Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st transl. thus, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 199 pages. This classic of German literature--often hailed as the inception of European modernist prose--follows the mental breakdown of an 18th-century schizophrenic playwright, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Published after Buchner's death, Lenz provides a taut case study of three weeks in the life of schizophrenic, perhaps the first third-person text ever to be written from the "inside" of insanity. An early experiment in docufiction, Buchner's textual montage draws on the diary of J.F. Oberlin, the Alsatian pastor who briefly took care of Lenz in 1778, while also refracting Goethe's memoir of his troubled friendship with the playwright. English versions of both these historical source texts here accompany Lenz for the first time in this bilingual presentation. Based on the best recent edition of the text, this fresh translation will allow readers to discover why Heiner Muller pronounced Lenz the inaugural example of "21st-century prose." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 400 pages. In 1897 Tolstoy wrote his daughter Tonya, explaining his opposition to her desired marriage: "As far as love is concerned, it's an ignoble and unhealthy sentiment-I would not have opened my door to it." Perhaps this passage reflects the turbulent marriage of Leo and Sonya-first the promise of love and then disillusionment. Certainly, there was a love of sorts-their marriage lasted 48 years and brought forth 13 children-but the later half of the marriage was soured by acrimony, secrecy, and great emotional wounding. The greatest division came with the battle over the rights to Tolstoy's works. Sonya finally got sole possession, outliving Leo by nine years and plagued by the thought that she had been wrong for her genius husband. In intimate and scrupulous detail often drawn directly from Leo and Sonya's diaries, Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) has profiled the disintegration of a marriage. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 351 pages. Written in the shadow of the Yugoslav wars, yet never eclipsed by them, Mama Leone is a delightful cycle of interconnected stories by one of Central Europe's most dazzling contemporary storytellers. Miljenko Jergovic leads us from a bittersweet world of precocious childhood wonder and hilarious invention, where the seduction of a well-told lie is worth more than a thousand prosaic truths, out into fractured worlds bleary-eyed from the unmagnificence of growing up. Yet for every familial betrayal and diminished expectation, every love and home(land) irretrievably lost, every terror and worst fear realized, Jergovic's characters never surrender the promise of redemption being but a lone kiss or winning bingo card away. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Munich/NY, Prestel Publishing, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 304 pages. There are hardly any artists who are as fascinating in terms of their work and personality as Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). By declaring an everyday object a work of art and thereby revolutionizing art history as the inventor of the readymade, he became a forerunner for an entire generation of conceptual artists. To this day, the influence of his works and writings holds immense significance for contemporary art. In addition to the significant Duchamp collection at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the publication also addresses the unique archive of the Swiss artist and Duchamp researcher Serge Stauffer. The 100 questions, addressed by Stauffer to Duchamp in 1960 and shown here for the first time along with Duchamp's answers, provide not only essential insights into Duchamp's artistic thinking but also demonstrate Stauffer's extraordinary research work. Due to size and weight, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Taschen America, reprint, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 710 pages illustrated in color. Travel back in time to witness the creation of the world's favorite web-slinger as dreamed up by comic book legends Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, who redefined what it meant to be a hero. In this Hulk-sized, collector's dream, the first 21 Spider-Man stories from 1962 to 1964 have been meticulously photographed from the most pristine copies of these rare comic books. A fine art celebration of the teen super hero. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Marvel Enterprises, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 250 pages. color illustrated. In 1961, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby lit the fuse to the greatest revolution in comic book history - the Marvel Age of Comics - and now you can experience it from page one! With the space race on, Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm and Johnny Storm aimed for the stars - but after their craft was bombarded by cosmic rays, they gained the startling powers of the Fantastic Four! Collects Fantastic Four 1-10. In publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, Marvel Enterprises, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 200 pages in color by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Hot off the success of The Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created an atomic update on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When mild-mannered scientist Dr. Robert Bruce Banner is caught in a gamma bomb explosion, he is transformed into the unstoppable engine of destruction known as the Incredible Hulk! In this collection of the Hulk's complete original solo series, you'll thrill to Hulk's first appearance as a gray goliath before he turned that familiar shade of green! You'll watch Hulk bust knuckles against the far-out Toad Men, the subterranean Tyrannus, the monstrous Mongu and the Metal Master! And you'll meet Rick Jones, General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and Betty Ross! Collects The Incredible Hulk (1962) #1-6. In publisher's shrinkwrap.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 318 pages. This new, expanded collection of Antonio Tabucchi's stories collects the best short fiction from the Italian author recognized as one of the masters of the form. These playful tales explore Tabucchi's signature themes, from his inventive, lyrical meditations on language, art, and philosophy, to his fascination with the passage of time, and the mystery of storytelling. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st English, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 131 pages. With an introduction by award-winning author Alberto Manguel, Milongas is Edgardo Cozarinsky's love letter to tango, and the diverse array of people who give it life. Argentine writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky traces [tango's] fascinating journey through time and the seedy brothels and rough Argentine and European bars where the dance could be quite mannered or could spark with theatrical violence . . . Cozarinsky takes us through the ebbs and flows of the popularity of the tango, and also through a number of its evolutionary adaptive speciations. Clean copy.

Softcover. Damiani , 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 124 pages. In 2008, Christopher Niquet, a well-known French stylist, spotted the 1960s supermodel Peggy Moffit in a Beverly Hills restaurant. Never an autograph chaser, he nonetheless felt compelled to ask for hers. This candid moment ignited an obsessive, ongoing quest. Niquet began to reach out to the models he considered quintessential figures in his industry, for their epic beauty and remote auras. Deploying a sleuth's methods to locate these models around the globe, he collected 100 signatures, most of which are framed along with an iconic portrait. "My original purpose was to get beyond the abstract, incorporeal beauty of these icons, and bring back a sense of their physicality. For me, each signature restored a womanly reality to the imaginary being." This book highlights the unique personalities of celebrated or forgotten women from the late 1950s to the 1990s and what they all have in common: the power to awaken creativity in the people who see them. Through generations of cover stories, Models That Matter explores a multi-layered history of feminine beauty, from Jean Shrimpton to Jerry Hall, from Lauren Bacall to Linda Evangelista, from Anita Pallenberg to Naomi Campbell, muses for extraordinary fashion lensmen like Steven Meisel-who wrote the preface-to Irving Penn or Richard Avedon. Clean in shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, Tudor Publishing , 1st US, 1934, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, deep green cloth with gilt lettering. 164 pages, 110 plates. Covers modern French art of the early twentieth century in text and through black and white illustrations. Discusses such topics as Fauvism, Futurism, and popular art as well as specific French painters.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st Eng. transl., 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 181 pages. In these surreal and gripping stories about desire, tyranny, fear, and love, one of Brazil's greatest queer writers appears in English for the first time. In 18 daring, scheming stories filled with tension and intimacy, Caio Fernando Abreu navigates a Brazil transformed by the AIDS epidemic and stifling military dictatorship of the 80s. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Bloomsbury, reprint, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 509 pages, b&w illustrations. In 1945, disguised in German greatcoat and helmet, Mussolini attempted to escape from the advancing Allied armies. Unfortunately for him, the convoy of which he was part was stopped by partisans and his features, made so familiar by Fascist propaganda, gave him away. Within 24 hours he was executed by his captors, joining those he sent early to their graves as an outcome of his tyranny, at least one million people. Bosworth's Mussolini allows us to come closer than ever before to an appreciation of the life and actions of the man and of the political world and society within which he operated. With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, this biography paints a picture of brutality and failure, yet one tempered with an understanding of Mussolini as a human being, not so different from many of his contemporaries. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Zone Books, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 525 pages. Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are leaders in a contemporary French classical scholarship that has produced a a stunning reconfiguration of Greek thought and literature. In this work, published here as a single volume, the authors present a disturbing and decidedly non-classical reading of Greek tragedy that insists on its radical discontinuity with our own outlook and with our social, aesthetic, and psychological categories. Originally published in French in two volumes, this new single-volume edition includes revised essays from volume one and is the first English translation of both volumes. Remainder mark top edge otherwise a clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 418 pages. A rich, polyphonic novel from one of the leading voices of contemporary Polish literature, encompassing a half-century of history and memory. In a Polish village, a young man watches an old man trip and fall down a flight of stairs. From this singular event arises a cascade of memories, regrets, and longings: the buried sensations of a whole lifetime, condensed and released. We hear of life during occupation, the scarcities of a childhood lived under the sign of war--and fragments of a home's sounds and scents (the private speech of mothers and fathers, the treasures of coffee, raisins, almonds, and plums). There are loves unrequited and fulfilled, landscapes of winter and spring, old jobs and old friends, all flowing together. Clean copy.

Softcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, reprint, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 474 pages, b&w illustrations. Awarded the Dexter Prize by the Society for the History of Technology, this book offers a comparative history of the evolution of modern electric power systems. It described large-scale technological change and demonstrates that technology cannot be understood unless placed in a cultural context. The book is about the formative period of electrical power systems, the years 1880 to 1930, in which these systems grew from neighborhood-sized lighting installations to immense interconnected networks that by 1930 spanned entire states and integrated different types of electric power production plants through transmission lines of hundreds of miles. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY COOK on the title-page. As two separate cases begin to merge, private detective Frank Clemons finds the lives of two very different women--Puri Dai, an accused killer and gypsy queen, and an elegant society matron with a secret past--also intertwining. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Gallery Books, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 267 pages. Now Departing explores the science, craft, and mindfulness behind Victor M. Sweeney's very peculiar skill set. Working in the funeral business since he was eighteen years old, Sweeney astutely shares the powerful and moving lessons of how we can exist and be remembered with intention and meaning. Each page is filled with reflective observations and true stories from the lives and deaths that Sweeney has come to know through his work in a small Minnesota town. With grace and understanding, he also explores the rituals around preparing and saying goodbye to those we mourn; the love and forgiveness that arises in the face of grief; the universal interplay of walking between the chasm of the mundanity of a required business practice that touches on humanity's deepest metaphysical realities; and ultimately, how loss gives us the opportunity to focus on and celebrate the elements we have gained. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 272 pages. Moving from the Great Lakes to the jazz bars of Detroit and Chicago, Of Song and Water is a tale of singlehanded sailors and jazz musicians, of working-class dreams blighted by family duty, personal betrayals, and the untold violence between fathers and sons. The novel follows the life of Coleman Moore, a jazz guitarist of early fame who finds himself adrift and in the company of ghosts: his mentor, a black jazz legend trying to live peacefully on the edge of a white town; his grandfather, a Prohibition rumrunner turned ruthless entrepreneur; and his first love, a clear-headed woman who refuses to live in the dark tunnels of the past. As he abandons music and turns his mind to a damaged sailboat, Coleman begins a hazardous course, risking the love of his daughter and the trust of Brian James, his longtime collaborator and friend. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A chronicle of the 1947 baseball season during which Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier is a sixtieth anniversary tribute based on interviews with Robinson's wife, daughter, and teammates that covers such topics as his relationship with fellow players, the St. Louis Cardinals' proposed boycott of the Dodgers, and Robinson's associate with segregated hotel roommate and sportswriter Wendell Smith. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Sotheby's, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 131 lots, illustrated in color and b&w. Light wear to edges and spine, else in very nice condition.

Hardcover. New York , Random House, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 244 page book with color and black & white photo illustrations by Annie Leibovitz. Lacks title band over dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. For generations the electric guitar has been an international symbol of freedom, danger, rebellion, and hedonism. In Play It Loud, veteran music journalists Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna bring the history of this iconic instrument to roaring life. It's a story of inventors and iconoclasts, of scam artists, prodigies, and mythologizers as varied and original as the instruments they spawned. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In English at last, Borges's erudite and entertaining lectures on English literature from Beowulf to Oscar Wilde. Writing for Harper's Magazine, Edgardo Krebs describes Professor Borges: "A compilation of the twenty-five lectures Borges gave in 1966 at the University of Buenos Aires, where he taught English literature. Starting with the Vikings' kennings and Beowulf and ending with Stevenson and Oscar Wilde, the book traverses a landscape of 'precursors,'cross-cultural borrowings, and genres of expression, all connected by Borges into a vast interpretive web. This is the most surprising and useful of Borges's works to have appeared posthumously." Clean copy.