american culture

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 144 pages, b&w drawings throughout. The Compleat Cannon reprints the entirety of cartoonist Wally Wood's classic sex and violence strip from the 1960s. Super-spy John Cannon is the American's answer to James Bond, fighting the Cold War with a license to kill.Wally Wood is of course the legendary cartoonist known for his contributions to the original Mad magazine. Always regarded as one of comics' great craftsmen, Cannon is simply one of the most beautiful strips ever produced. Featuring outrageous parodies of pop culture icons of the time, the Cold War, and the secret agent genre, Cannon is Wood at his most gregarious and incisive, working on one of the few projects in his career where he had no editorial constraints.Like Fantagraphics' The Compleat Sally Forth, also by Wood, this oversized collection includes a section of never-before-seen Cannon ephemera in the form of sketches, notes and annotated information about the strip.

Softcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution, 1st, 1945, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in gray wrappers, 244 pages, 20 full page photo plates on slick paper. 33 text figures. 1 map. Errata slip tipped in. Owner's small sticker on inside cover otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Baltimore, Clearfield Company, reprint, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth, gilt lettering on spine, 132 pages. A reprint of a book written by Alexander Jones in 1855. The book explores the role of Welsh immigrants and their descendants during the American Revolution. It provides a detailed account of the Welsh contributions to the war effort, including their participation in battles, their leadership in politics and commerce, and their support for the cause of American independence. The book is divided into several chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of Welsh involvement in the Revolution. It begins by discussing the early settlement of Welsh immigrants in America, their struggles to maintain their language and culture, and their eventual integration into American society. Jones then goes on to describe the various battles and campaigns in which Welsh soldiers fought, including the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Battle of Saratoga, and the Battle of Yorktown. He also highlights the contributions of Welsh leaders such as General Richard Montgomery and Colonel William Davies.In addition to military contributions, the book also explores the role of Welsh Americans in politics and commerce during the Revolution. Jones discusses the involvement of Welshmen in the Continental Congress, as well as their contributions to the development of American industry and trade. Overall, The Cymry of '76 provides a comprehensive and detailed account of the Welsh contribution to the American Revolution. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New York University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 240 pages. Under the influence of European historians, scholarship about the Dutch in America has generally emphasized what was derived from the urban and merchant character of the Netherlands, particularly the single province of Holland in the seventeenth century. But it was among the farmers of New York and New Jersey, according to David Steven Cohen, rather than the urban merchants of Albany and New York City, that a distinctive Dutch-American regional subculture arose, thrived, and survived through the end of the nineteenth century. By examining the life of the early emigrant Dutch settlers, the author constructs a picture of their culture through the farmhouses they built, the landscapes they cultivated, and the tools and equipment they used, relating it all to the structure of their families, their folklore, and folklife. It was in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, according to Cohen, that a change occurred in the culture of the Dutch in America by which they became Dutch-American, and the most striking material evidence of this transformation was in the development of a new type of farmhouse, which began to replace those still traceable to the Netherlands.Thirty black-and-white illustrations. Many pages with light pencil notations.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st UK, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 431 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University, 1st, 1987, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 227 pages, b&w illustrations. In this penetrating study, Carl Brasseaux looks beyond long-standing mythology to provide a critical account of early Acadian culture in Louisiana and the reasons for its survival. He convincingly dispels many received notions about the routes Acadians traveled from Nova Scotia to Louisiana, their original settlement sites, and the patterns of their subsequent migrations within the state, and closely examines the relations of Louisiana's Acadians with their black, Spanish, Indian, and Creole neighbors. In adapting to subtropical Louisiana, with its turmoil of alternating French and Spanish regimes, the Acadians exhibited industry, pragmatism, individualism, and the ability to close ranks in the face of a general threat. As Brasseaux reveals, Acadians' cohesiveness and insularity preserved the core elements of their culture and helped them adjust to new physical and social demands. Names, inscription to front fly leaf, interior clean and bright.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 248 pages. Name on front fly leaf whited out, otherwise clean.

Softcover. NY, American Italian Historical Association, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 244 pages, 35th Conference of the American Italian Historical Association . "'Italian Americans and World War II, ' explores many facets of the dynamic period of the 1940s and the consequences of war and peace. Scholars within AIHA and outside the academy have been slow to recognize the significance of World War II, now recognized as a seminal event in Italian-American life and culture. . . . "This volume is dedicated to all Italian Americans who lived and died, fought and prayed during World War II." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 64 pages. Yarbrough weaves a beautiful story in picture-book format about the role of music in the lives of Africans and shows how it was transformed on American and Caribbean soil. The tale revolves around a "Roots of Rhythm and Blues" concert attended by a sister and brother and their parents, great grandmother, and elderly neighbor. At the park, the father tells his children about slavery and the "culture baggage" the slaves carried with them from Africa. With a compelling delivery that echoes the rhythmic chanting of the griot, the man speaks about concepts such as spirit power and the tree of life that at first are hard for his young son to grasp. The performance begins with a song of praise for the strength and endurance of a transplanted people. By the end, the youngsters understand more about their heritage and the role spirituals played and continue to play in it. Geter's pencil-and-charcoal illustrations are richly imaginative, evoking images of Africa, slavery, roots, and soaring trees. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton , 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. After the Second World War, a newly affluent United States reached for its own gourmet culture, one at ease with the French international style of Escoffier, but also distinctly American. Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties were synonymous with the nation's food for decades, even after his death in 1985. In the first biography of Beard in twenty-five years, acclaimed writer John Birdsall argues that Beard's struggles as a closeted gay man directly influenced his creation of an American cuisine. Starting in the 1920s, Beard escaped loneliness and banishment by travelling abroad to places where people ate for pleasure, not utility, and found acceptance at home by crafting an American ethos of food likewise built on passion and delight. Informed by never-before-tapped correspondence and lush with details of a golden age of home cooking, The Man Who Ate Too Much is a commanding portrait of a towering figure who still represents the best in food. Clean copy.

Softcover. Indiana Historical Society, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 358 pages, 2 maps, b/w photos, appendices, notes, important dates, bibliography, index. Explores the history and culture of the Miami Indians, who have fought for many years to gain tribal status from the U.S. government. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Center for American Places, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 232 pages. The Mississippi River flows through American history and culture as a mythic waterway brimming with tragedy and hope, and awash in passionate ambitions and harsh realities. In 1953, a young Charles Dee Sharp traveled twice down the Mississippi (first by towboat and then by car along the renowned river road Highway 61) to make a documentary film of it, taking black-and-white photographs of the river, its communities, and its people.While Sharp's documentary never came to fruition, the striking images he captured survived as moving and evocative historical testaments to a lost era, now collected in his new book The Mississippi in 1953. These images create a vivid portrait of America's heartland a half century ago, and they are enriched with excerpts from Sharp's original trip journal, intriguing anecdotes from the people he encountered along his journey, and an engaging environmental history of the river by historian John O. Anfinson. The Mississippi in 1953 offers an original and poignant look at the living artery of the American landscape and how it molded the United States into the nation it is today.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 541 pages. b&w illustrations. As Joel Dinerstein reveals in this book, cool began as a stylish defiance of racism, a challenge to suppressed sexuality, a philosophy of individual rebellion, and a youthful search for social change. Through portraits of iconic figures, Dinerstein illuminates the cultural connections and artistic innovations among Lester Young, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, among others. We eavesdrop on conversations among John-Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, and Miles Davis, and on a forgotten debate between Lorraine Hansberry and Norman Mailer over the 'white negro' and Black cool. We come to understand how the cool worlds of Beat writers and Method actors emerged from the intersections of film noir, jazz, and existentialism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Lee & Low Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This dazzling collection of poetry celebrates the beauty of African-American culture. Written by 20 inner-city children, these moving and powerful poems represent little-heard and often overlooked voices. Color illustrations by Gregory Christie. Bookplate on inside front cover otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 94 pages, color illustrations by Peggy Turley. In this delightful children's tale, an American boy, Kenny Strange, moves to the quiet Mexican town of Taxco with his parents and strikes up a friendship with young Juanito Perez, a Taxco native. The two boys are brought together by an enchanting toy, the pasteboard bandit Tito. Chosen by Juanito at a town fair from among the other pasteboard toys, Tito, with his colorful clothes and bright eyes, becomes Juanito's and Kenny's constant companion, and the threesome share many adventures in and around the town's rolling green hills. The boys' growing friendship, Kenny's introduction to a culture unlike his own, and Tito's witty reflections on being a toy will be recognized instantly by anyone young or old who has ever made a friend or imagined that a toy might be real. Originally written in 1935, but never before published, The Pasteboard Bandit grew out of several trips Langston Hughes made to Mexico during his lifetime. Hughes first went to the town of Toluca at age 5 to visit his father, and again when he was older. During these visits, Hughes met many writers and artists, and it is their influence that informs the story of The Pasteboard Bandit--a story of two cultures meeting. When Hughes left Mexico for the last time, at age 32, he was carrying the first draft for The Pasteboard Bandit. Clean copy.

Softcover. Berlin/NY, Mouton de Gruyter, reprint, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 266 pages. Edward Sapir (1884-1939), one of this century's leading figures in American anthropology and linguistics, planned to publish a major theoretical statement on culture and psychology. He developed his ideas in a course of lectures presented at Yale University in the 1930s, which attracted a wide audience from many social science disciplines. Unfortunately, he died before the book he had contracted to publish could be realized. Like de Saussure's (ours de Linguistique Generale before it, this work has been reconstructed from student notes, in this case twenty-two sets, as well as from Sapir's manuscript materials. Judith Irvine's meticulous reconstruction makes Sapir's compelling ideas - of surprisingly contemporary resonance - available for the first time. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. NY, Hastings House, 1st, 1941, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth stamped with dark blue design, 124 pages, sepia tone photos throughout. This work is Gilpin's photographic love letter to the Pueblos of the southwest. Laura Gilpin (1891-1979) attained international recognition as photographer and her images of the Navajo and Pueblo peoples of the four corners area offer an important record of these cultures. She excelled in a field that up to the point, had largely been the purview of men. Cloth covers with edgewear, light soil. Inscription on inside front cover. Covers fair, interior good+.

Softcover. Lincoln NE, Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 247 pages, b&w illustrations. In the spring of 1968, the Omaha Central High School basketball team made history with its first all-black starting lineup. Their nickname, the Rhythm Boys, captured who they were and what they did on the court. Led by star center Dwaine Dillard, the Rhythm Boys were a shoo-in to win the state championship. But something happened on their way to glory. In early March, segregationist George Wallace, in a third-party presidential bid, made a campaign stop in Omaha. By the time he left town, Dillard was in jail, his coach was caught between angry political factions, and the city teetered on the edge of racial violence. So began the Nebraska state high school basketball tournament the next day, caught in the vise of history. The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central tells a true story about high school basketball, black awakening and rebellion, and innocence lost in a watershed year. The drama of civil rights in 1968 plays out in this riveting social history of sports, politics, race, and popular culture in the American heartland.

Softcover. London/NY, Verso, 1st, 1990, Softcover, 397 pages. In this acclaimed historical study, Alexander Saxton establishes the centrality of white racism to American politics and culture. Examining images of race at a popular level - from blackface minstrels to the construction of the Western hero, from grassroots political culture to dime novels - as well as the philosophical constructions of the political elite, it is a powerful and comprehensive account of the ideological forces at work in the formation of modern America. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, repriny, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 290 pages. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s original, groundbreaking study explores the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself.Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, and particularly the Yoruba trickster figure of Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey whose myths help articulate the black tradition's theory of its literature, Gates uncovers a unique system forinterpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. His critical approach relies heavily on the Signifying Monkey--perhaps the most popular figure in African-American folklore--and signification and Signifyin(g). Exploring signification in black American life and literature by analyzing the transmission and revision of various signifying figures, Gates provides an extended analysis of what he calls the "Talking Book," a central trope in early slave narratives that virtually defines the tradition of black American letters. Gates uses this critical framework to examine several major works of African-American literature--including Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo--revealing how these works signify on the black tradition and on each other. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light blue cloth with red and dark blue lettering on the spine and cover, 302 pages. A moving novel of the beginning of the American trek to the west. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight. Here, in the first novel of Conrad Richter's Awakening Land trilogy, the Lucketts, a wild, woods-faring family, lived their roaming life, pushing ever westward as the frontier advanced and as new settlements threatened their isolation. This novel gives an excellent feel for America's lost woods culture, which was created when most of the eastern midwest was a vast hardwood forest---virtually a jungle. The Trees conveys settler life, including conflicts with Native Americans, illness, hunting, family dynamics, and marriage. INSCRIBED BY RICHTER on the front fly leaf. A bright, sharp copy missing the dust jacket. Related ephemera laid in.

Hardcover. NY, The Dial Press, 2nd pr., 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardccover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 497 pages, b&w illustrations. An overview of what entertained America for 200 years, from opera to comics. Clean copy.

Softcover. Atlanta, High Museum of Art, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The catalogue of a traveling exhibition organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, examining the significant interrelationships between sports, photography, and culture in the US, Europe, and Russia since the late 19th century. The 141 works featured (32 color, 109 duotone) by 120 photographers (including such masters as Stieglitz, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, and Arbus) are drawn from American and European public and private collections and the archives of Life and Sports Illustrated . Includes essays by Harvey Green, John M. Hoberman, and Peter Schjeldahl.

Softcover. Atlanta, High Museum of Art, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The catalogue of a traveling exhibition organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, examining the significant interrelationships between sports, photography, and culture in the US, Europe, and Russia since the late 19th century. The 141 works featured (32 color, 109 duotone) by 120 photographers (including such masters as Stieglitz, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, and Arbus) are drawn from American and European public and private collections and the archives of Life and Sports Illustrated . Includes essays by Harvey Green, John M. Hoberman, and Peter Schjeldahl.