Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 373 pages. Scholars have long held that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was a centralized organization from its founding in 1921. In a departure from that view, From Friend to Comrade demonstrates how the CCP began as a group of study societies, only evolving into a mass Marxist-Leninist party by 1927. Hans J. van de Ven's study is based on party documents of the 1920s that have only recently become available, as well as the writings of a wide range of Chinese communists. He analyzes the party's difficulty in building a cohesive organization firmly rooted in Chinese society. While past scholarship has emphasized the influence of Soviet communism on the CCP, van de Ven stresses the thinking and actions of Chinese communists themselves, placing their struggle in the context of China's political history and highly complex society. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Dey Street Books, reprint, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 594 pages, b&w illustrations. Rediscover the groundbreaking magic of Blade Runner with this revised and updated edition of the classic guide to Ridley Scott's transformative film and published in anticipation of its sequel, Blade Runner 2049, premiering October 2017 and starring Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, and Harrison Ford. Ridley Scott's 1992 "Director's Cut" confirmed the international film cognoscenti's judgment: Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick's brilliant and troubling science fiction masterpiece Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is the most visually dense, thematically challenging, and influential science fiction film ever made. Future Noir offers a deeper understanding of this cult phenomenon that is storytelling and visual filmmaking at its best. In this intensive, intimate and anything-but-glamorous behind-the-scenes account, film insider and cinephile Paul M. Sammon explores how Ridley Scott purposefully used his creative genius to transform the work of science fiction's most uncompromising author into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic that would reinvent the genre. Sammon reveals how the making of the original Blade Runner was a seven-year odyssey that would test the stamina and the imagination of writers, producers, special effects wizards, and the most innovative art directors and set designers in the industry at the time it was made.

Hardcover. NY, Elsevier/Nelson, 2nd pr., 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket, 127 pages. Newbery Medalist Katherine Paterson describes what it means to be a writer & reader struggling through the "gates of excellence". Spine with light fading.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 560 pages. Clean copy. First published in 1931 and now appearing for the first time in English, Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer is a disquieting anatomy of a deviant mind in the tradition of Crime and Punishment. Letham, the treacherously unreliable narrator, is a depraved bacteriologist whose murder of his wife is, characteristically, both instinctual and premeditated. Convicted and exiled, he attempts to atone for his crimes through science, conceiving of the book we are reading as an empirical report on himself--whose ultimate purpose may be to substitute for a conscience. Yet Letham can neither understand nor master himself. His crimes are crimes of passion, and his passions remain more or less untouched by his reason--in fact they are constantly intruding on his "report," rigorous as it is intended to be. Both feverish and chilling, Georg Letham explores the limits of reason and the tensions between objectivity and subjectivity.

Hardcover. Urbana IL, University of Illinois Press, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket, 221 pages, b&w illustrations. Sketches and essays that combine White's scholarly research on the origins of western folksong with his personal knowledge and experience as a cowboy singer. A work that bridges the generations of balladry and folksong scholarship. Includes a four song vinyl record laid in at rear.

Hardcover. NY, Sheed & Ward, 2nd pr., 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket, 231 pages. Tales of life in the West of Ireland by Father Leo R. Ward, philosopher and theologian. The Irish "treat every stranger as though they expected him to write about them and wanted to give him plenty of material....But we ... have never seen it put into a book -- not even by Synge--as it has been put into this book" (from the jacket flap). Wonderful travel memoir by a native of Nebraska. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st US, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 252 pages. collection of four blistering, darkly humorous stories that upend the idyllic image of the Greek holiday island. Seeking to escape the paralyzing effects of the Greek economic crisis, a group of Athenian friends move to an Aegean island in the hopes of starting over. Viewed with suspicion and disdain by the locals, they soon find themselves enmeshed in the same vicious cycle of money, power, and violence they thought they had left behind. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Brooklyn Museum, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 208 pages. Softcover published for the exhibition, May 13 - July 16, 1978. Cover image from Robert Rauschenberg, "Airport" series. Full color and black & white photographs throughout. Sections devoted to Philip Pearlstein, Charles Hinman, Mel Ramos, Ed Ruscha, James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, more. Clean unmarked text.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Love and crime may prove too much for Gabe Wager, whose relationship with policewoman Jo Fabrizio is interrupted by old friend Tommy Sanchez's request that he search out Tommy's aloof sons on their secluded ranch. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 199 pages illustrated in color. Sphinxes, hydras, chimeras, dragons, unicorns, griffins, sirens, and centaurs--fantastic animals can be found in works from Greek vases to paintings by Bosch, Goya, and Picasso, from folk art to comic strips, advertising, and Hollywood movies. Here Be Dragons is a lavishly illustrated compendium of the marvelous menagerie of imaginary animals that humans have conjured up over the ages. Ariane and Christian Delacampagne take us on a visually and intellectually riveting journey through five thousand years of art, examining the symbolic meanings of such creatures and what they say about the unconscious life of the human mind. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1st UK, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Drawing extensively on his diaries as well as his published works, this intellectual biographical follows Herzl's transformation from a private person into the founder and leader of a political movement which made the quest for a Jewish state into a player in international politics. Contrary to the conventional view which saw the Dreyfus affair as the trigger for Herzl's loss of belief in the promise of Jewish emancipation, Avineri shows how it was the political crisis of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire, torn apart by contending national movements, which convinced Herzl of the need for a Jewish polity. In response to the wide resonance for his 1896 The Jewish State, Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, which established the World Zionist Organization with its representative and elected institutions; this in turn became the foundation for Israel's democratic political system. In his efforts to gain international support for a Jewish state, Herzl met with the Ottoman Sultan, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, Pope Pius X, British, Russian and German ministers, as well as an enormous number of other government and public opinion leaders of most European countries. By the time of his early death in 1904 at the age of 44, Herzl succeeded in putting Zionism on the map of world politics, no longer an esoteric idea held by a small group of Jewish intellectuals in Eastern Europe. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Hanover NH, Smith and Kraus, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 561 pages, b&w illustrations. 12 year old Bertel, living in Hindenburg, Germany in 1938, was forced by the Nazis to leave Germany for Poland. Disguising herself as a young Polish woman, this is the story of Bertel's survival. INSCRIBED TWICE BY LAUER on the front fly leaf. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York Graphic Society, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 228 pages, illustrated in color, black & white. Describes the art of filmmaking and includes discussions with the creators of film--producers, directors, designers, technicians, and the stars.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2nd pr., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in green cloth covers, 188 pages, b&w illustrations. In this provocative examination of collective identity in Jordan, Linda Layne challenges long-held Western assumptions that Arabs belong to easily recognizable corporate social groups. Who is a "true" Jordanian? Who is a "true" Bedouin? These questions, according to Layne, are examples of a kind of pigeonholing that has distorted the reality of Jordanian national politics. In developing an alternate approach, she shows that the fluid social identities of Jordan emerge from an ongoing dialogue among tribespeople, members of the intelligentsia Hashemite rulers, and Western social scientists. Many commentators on social identity in the Middle East limit their studies to the village level, but Layne's goal is to discover how the identity-building processes of the locality and of the nation condition each other. She finds that the tribes creates their own cultural "homes" through a dialogue with official nationalist rhetoric and Jordanian urbanites, while King Hussein, in turn, maintains the idea of the "homeland" in many ways that are powerfully influenced by the tribespeople. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. Lawrence KS, University Press of Kansas, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 328 pages. By the end of the Civil War, fatalities from that conflict had far exceeded previous American experience, devastating families and communities alike. As John Neff shows, commemorating the 620,000 lives lost proved to be a persistent obstacle to the hard work of reuniting the nation, as every memorial observation compelled painful recollections of the war. Neff contends that the significance of the Civil War dead has been largely overlooked and that the literature on the war has so far failed to note how commemorations of the dead provide a means for both expressing lingering animosities and discouraging reconciliation. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY/London, Routledge, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 233 pages. Ignatiev traces the tattered history of Irish and African-American relations, revealing how the Irish used labor unions, the Catholic Church and the Democratic party to succeed in American. He uncovers the roots of conflict between Irish-Americans and African-Americans and draws a powerful connection between the embracing of white supremacy and Irish "success" in 19th century American society. Clean copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages, fine in fine dust jacket. (10 1/2" X 12 1/4"). Color and b&w illustrations throughout. In celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Summer of Love, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has launched a major exhibition examining how rock & roll came of age in the late Sixties and influenced everything from fashion and art to politics and literature. I Want to Take You Higher expands on that exhibit, showcasing the infamous icons of the era - from John Lennon's Sgt. Pepper uniform to Janis Joplin's hand-painted Porsche. A host of revealing new interviews offer never-before-published tales from the land of psychedelic wonder. Country Joe McDonald, Allen Ginsberg, Grace Slick, Mickey Hart, Donovan, Bob Weir and members of the influential bands Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape and many others contribute fresh perspectives on now-legendary events. I Want to Take You Higher also features posters, paraphernalia and an illustrated time line (just in case you forgot), as well as classic and previously unpublished images from the greatest rock photographers of the era: Jim Marshall, Baron Wolman, Robert Whitaker, Michael Cooper, Herb Greene, Bob Seidemann and others. Due to size and weight, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. Flagstaff AZ, Northland Publishing, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 89 pages. Extensive b&w photography throughout. Illustrated frontispiece. Slight curl to corner edges, otherwise clean, tight copy. Images that portray the contemporary Southwest with the zeal and romantic fervor inherent in one who has absorbed and integrated the southwestern environment. Whether landscape or portrait, Gaede's photos evoke a reverence for the Southwest and it's inhabitants.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 279 pages. John Barrow is increasingly recognized as one of our most elegant and accomplished science writers, a brilliant commentator on cosmology, mathematics, and modern physics. Barrow now tackles the heady topic of impossibility, in perhaps his strongest book yet. Writing with grace and insight, Barrow argues convincingly that there are limits to human discovery, that there are things that are ultimately unknowable, undoable, or unreachable. He first examines the limits on scientific inquiry imposed by the deficiencies of the human mind: our brain evolved to meet the demands of our immediate environment, Barrow notes, and much that lies outside this small circle may also lie outside our understanding. Barrow investigates practical impossibilities, such as those imposed by complexity, uncomputability, or the finiteness of time, space, and resources. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, reprint, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 171 pages. One of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Darwish composed this remarkable elegy at the apex of his creativity, but with the full knowledge that his death was imminent. Thinking it might be his final work, he summoned all his poetic genius to create a luminous work that defies categorization. In stunning language, Darwish's self-elegy inhabits a rare space where opposites bleed and blend into each other. Prose and poetry, life and death, home and exile are all sung by the poet and his other. On the threshold of im/mortality, the poet looks back at his own existence, intertwined with that of his people. Clean Copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 386 pages. In a study of the vitality of Islam in late-nineteenth-century north India, Barbara Metcalf explains the response of Islamic religious scholars ('ulama) to the colonial dominance of the British and the collapse of Muslim political power. Clean bright copy of the first printing.

Hardcover. Munich/NJ, Prestel, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 256 pages. One of the most important German postwar artists, Joseph Beuys is known for his drawings, performance art, activism, and teaching, influencing a generation of younger artists and expanding the concept of what art is. He had an ambitious goal for his art: to transform western culture into a more peaceful, democratic, and creative place. He also considered everyone to be an artist and that art and life should not be viewed separately. This book pulls together all of the avant-garde artist's posters from his entire oeuvre. His earliest posters often announced exhibitions of his own performance art, while later posters expressed his philosophical and political opinions, such as those for Germany's Green Party, which he was a founding member of. This book includes full page illustrations of Beuys' most important posters, essays about Beuys' influence, an extensive biography of the artist and a complete catalogue of all posters created under his guidance. Text in English and German. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, Hyperion, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 237 pages. Author's critically acclaimed first book marks the debut of an extraordinary new voice in fiction. Wonderfully poignant and witty stories based on people and places she knows well, Ellen Slezak documents the colorful clash of young and old, of religious and secular, of traditional values and the temptations of the flesh. Like Winesburg, Ohio, Last Year's Jesus creates a fully realized world teetering on the brink of change. Clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 218 pages. Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi (1130-1200)-a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Clean copy.