american culture

Softcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in a cardboard slipcase. A large-scale publication dedicated to the 1950s as captured in the pages of American Vogue. This book is illustrated by fashion's greatest photographs of that period-the era when the magazine became the cultural force it is today. One of only seven editors in chief in American Vogue's history, Jessica Daves has remained one of fashion's most enigmatic figures. Diana Vreeland's direct predecessor in the role, it is Daves who first catapulted the magazine into modernity. A testament to a changing America on every level, Daves's Vogue was the first to embrace a "high/low" blend of fashion in its pages and to introduce world-renowned artists, literary greats, and cultural icons into every issue, offering the reader a complete vision of how design, interiors, architecture, entertaining, art, literature, and culture all connected and contributed to refining and defining taste and personal style. Daves profiled icons of American style, from John and Jackie Kennedy to Charles and Ray Eames, alongside Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, and Balenciaga creations. Organized in multifaceted, thematic chapters, 1950s in Vogue features carefully curated photographs, illustrations, and page spreads from the Vogue archives (with iconic images as well as lesser-known wonders), and unpublished photographs and letters from Jessica Daves's personal archives. Clean, bright copy. Slipcase with minor wear, line in bottom edge. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. US, Soul Jazz Books, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 200 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to laminated cover boards. Color and black and white pictures throughout. The image of the Caribbean is as much a creation of the West as it is the result of its population's incredibly complex identity. A melting pot of races born of the 400-year slave trade--Africans, indigenous Americans and their French, Spanish, German, Dutch and English colonizers--the identity of the Caribbean stands at the intersection of tourism, colonialism and tropicality. This deluxe large-format volume features hundreds of fascinating and unique photographs that span 100 years of Caribbean history, culture, industry and more, as well as the subsequent diaspora of its people to America, England and elsewhere. The photographs show the many ways in which the region has been portrayed, from tropical backdrop of tourism and hedonism to colonial outpost and revolutionary threat in North America's own backyard.

Hardcover. Berghahn Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 193 pages, b&w illustrations. With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish emigre from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, reprint, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages with index. In this major contribution to cultural history Kammen focuses on the American Revolution and it's impact on literature and art. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Kent OH, Kent State Univ Pr, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 180 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Zoar, Ohio, a German-Christian utopian community founded in 1817, encouraged tourism and "gawkers." This has left a rich photographic record of the community, which includes tourists's photos and Zoarite-produced postcards. Fernandez uses many previously unpublished photos, captioned with the words of journalists, diarists, and other visitors.

Hardcover. Berkeley/Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 270 pages in color and b&w. The first major book to consider the life and work of Robert Arneson, A Troublesome Subject tells the fascinating story of how a high school art teacher transformed himself into an artist of international stature and ambition. Representing the full scope of Arneson's career in a rich survey of color reproductions, this book is at once a study of the trajectory of contemporary culture, the work of Robert Arneson, and the relationship between the two. It shows how Arneson's work articulated the crisis of narcissism that has defined American culture since 1970. Jonathan Fineberg develops his ongoing work toward a psychosocial history of art as he proceeds through Arneson's career-chronicling his early life, the formation of a personal style, and finding a unique subject matter in his famous post-1970 turn to self-portraiture. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Chicago, American Planning Association, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, oblong format, 210 pages. Color illustrations. Above and Beyond takes an aerial view to conclusively demonstrate how suburban sprawl is forever changing the look of America -- and how that can be avoided. Alex MacLean's photographs -- many of them combined with computer simulations to illustrate how landscapes are transformed over time -- show how traditional development patterns produce more compact cities and towns. In conjunction, the authors introduce communities that have successfully fought sprawl, invigorated their town areas, and overcome the car-culture mentality of sprawl development. The case they make, and the examples they offer, will inspire planners, officials, and concerned citizens everywhere. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Artist Book Foundation, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Adolf Dehn (1895-1968), an American lithographer and watercolorist, left his hometown in Minnesota after formal training at the Minneapolis Art Institute to study at the Art Students League in New York. In the early 1920s, he traveled to the cosmopolitan cities of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, where he focused on lithography and printmaking, and soon found success as a magazine illustrator. As he toured Europe, Dehn quickly acclimated to the continental lifestyle and was adept at depicting its nuances and idiosyncrasies through his prolific lithographs and sketches. His critical and satirical renderings of the political movements, social conventions, and governmental policies in pre-World War II Europe gave the Midwestern artist ample material for his growing body of work. Returning to the United States in 1930, Dehn exhibited his prints in several solo shows at the Weyhe Gallery in New York, starting in 1935. As an artist during the era of the Great Depression, Dehn did commercial artwork and contributed to popular magazines such as The New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. In fact, his clever drawings that reflected the culture and fashionable society during the Jazz Age, made Dehn a favourite of Frank Crowninshield, Vanity Fair's renowned editor. 182 pages, clean, still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, Free Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 322 pages, b&w illustrations, in a bright dust jacket. This book examines the issue of racial stereotyping and with the issue of skin color as seen by such radio show broadcasts as Amos 'N' Andy. Some Blacks did not like the show when released, while others saw it as a humane portrayal of African-American Life. Overall, the show became the most popular radio show of all time. Later, it was touted by the Civil Rights Movement as offensive and racist.

Hardcover. NY, Whitney Museum of Art/Abrams, 1st, 1992, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 187 pages. Published to accompany a 1992-93 exhibition held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, this book deals with the full scope of Agnes Martin's art. It includes essays that place her work in the context of American and European 20th-century art and culture. Agnes Martin's paintings, constructions, and works on paper provide a link between the chromatic abstraction of artists such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, her generational and ideological peers, and the Minimalist vocabulary of the 1960s. This book reproduces works made between 1957 and 1967, and better-known paintings and constructions created since 1974. A selection of Martin's writings reveals the spiritual philosophy that sustains her painting. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with light edgewear, 400 pages.This adventurous book charts the origins of the local "market cooking" culture that we all savor today. When Francophile Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971, few Americans were familiar with goat cheese, cappuccino, or mesclun. But it wasn't long before Waters and her motley coterie of dreamers inspired a new culinary standard incorporating ethics, politics, and the conviction that the best-grown food is also the tastiest. Based on unprecedented access to Waters and her inner circle, this is a truly delicious rags-to-riches saga.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. B&w photos, 185 pages. Twenty years after his death, George Balanchine still dominates the world of ballet. Not only have his works been danced by the New York City Ballet continuously since 1948, but they also have been performed by more than two dozen other companies throughout the world. In clear and elegant writing, Terry Teachout brings to life the dramatic story of George Balanchine, a Russian emigre who fell in love with American culture, married four times and kept a mistress on the side, and transformed the art of ballet forever. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Dover, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 160 pages. Harrison Fisher's portraits of healthy, poised, active, and confident women set the standard for the concept of American beauty during the early years of the twentieth century. The artist enjoyed enormous popularity from 1905 to 1920, serving as a judge in nationwide beauty contests and maintaining a celebrity status that was unparalleled for an illustrator. This original publication recaptures the images that made Fisher famous, compiling his very best black-and-white and color illustrations for Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Ladies Home Journal as well as for books and other publications. The successors to the stylish Gibson Girls created by Charles Dana Gibson, Fisher's idealized women reflect an aspirational degree of wealth and social ease. They ride horses, play tennis, swim, go motoring in newfangled automobiles, and graciously bask in the admiration of attractive young men. These century-old images from a moment in our country's cultural history will appeal to enthusiasts of graphic art and illustration as well as to students of American art and popular culture.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 314 pages. Black boards, red dust jacket with graphic illustration.

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher's shrink wrap. Jean Patchett was both model and muse, a famous face from New York's vibrant midcentury popular culture and the most successful high-fashion model of her time.A small-town girl from rural Maryland, Patchett had no firm ambitions until a friend suggested she drop out of college and go to New York and become a model. Within a year Jean had left school, met model agent Eileen Ford, and begun a career that saw her photographed by the greatest photographers of her era, with more than 58 magazine covers over 14 years."A young American goddess in Paris couture," was Irving Penn's epitaph for the model he photographed for a classic series in Lima, Peru where, pushed past their limits, Patchett and Penn created passionate art with a possible passionate relationship as well. Penn would go on to create stunning images of Patchett forVogueand later, for a series of nudes he called "the major artistic experience of my life." Letters from Patchett to her family show a young woman in love with her life and eager to share the thrills and struggles of her career. Quotes from photographers Cecil Beaton, John Rawlings, William Helburn, Jerry Schatzberg, and Francesco Scavullo reflect their admiration for her technical skills as a model as well as her unique beauty. A work diary from 1951 allows us to see how-and with whom-she worked from day to day.

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher's shrink wrap. Jean Patchett was both model and muse, a famous face from New York's vibrant midcentury popular culture and the most successful high-fashion model of her time.A small-town girl from rural Maryland, Patchett had no firm ambitions until a friend suggested she drop out of college and go to New York and become a model. Within a year Jean had left school, met model agent Eileen Ford, and begun a career that saw her photographed by the greatest photographers of her era, with more than 58 magazine covers over 14 years."A young American goddess in Paris couture," was Irving Penn's epitaph for the model he photographed for a classic series in Lima, Peru where, pushed past their limits, Patchett and Penn created passionate art with a possible passionate relationship as well. Penn would go on to create stunning images of Patchett forVogueand later, for a series of nudes he called "the major artistic experience of my life." Letters from Patchett to her family show a young woman in love with her life and eager to share the thrills and struggles of her career. Quotes from photographers Cecil Beaton, John Rawlings, William Helburn, Jerry Schatzberg, and Francesco Scavullo reflect their admiration for her technical skills as a model as well as her unique beauty. A work diary from 1951 allows us to see how-and with whom-she worked from day to day.

Hardcover. New York, Abbeville Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 247 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. 163 color illustrations throughout.

Softcover. US, Laurence King Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 186 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light edgewear to wrappers, else a clean, tight copy. This is the first comprehensive survey of Modernist graphic design as it emerged in America in the period from 1920 and 1960 in various media--advertising, information design, brand identity, magazine design, book design, and posters. It examines the great works which by mid-century had defined American graphic design. The book begins with a section devoted to the emergence of Modernism and its major historical influence, such as European avant-garde movements, popular culture, educational innovations such as the Bauhaus School, architecture, industrial design, and photography. The heart of the book includes the key works of mid-century Modernism as it matured into a fully-formed American style, bringing together such great names as Alexey Brodovitch, Lester Beall, Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Will Burtin, and Alvin Lustig. The final section looks at the impact of and reactions to this new movement as graphic design in America matured in the 1960s and beyond.

Hardcover. Woodstock, New York, The Overlook Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, Encyclopedic volume featuring the historical evolution of American homes. Hardcover, 320 pages. Over 1000 black/white illustrations, including architectural plans for each variety of home discussed. Cloth bound book is in near fine condition, only flaw on the dust jacket is a small blue ink stain on the front.

Softcover. NY, Monacelli Press,, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 272 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. The roadside sign has become an American icon: a glowing neon symbol of the golden age of the open road. Yet signs are complex pieces of design, serving not only as physical markers but also as cultural, political, and economic ones. In American Signs, Lisa Mahar traces the evolution of motel signs on Route 66 in a distinctive visual approach that combines text, images, and graphics. American Signs reveals the rich vernacular traditions of motel sign-making in five eras, spanning from the late 1930s through the 1970s. The motel signs of the early 1940s, for instance, reflect vernacular traditions dating back at least a century, while examples from the later years of the decade reveal a culture newly obsessed with themes. America's fascination with newness and technological progress is manifested in 1950s motel signs. Finally, in the 1960s, a turn toward simplicity and the use of new, modular technologies allowed motel signs to address the needs of a mass society and the beginnings of a national, rather than regional, aesthetic for motel signs.

Hardcover. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1st, 1872, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 74 pages. Hardcover. Green Pebbled cloth. Gilt title and decoration on front cover. Black & white illustrations by Toby. Front endpaper has been removed. Previous owners name on inside front cover and preliminary page. Moderate fraying at bottom of spine, light rubbing to corners. All edges gilt. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st pbk., 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 373 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. This engaging, deeply researched study provides the richest and most nuanced picture we have to date of cinema-both movies and movie-going-in the early 1910s. At the same time, it makes clear the profound relationship between early cinema and the construction of a national identity in this important transitional period in the United States. Richard Abel looks closely at sensational melodramas, including westerns (cowboy, cowboy-girl, and Indian pictures), Civil War films (especially girl-spy films), detective films, and animal pictures-all popular genres of the day that have received little critical attention. He simultaneously analyzes film distribution and exhibition practices in order to reconstruct a context for understanding moviegoing at a time when American cities were coming to grips with new groups of immigrants and women working outside the home. Drawing from a wealth of research in archive prints, the trade press, fan magazines, newspaper advertising, reviews, and syndicated columns-the latter of which highlight the importance of the emerging star system-Abel sheds new light on the history of the film industry, on working-class and immigrant culture at the turn of the century, and on the process of imaging a national community.

Hardcover. New York, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 167 pages, 132 plates in duotone and color. Light wear to dust jacket. This book focuses on surprisingly atypical choices from the oeuvres of 125 seminal artists, such as Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alexander Rodchenko, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Ulrich Tillman. Over 130 images in duotone and color illustrate the aesthetic differences between various styles, genres, and authors, and show diversities and affinities among different continents, cultures and periods. This extraordinary recombination of photographs by master artists offers viewers a fresh look at the world of photography.

Hardcover. New York, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 167 pages, 132 plates in duotone and color. Light wear to dust jacket. This book focuses on surprisingly atypical choices from the oeuvres of 125 seminal artists, such as Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alexander Rodchenko, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Ulrich Tillman. Over 130 images in duotone and color illustrate the aesthetic differences between various styles, genres, and authors, and show diversities and affinities among different continents, cultures and periods. This extraordinary recombination of photographs by master artists offers viewers a fresh look at the world of photography.