violence.
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.
NY, Crown, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The monumental life of Benjamin Rush, medical pioneer and one of our most provocative and unsung Founding Fathers. By the time he was thirty, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin's protege, and become John Adams's confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington's surgeon general. And as with the greatest Revolutionary minds, Rush was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment. As the new republic coalesced, he became a visionary writer and reformer; a medical pioneer whose insights and reforms revolutionized the treatment of mental illness; an opponent of slavery and prejudice by race, religion, or gender; an adviser to, and often the physician of, America's first leaders; and "the American Hippocrates." Rush reveals his singular life and towering legacy, installing him in the pantheon of our wisest and boldest Founding Fathers.
NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 609 pages, b&w illustrations. They say that history is written by the victors. But not in the case of the most famous dissenter on the Supreme Court. Almost a century after his death, John Marshall Harlan's words helped end segregation and gave us our civil rights and our modern economic freedom. But his legacy would not have been possible without the courage of Robert Harlan, a slave who John's father raised like a son in the same household. After the Civil War, Robert emerges as a political leader. With Black people holding power in the Republican Party, it is Robert who helps John land his appointment to the Supreme Court. At first, John is awed by his fellow justices, but the country is changing. Northern whites are prepared to take away black rights to appease the South. Giant trusts are monopolizing entire industries. Against this onslaught, the Supreme Court seemed all too willing to strip away civil rights and invalidate labor protections. So as case after case comes before the court, challenging his core values, John makes a fateful decision: He breaks with his colleagues in fundamental ways, becoming the nation's prime defender of the rights of Black people, immigrant laborers, and people in distant lands occupied by the US. Harlan's dissents, particularly in Plessy v. Ferguson, were widely read and a source of hope for decades. Thurgood Marshall called Harlan's Plessy dissent his "Bible"--and his legal roadmap to overturning segregation. In the end, Harlan's words built the foundations for the legal revolutions of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras.
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.
Hardcover. NY, Free Press , 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 464 pages, b&w illustrations. A great but frequently overlooked figure in America during the early decades of the 19th century now gets his due. Military historian Eisenhower (son of the late president) describes a natural leader of imposing stature, overweening pride, exceptional courage, and wide learning, who possessed considerable organizational and diplomatic skills along with outstanding martial instincts. As the nation's youngest general, Scott distinguished himself in the War of 1812, and he was a hero of the Mexican War in the 1840s. After a brilliant campaign fought entirely on foreign soil, he stormed and captured Mexico City despite considerable political maneuvering on the battlefield and the homefront by a variety of influential enemies. In peacetime, he served successfully as a diplomat to the Canadians, the British, the Seminoles, and the Cherokees. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Titanic Thompson is the rollicking true story of one of the most charismatic characters in twentieth-century America. Travelling only with his golf clubs, a .45 revolver, and a suitcase full of cash, this is the legendary tale of a man who was married five times to five different girls, all teenagers on their wedding day. He killed five men, though he'd say 'they'd all agree they had it coming to them'. He won and lost millions in a time when being a millionaire still really meant something.Filled with fascinating facts and famous faces - Harry Houdini, Al Capone, Lee Trevino, Arnold Rothstein and Jean Harlow all make appearances - this is a brilliant and compelling snapshot of life on the road in freewheelin' America.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover on a lightly worn dust jacket, 641 pages, b&w illustrations. This is the first full-length biography of the man historian Michael Beschloss calls the keystone figure in the history of American intelligence. Allen Dulles (1893-1969) served in the Office of Strategic Services in Europe during WWII and was named director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1953, serving under Eisenhower and Kennedy. In an overlong, sometimes tedious narrative, Grose (Israel in the Mind of America) describes how Dulles oversaw the firm establishment of the CIA in the Washington power structure during the Eisenhower years (his older brother, John Foster Dulles, was then the Secretary of State), only to be forced out after the CIA's failure in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Later appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy, Dulles became its most diligent member, according to Grose, and a supporter of the view that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Other controversial issues explored include Dulles's exploitation of ex-Nazi Reinhard Gehler's spy network in the early years of the Cold War, and whether JFK authorized, or even knew about, CIA attempts to liquidate Castro. Grose delves unenlighteningly into Dulles's shortcomings as husband and father; he kept a mistress or two and spent little time at home.
Hardcover. West Kennebunk ME, Phoenix Publishing, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. an extraordinary memoir of Maurice that recounts the strange turns and fateful encounters that led him from his newsboyhood to collaborate with some of the world's most important men and to cooperate with some of it's most determined dreamers. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. When the French designer Christian Dior presented his first collection in Paris in 1947, he changed fashion forever. Dior's "New Look" created a striking, romantic vision of femininity, luxury, and grace, making him-and his last name-famous overnight. One woman informed Dior's vision more than any other: his sister, Catherine, a Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and cultivator of rose gardens who inspired Dior's most beloved fragrance, Miss Dior. Yet the story of Catherine's remarkable life-so different from her famous brother's-has never been told, until now. Drawing on the Dior archives and extensive research, Justine Picardie's Miss Dior is the long-overdue restoration of Catherine Dior's life. The siblings' stories are profoundly intertwined: in Occupied France, as Christian honed his couture skills, Catherine dedicated herself to the Resistance, ultimately being captured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbruck, the only Nazi camp solely for women. Seeking to trace Catherine's story as well as her influence on her brother, Picardie traveled to the significant places of Catherine's life, including Les Rhumbs, the Dior family villa with its magnificent gardens; the House of Dior in Paris; and La Colle Noire, Christian's chateau that he bequeathed to his sister. Remainder dot top edge.
Softcover. Port Townsend WA, Feral House, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 339 pages. Ladies' man. Child soldier. Civil War hero. Egotist. Tramp. Drunkard. Published author. Roving Bill Aspinwall: Dispatches from a Hobo in Post-Civil War America tells the story of an American hobo entirely in his own words.William 'Roving Bill' Aspinwall was all of these things and yet no lone descriptor does him justice. Born one of 23 siblings, married 5 times, wounded fighting for the Union in one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War, kicked out of numerous jobs and soldiers' homes for drunkenness, and having spent decades wandering as a penniless vagabond, Bill also kept up a 24-year correspondence with John James McCook, Professor of Modern Languages at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. In so doing Bill provided the earliest and best account of life on the road by an American hobo.Written between 1893 and 1917, Roving Bill Aspinwall: Dispatches from a Hobo in Post-Civil War America tells Bill's story entirely in his own words. Describing experiences on the road, the people he meets, his dalliances with women and his memories of the Civil War, the letters are a rich and unique correspondence. Having been physically and mentally scarred at the 1863 Battle of Champion Hill, Bill details his lifelong battle with booze. He also gives first-hand accounts of men thrown out of work during the economic Panic of 1893, of wandering around the country as an itinerant umbrella-mender, of working in factories, farms and even a circus, as well as his visit to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1903. Bill's words are the real voice of a nineteenth-century hobo.
Hardcover. University Press of Mississippi,, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 260 pages, b&w illustrations. Former New York Times correspondent John N. Herbers (1923-2017), who covered the civil rights movement for more than a decade, has produced Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist, a compelling story of national and historical significance. Born in the South during a time of entrenched racial segregation, Herbers witnessed a succession of landmark civil rights uprisings that rocked the country, the world, and his own conscience. Herbers's retrospective is a timely and critical illumination on America's current racial dilemmas and ongoing quest for justice.Herbers's reporting began in 1951, when he covered the brutal execution of Willie McGee, a black man convicted for the rape of a white housewife, and the 1955 trial for the murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. 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. NY, Pharos Books , 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 220 pages, b&w photos. Examines the life of the photographer who has, during his career, captured such events as the Vietnam War, the killing fields of Cambodia, and the Iran-Iraq War. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Delacorte Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY GEYER on the front fly leaf. What is it like to cover revolutions and interview the great revolutionary figures of our time? This lively firsthand account of one of our most eminent foreign correspondents, the first American woman journalist to cover the world on such a scale, provides a glimpse into this glamorous, rewarding, exhausting, and grueling life. About the Author: Georgie Anne Geyer was a foreign correspondent, an author and biographer, and a syndicated columnist for half a century. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with spine faded. The author's first book. The book describes the experiences that "Gael Greene, girl reporter," encountered in writing her features for the New York Post. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. Drawings by Saul Steinberg. Mississippi author, and war correspondent, who toured the World during WWII for the US Army Service Forces (Supply). Foreword says "This book is a personal record. It has to do with a journey that I made in 1944-45 to Great Britain, France, Belgium, Corsica, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, India, Burma, China."
NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with faded spine. 314 pages. Fowler's last book, completed just before his death in 1960, Chapters on the famous celebrities of the period as well as profiles of panhandlers, defrocked doctors, kidnaperc and fellow reporters. Clean copy.
Softcover. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1st pbk, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 376 pages, b&w illustrations. The personal history of Barney Josephson, proprietor of the legendary interracial New York City night clubs Cafe Society Downtown and Cafe Society Uptown and their successor, The Cookery. Famously known as 'the wrong place for the Right people', Cafe Society featured the cream of jazz and blues performers--among whom were Billie Holiday, Big Joe Turner, Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Big Sid Catlett, and Mary Lou Williams--as well as comedy stars Imogene Coca, Zero Mostel, and Jack Gilford, the boogie-woogie pianists, and legendary gospel and folk artists. Spanning half a century from the 1930s to the 1980s, Josephson's narrative depicts both the business and the artistic sides of Cafe Society while exposing the tensions between the club's own progressive interracial openness and the more restrictive social and political climate in which it evolved. Publisher's stamp on bottom edge otherwise clean.
NY, Viking, 4th pr., 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 594 pages, b&w illustrations. Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Chicago, Allen-Bennett, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light wear, chipping. 240 pages. This book is a good behind the scenes look at the business of Playboy and Hugh Hefner in the '60s and early '70s. The major focus is on the business side of the industry, Byer was a corporate Vice President of Marketing for the Playboy empire. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 2nd pr., 1956, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket, 314 pages. Once a correspondent for the "Daily Worker" of London, foreign reporter for The Times of London and founder of The Week, an anti-fascist periodical, This self portrait is a fascinating read, The book is solid but the cheap paper used has tanned considerably.
Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 642 pages. Gray cloth boards with silver titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Crisp dust jacket with only minor wear. Very clean & unmarked. Crisp, tight copy.
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.
Softcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pbk proof, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 420 pages. Publishers uncorrected proof with flyer promoting the title laid in. The first major biography of the great jazz pianist and singer, written with the full cooperation of his family. When he died in 1965, at age forty-five, Nat King Cole was already a musical legend. As famous as Frank Sinatra, he had sold more records than anyone but Bing Crosby. Written with the narrative pacing of a novel, this absorbing biography traces Cole's rise to fame, from boy-wonder jazz genius to megastar in a racist society. Daniel Mark Epstein brings Cole and his times to vivid life: his precocious entrance onto the vibrant jazz scene of his hometown, Chicago; the creation of his trio and their rise to fame; the crossover success of such songs as "Straighten Up and Fly Right"; and his years as a pop singer and television star, the first African American to have his own show.Epstein examines Cole's insistence on changing society through his art rather than political activism, the romantic love story of Cole and Maria Ellington, and Cole's famous and influential image of calm, poise, and elegance, which concealed the personal turmoil and anxiety that undermined his health.
Hardcover. NY, Wiley, 2nd pr., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The long-awaited, untold, inside story of the rise of the legendary actor, singer, scholar, and activist. The first volume of this major biography breaks new ground. The greatest scholar-athlete-performing artist in U.S. history, Paul Robeson was one of the most compelling figures of the twentieth century.Now his son, Paul Robeson Jr., traces the dramatic arc of his rise to fame, painting a definitive picture of Paul Robeson's formative years. His father was an escaped slave; his mother, a descendent of freedmen; and his wife, the brilliant and ambitious Eslanda Cardozo Goode. With a law degree from Columbia University; a professional football career; title roles in Eugene O'Neill's plays and in Shakespeare's Othello; and a concert career in America and Europe, Robeson dominated his era. 383 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean copy.
Softcover. Authors Choice Press, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, b&w illustrations, 216 pages. Originally published in 1973 and covers the early and essential years of her life and career. The story of a shy girl from Mississippi who became a world opra star told in a sympathetic light.
Softcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, reprint, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 207 pages, b&w illustrations. Few of rodeo's early heroes matched the achievements of the black cowboy Bill Pickett, and his story is recounted here for the first time in book form. Pickett grew up in Texas in the 1880s, the child of former slaves, to become nationally famous as the star of the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. Pickett was associated with such western figures as Tom Mix, Will Rogers, Milt Hinkle, and Lucille Mulhall, and earned a reputation as an all around cowboy of legendary abilities. His greatest claim to fame is as the originator of steer wrestling, the only rodeo event to the traced to one individual. Audiences all over the United States, South America, Canada, and England were amazed to see the "Dusky Demon" fell on thousand-pound steers and bring them down bite-'em style with his teeth. 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. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a mildly worn dust jacket. 361 pages, index, b&w illustrations. Benjamin Thompson, later Count Rumford, was one of the most fascinating and complex men of his period (1753~1814). Soldier of fortune, spy, womanizer, brilliant scientist, intriguer, autocrat, inventor, adventurer, an American expatriated to England who did his most productive scientific work in Munich and who died in France, a man devoted to relieving the suffering of the poor, Rumford was all this and more, and Sanborn Brown's biography makes clear that all these aspects merge into a whole human being. The man who conducted experiments on the caloric theory of heat and the ladies' man are one and the same. Clean copy
Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The mysterious true story of Connie Converse--a mid-century New York City songwriter, singer, and composer whose haunting music never found broad recognition--and one writer's quest to understand her life This is the mesmerizing story of an enigmatic life. When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse's voice on a recording, he was convinced she could not be real. Her recordings were too good not to know, and too out of place for the 1950s to make sense--a singer who seemed to bridge the gap between traditional Americana (country, blues, folk, jazz, and gospel), the Great American Songbook, and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. And then there was the bizarre legend about Connie Converse that had become the prevailing narrative of her life: that in 1974, at the age of fifty, she simply drove off one day and was never heard from again. Could this have been true? Who was Connie Converse, really?
Yorkshire UK, White Owl, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An in-depth look at the history that shaped the much beloved Herge and the Tintin books. Herge created twenty-four Tintin books which have been translated into more than seventy languages and sold 230 million copies worldwide. The author takes an in-depth look at the man behind the cultural phenomenon and the history that helped shape these books. As well as focusing on the controversies that engulfed Herge, this biography will also look at his personal life, as well as the relationships and experiences that influenced him.
Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 2nd pr., 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. George Schuyler, a renowned and controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress and granddaughter of slave owners, believed that intermarriage would "invigorate" the races, thereby producing extraordinary offspring. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory, and they hoped she would prove that interracial children represented the final solution to America's race problems. Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and 40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. Philippa grew up under the adoring andinquisitive eyes of an entire nation and soon became the role model and inspiration for a generation of African-American children. But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happened to the "little Harlem genius." Suffering the double sting of racismand gender bias, Philippa had been rejected by the elite classical music milieu in the United States and forced to find an audience abroad, where she flourished as a world-class performer and composer. She traveled throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia performing for kings, queens, and presidents. By then Philippa had added a second career as an author and foreign correspondent reporting on events around the globe--from Albert Schweitzer's leper colony in Lamberene to the turbulent Asian theater of the 1960s. She would give a command performance for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium one day, and hide from the Viet Cong among the ancient graves of the Annam kings another.
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. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in dust jacket with some fading to edges, spine. 421 pages, b&w illustrations. ."This story of an outstandingly strange and interesting man is a triumph of modern biography. Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay (1846-1888) was one of the most extraordinary of all the nineteenth-century savant-adventurers. a brilliant student of Ernst Haeckel, he embraced the natural sciences at a time when the genius of Darwin was revolutionizing Western cosmology. In his short lifetime he made the whole world his laboratory: sponges in the Red Sea, and the ancestry of sharks, head measurements in New Guinea; Negrito races in Malay jungles; marine life in Sydney Harbor -- all these and a hundred other topics and places engaged his curiosity. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Boston, Gambit , 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. Emissar of Charles the First, second governor of Massachusetts, pillar of the Protectorate, and victim of Charles the Second, atypical Puritan and passionate lover, Sir Harry Vane was a man of peace who initiated genocide in the New World and found martyrdom in the Old. His experience reaches from Indian wigwam to royal palace. This is an unparalleled picture of a formative age which is with us yet. Clean copy.
Record # 381896
Price: $12.00
Out-of-Print Biographies & Memoirs
The biography section gathers used, rare, and out-of-print lives, memoirs, and personal histories. Subjects run from music and politics to art and exploration, along with regional and family histories. Titles include Max Jones and John Chilton's Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, 1900-1971 and Enid Mallory's Coppermine: The Far North of George M. Douglas.
Signed and inscribed copies appear regularly, among them Shimon Peres's Battling for Peace: A Memoir and The World of Owen Gromme. You'll also find personal accounts such as Shirley Temple's own diary, in editions ranging from reading copies to collectible hardcovers, each described down to its inscriptions and condition.
Because these are used and rare books, condition and availability vary by copy. Order a life story online.