american culture

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 248 pages. Copybooks and the Palmer method, handwriting analysis and autograph collecting - these words conjure up a lost world, in which people looked to handwriting as both a lesson in conformity and a talisman of individuality. In this engaging history, ranging from colonial times to the present, Tamara Plakins Thornton explores the shifting functions and meanings of handwriting in America.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, BC Ed., 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Copyright page states first printing, but no price on flap, probably a book club edition. Colorfully illustrated boards with black cloth spine, with gilt lettering; white DJ with red and orange illustration and lettering; 255 pages, profusely illustrated. Long before Harlem became one of the trendiest neighborhoods in the red-hot real estate market of Manhattan, it was a metaphor for African American culture at its richest. Allon Schoener's celebrated Harlem on My Mind is the classic record of Harlem life during some of the most exciting and turbulent years of its history, a beautiful and poignant reminder of a powerful moment in African America history. Including the work of some of Harlem's most treasured photographers, among them James Van Der Zee and Gordon Parks, there are photographs of Harlem's literary lights Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Richard Wright; its politicians Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr.; and its musicians Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday. The book also includes the photographs of the everyday folk who gave life to this legendary community. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Naperville IL, Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 502 pages, b&w illustrations. For three decades after World War I, Harlem was the site of burgeoning racial and cultural awareness and ambitions among African Americans. In the opening section of this book, Wintz provides the historical context for what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. In separate sections devoted to poetry, music, politics, art, and the phenomenon of the New Negro, contributors profile many of the era's major figures, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, A. Phillip Randolph, and Marcus Garvey. The essays place the Harlem Renaissance in the broader context of an awakening of black culture throughout the U.S. The book contains references to the accompanying CD, which offers 60 minutes of music, poetry, interviews, performances, and speeches, giving voice to the vibrant life of Harlem. Photographs, drawings, book covers, and posters add to the richness of this collection. A fabulous resource on the Harlem Renaissance.

Hardcover. NY, NYU Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 281 pages, b&w illustrations. Before Liz Smith and Perez Hilton became household names in the world of celebrity gossip, before Rush Limbaugh became the voice of conservatism, there was Hedda Hopper. In 1938, this 52-year-old struggling actress rose to fame and influence writing an incendiary gossip column, "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood," that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers throughout Hollywood's golden age. Often eviscerating moviemakers and stars, her column earned her a nasty reputation in the film industry while winning a legion of some 32 million fans, whose avid support established her as the voice of small-town America. Yet Hopper sought not only to build her career as a gossip columnist but also to push her agenda of staunch moral and political conservatism, using her column to argue against U.S. entry into World War II, uphold traditional views of sex and marriage, defend racist roles for African Americans, and enthusiastically support the Hollywood blacklist. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London/NY, Merrell Publishers, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Photographer Andrew Shaylor has been given unique and long-term access to the secret world of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. Over 300 stunning photographs reveal the rich diversity of the HAMC. Includes HAMC events, members? motorcycles (always Harley Davidsons), clubhouses, over 100 incisive portraits and a multitude of details that uniquely define HAMC culture. Specially commissioned foreword by American legend Sonny Barger, internationally well-known and respected member of the HAMC. Limited to 1000 copies SIGNED by Andrew Shaylor on the limitation label to the front endpaper.

Hardcover. Burlington, VT, Chauncey Goodrich, Early reprint with appendix added, 1853, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 716 pages. Hardcover. "...With a New (fold-out) Map of the State, and 200 (b/w) Engravings." Significant foxing and tanning to volume from age, as well as some moisture damage to bottom of fore-edge. Leather bound with bands and gilt title on spine. Fading to covers. Binding surprisingly tight. Cover boards slightly warped. In fair condition.

Softcover. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Chief Joseph's exhausted words of surrender, 'Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever', are the accepted end of the Nez Perce War of 1877, in which several bands of Nez Perce attempting to find a new home outside their diminished Idaho reservation clashed with the U.S. military (and occasionally other Indians) along the Clearwater and Big Hole Rivers, and finally at the foot of the Bear Paw Mountains. However, a number of Nez Perce escaped transportation to Indian Territory with Joseph and continued their flight to Canada, with perhaps a hundred eventually joining Sitting Bull's Lakota."I Will Tell of My War Story" reproduces, describes, and discusses a remarkable series of drawings by an anonymous Indian artist who fought with Chief Joseph and later reached Canada. The drawings, in red, blue, and black pencil, include portraits of principal participants in the war, battle scenes, and views of Nez Perce camp life and celebrations during the war and after. The drawings are preserved in a small pocket ledger labeled 'Cash Book' on the front, which was acquired by Indian Agent Charles D. Warner in the 1880s. It was willed by him to a family living in northern Idaho, and is now in the collection of the Idaho State Historical Society. Scott Thompson worked closely both with the owners and with members of the Nez Perce community in preparing his manuscript. Thompson's detective work and research methods to identify Nez Perce and other parties pictured in the Cash Book make fascinating reading. He is careful to point out what is speculation and what has been documented or attested to by experts on dress, weapons, ceremony, and other aspects of Native culture. The Cash Book drawings are unique in several ways. They are one of very few firsthand pictorial records of the Nez Perce War, representing an even scarcer record of this war as seen from the Indian viewpoint. They contain invaluable historical and ethnographic information not only explicit in the form of military and Native dress, regalia, and quite graphic battle scenes, but also implicit. The drawings reveal an important stage of cultural adaptation as shown by the mixture of white and Native goods combined in Nez Perce material culture during the 1870s and 1880s, and by the artist's assimilation of white/European drawing techniques such as texture and perspective. The artist combined these drawing techniques with Native art traditions to make exceptionally effective pictorial communications. Scott M. Thompson is an art teacher at Chase Middle School in Spokane, Washington.

Hardcover. New York, George Braziller, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 189 pages. Hardcover. Black & white illustrations. Dust jacket with spine fading, light wear at corners, edges. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with silver lettering, 384 pages, b&w illustrations. Say "New England" and you likely conjure up an image in the mind of your listener: the snowy woods or stone wall of a Robert Frost poem, perhaps, or that quintessential icon of the region--the idyllic white village. Such images remind us that, as Joseph Conforti notes, a region is not just a territory on the ground. It is also a place in the imagination. This ambitious work investigates New England as a cultural invention, tracing the region's changing identity across more than three centuries. Incorporating insights from history, literature, art, material culture, and geography, it shows how succeeding generations of New Englanders created and broadcast a powerful collective identity for their region through narratives about its past. Whether these stories were told in the writings of Frost or Harriet Beecher Stowe, enacted in historical pageants or at colonial revival museums, or conveyed in the pages of a geography textbook or Yankee magazine, New Englanders used them to sustain their identity, revising them as needed to respond to the shifting regional landscape. Clean copy. No dust jacket.

Softcover. Amherst MA, University of Massachusetts Press , reprint, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 329 pages. An analysis of how culture, class and gender shaped American foreign policy during the Cold War. The author examines the institutions that shaped the members of the US foreign policy establishment, including all-male prep schools and Ivy-League universities.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st , 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 207 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. 161 color photographs by Arnold. Dust jacket with light wear. This book represents the result of two years traveling the USA. Arnold was a member of Magnum and though born and raised in the US, spent some 30 years in Britain; this was her way of reconnecting with her birth country and thus provides a look at US culture in the late 1970s/early 80s. Eve Arnold (1912-2012) was an American photojournalist. She joined Magnum Photos agency in 1951 as the first women, and became a full member in 1957. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. College Station TX, Texas A&M University, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, terra-cotta cloth, 145 pages. The subjects of Craig Clifford's ruminations range from Willie Nelson to Walter Prescott Webb, from German philosophers to an Irish immigrant out to save the American West, and in them Clifford voices the concerns of a new generation of Texans and other earthlings. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Press, First Thus, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 628 pages. Hardcover. Bright dust jacket with light sun fading to spine. Clean & unmarked text. A nice copy.

Softcover. Canberra AU, National Gallery of Australia, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 96 pages. From his studio in the heart of New York, Australian-born Anton Bruehl created inventive and perfectly realized color photographs for advertisements in top American magazines such as Vogue and the New Yorker. Seen by the millions of readers, his ads had a dedicated following eliciting bags of fan mail. As well as advertising, Bruehl produced evocative images of stars of stage and screen, other celebrities, seasonal child studies, and his personal photography in the classic documentary tradition including his award-winning photo book Mexico (1933) and Tropic patterns (1970). Essays cover the early lives of the Bruehl brothers in Australia; Anton's success in New York, including his most famous and whimsical advertising campaigns; and fascinating details on Bruehl-Bourges color process which gave Breuhl's photographs their distinctive look. Illustrated with Bruehl's photographs, magazine prints, and printers proofs, this book is a must for anyone interested in photography, advertising, and popular culture. In publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. Portland, Or., C. H. Belding, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 119 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. Hartford, CT, American Publishing Company, 1st Edition, 1870, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 651 pages plus publisher's ads. Hardcover. Front and back hinges cracked, binding tight otherwise. Frontispieces with tissue guard. Tanning to edges. Pages clean with just a touch of tanning. Spine straight. Cover boards bound in black cloth, gilt title on spine and design on front cover board. Borders and decoration blind-stamped to front and back cover boards. Some agewear to boards: fraying/chipping at top and bottom of spine and corners, rubbing. "Being some account of the steamship Quaker City's pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land; with descriptions of countries, nations, incidents and adventures, as they appeared to the author." Perfect for any collector's bookshelf.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 5th pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 250 pages, b&w illustrations. This entertaining and playful book views Disney World as much more than the site of an ideal family vacation. Blending personal meditations, interviews, photographs, and cultural analysis, Inside the Mouse looks at Disney World's architecture and design, its consumer practices, and its use of Disney characters and themes. This book takes the reader on an alternative ride through "the happiest place on earth" while asking "What makes this forty-three-square-mile theme park the quintessential embodiment of American leisure?" Turning away from the programmed entertainment that Disney presents, the authors take a peek behind the scenes of everyday experience at Disney World. In their consideration of the park as both private corporate enterprise and public urban environment, the authors focus on questions concerning the production and consumption of leisure. Featuring over fifty photographs and interviews with workers that strip "cast members" of their cartoon costumes, this captivating work illustrates the high-pressure dynamics of the typical family vacation as well as a tour of Disney World that looks beyond the controlled facade of themed attractions. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 360 pages. Published in association with the American Heritage Publishing Co. Text by Bernard Lewis, Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar, Fritz Meier, Charles Pellat, A. Shiloah, A.I. Sabra, Edmund Bosworth, Emilio Garcia Gomex, Roger M. Savory, Norman Itzkowitz, S.A.A. Rizvi, Elie Kedourie. Illustrated with 495 reproductions, photographs, drawings, and maps, 160 of them in full color.

Softcover. Bloomington, Indiana University, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 443 pages, b&w illustrations, index. Traces the origins of American cinema's century-long fascination with Italy and Italian immigrants to the popularity of the pre-photographic aesthetic - the picturesque. "To read Bertellini's superb book is to enter into an intense, rich, and intricately layered experience of Italian immigrant culture in the New York of the 1900's and 1910's." Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , Watson Guptill, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages illustrated throughout with 175 b&w illustrations and 70 plates in full color. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York , Watson Guptill, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages illustrated throughout with 175 b&w illustrations and 70 plates in full color. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York , Watson Guptill, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 208 pages illustrated throughout with 175 b&w illustrations and 70 plates in full color. Clean, unmarked copy with minor closed tears to dust jacket.

Bologna, Damiani, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 280 pages. American fashion photographer James Moore (1936-2006) was an influential voice in mid-20th-century fashion photography, working for Harper's Bazaar during its 1960s heyday under the leadership of legendary editor Carmel Snow. Shooting languid mod gamines and luxe bohemians in arresting, often surreal or cinematic compositions, Moore helped shape the visual vocabulary of '60s fashion alongside better-known colleagues such as art director Alexey Brodovitch (under whom Moore studied). Moore also directed television commercials and contributed photographs to European magazines in the 1980s and 1990s, and taught photography at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.Every Moore photograph is an intricate exploration of space and beauty, with an attention to detail that betrays the photographer's peerless eye. Something of a "photographer's photographer," Moore influenced the next generation of great fashion photographers but has been somewhat neglected in histories of 1960s fashion and culture--until now. James Moore: Photographs 1962-2006 collects a half century of extraordinary photographs by Moore, the first time his work has been collected in a single monograph. Including texts from the leading editors, models, photographers and designers of the day, this volume takes stock of James Moore's astounding career and an extraordinary cultural moment.

Bologna, Damiani, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 280 pages. American fashion photographer James Moore (1936-2006) was an influential voice in mid-20th-century fashion photography, working for Harper's Bazaar during its 1960s heyday under the leadership of legendary editor Carmel Snow. Shooting languid mod gamines and luxe bohemians in arresting, often surreal or cinematic compositions, Moore helped shape the visual vocabulary of '60s fashion alongside better-known colleagues such as art director Alexey Brodovitch (under whom Moore studied). Moore also directed television commercials and contributed photographs to European magazines in the 1980s and 1990s, and taught photography at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.Every Moore photograph is an intricate exploration of space and beauty, with an attention to detail that betrays the photographer's peerless eye. Something of a "photographer's photographer," Moore influenced the next generation of great fashion photographers but has been somewhat neglected in histories of 1960s fashion and culture--until now. James Moore: Photographs 1962-2006 collects a half century of extraordinary photographs by Moore, the first time his work has been collected in a single monograph. Including texts from the leading editors, models, photographers and designers of the day, this volume takes stock of James Moore's astounding career and an extraordinary cultural moment.