american west

Softcover. NY, Villard, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 176 pages. Huntington, West Virginia "On the Fly" is prime Pekar, recounting the irascible everyman's on-the-road encounters with a cross section of characters--a career criminal turned limo-driving entrepreneur, a toy merchant obsessed with restoring a vintage diner, comic-book archivists, indie filmmakers, and children of the sixties--all of whom have stories to tell. By turns funny, poignant, and insightful, these portraits a la Pekar showcase a one-of-a-kind master at work, channeling the stuff of average life into genuine American art.

Hardcover. NY, Free Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Like Faulkner's Mississippi and Cormac McCarthy's American West, Gay's Tennessee is redolent of broken souls. Mining that same fertile soil, his debut collection, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, brings together thirteen stories charting the pathos of interior lives. Among the colorful people readers meet are: old man Meecham, who escapes from his nursing home only to find his son has rented their homestead to "white trash"; Quincy Nell Qualls, who not only falls in love with the town lothario but, pregnant, faces an inescapable end when he abandons her; Finis and Doneita Beasley, whose forty-year marriage is broken up by a dead dog; and Bobby Pettijohn -- awakened in the night by a search party after a body is discovered in his back woods. William Gay expertly sets these conflicted characters against lush backcountry scenery and defies our moral logic as we grow to love them for the weight of their human errors. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Garden City, Doubleday & Co, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 549 pages. Tan cloth cover with gilt lettering to spine, color illustrated dust jacket, b&w illustrations, comprehensive reference work on Western American art. Light wear to dust jacket; overall a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Vol. 1: Slaves and Liberators, 379 pages with 156 b&w, 40 color illustrations. Vol. 2: 306 pages, 131 b&w, 52 color illustrations. Both volumes like new, shrinkwrapped in cardboard slipcases. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. San Francisco CA, California Academy of Sciences, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 96 pages, an exhibition catalog with 43 color plates. Essays by Donald Hagerty, Dan Dixon, Ansel Adams, others. INSCRIBED BY DAN DIXON (the artist's son) on front fly leaf. Embossed white cloth covers in a matching slipcase. 8 page exhibition brochure listing 118 works is laid in.

Hardcover. Westvaco Corporation, Ltd. Ed., 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 194 pages, Bound in light brown cloth with gilt lettering on the spine and gilt decoration on the covers. In a pictorial cardboard slipcase illustrated with Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley painted by Paul Cezanne. When In Our Time was first published in 1925, it was widely praised for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and earned Hemingway a place among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories Indian Camp and The Three Day Blow, and introduces readers to the hallmarks of the Hemingway style: a lean, tough prose, enlivened by an ear for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic. His writing suggests, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and a clarity of vision. Limited Edition, privately published by Westvaco. Bright, clean copy.

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.

Softcover. NY, Viking Press, Uncorr. proof, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, yellow wrappers. Unrevised and unpublished proofs. Page numbers hand written, 562 pages. SIGNED BY MATTHIESSEN on half-title page: "With best wishes/Peter Matthiessen". The author's controversial and suppressed book about the confrontation between American Indian activists and the FBI in the early 1970s at Pine Ridge Reservation near Wounded Knee. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. US, University of California Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 304 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light sun-fade and edgewear to wrappers, else a clean, tight copy. Independent Spirits brings to vivid life the West as seen through the eyes of women painters from 1890 to the end of World War II. Expert scholars and curators identify long-lost talent and reveal how these women were formidable cultural innovators as well as agitators for the rights of artists and women during a period of extraordinary development.

Softcover. West Danville VT, United Methodist Church, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover booklet, stapled wrappers, 16 pages. Indian Joe was a Native American guide active in the early conflicts and settlement of Vermont in the 1700s. B&w illustrations, photo of his tomb in the Oxbow cemetery in Newbury, Vermont. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace , 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Illustrated with 16 pages of black and white photographs, 338 pages. With wry humor and sharp observation, playwright Pifer elegantly mixes memory and research to reconstruct the world of his South African boyhood from 1933 to 1945. Pifer's father, an idealistic mining engineer in search of challenge and stability during the Depression, found it in Africa, but his earnest American egalitarianism soon put him in conflict with Afrikaner mine overseers, and his career under magnate Sir Ernest Oppenheimer stalled. The author deftly evokes his family--"my mother had the freedom of a disobedient daughter"--and the isolation of the desert town of Oranjemund. The book is even more resonant in its snapshots of mid-century Southern Africa: the still-simmering enmity between Afrikaners and the English; the ripples from Hitler's war in what prior to WW I had been the German territory of South West Africa (currently Namibia). Pifer's knowing account of the travails of servants--"the chasm that exists between white mistress and African maid"--still rings true today. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 168 pages. Hardcover still in publisher's shrinkwrap. Dust jacket unmarked. Binding is strong. Clean tight copy.

Hardcover. University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 279 pages, 227 plates. Traces the life of the Wyoming photographer and shows his pictures of people, landscapes, stories, street scenes, churches, farms, homes and businesses of the West

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 430 pages. The titanic choreographer, creator of memorable ballets, master of Broadway musicals, legendary show doctor and director, now revealed in his own words--the closest we will get to a memoir/autobiography--from his voluminous letters, journals, notes, diaries, never before published. Robbins was famous for reinventing the Broadway musical, creating a vernacular American ballet, pushing the art form to new boundaries where it had never gone before, integrating dance seamlessly with character, story and music, and as Associate Artistic Director, Ballet Master, and Co-Artistic Director, with George Balanchine, shaping the New York City Ballet with daring and brio for more than five decades through his often startling choreography in ballet's classical idiom. He was known as the king of Broadway, the most sought-after director-choreographer and show doctor who gave shape to On the Town (1944), Call Me Madam (1950), The King and I (1951), Wonderful Town (1953), Peter Pan (1954), The Pajama Game (1954), Silk Stockings (1955), West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Funny Girl (1964), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), and many other classic musicals, winning four Tony Awards, two Oscars, and an Emmy. He shocked and betrayed those he loved and worked with by naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. ("I betrayed my manhood, my Jewishness, my parents, my sister," he wrote in a diary. "I can't undo it.") Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press;, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 180 pages. John Gutmann (1905-1998) was one of America's most distinctive photographers. Born in Germany where he trained as an artist and art teacher, he fled the Nazis in 1933 and settled in San Francisco, reinventing himself as a photo-reporter. Gutmann captured images of American culture, celebrating signs of a vibrant democracy, however imperfect. His own status as an outsider--a Jew in Germany, a naturalized citizen in the United States--informed his focus on individuals from the Asian-American, African-American, and gay communities, as well as his photography in India, Burma, and China during World War II. This handsome book acknowledges Gutmann's place in the history of photography. Drawing on his archive of photographs and papers at the Center for Creative Photography, it presents both unfamiliar works and little-known contexts for his imagery, linking his photography to his passionate interest in painting and filmmaking, his collections of non-Western art and artifacts, and his pedagogy. In addition to a major essay by Sally Stein, the volume includes an introduction by Douglas R. Nickel, and an overview of the Gutmann archive by Amy Rule.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press;, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 180 pages. John Gutmann (1905-1998) was one of America's most distinctive photographers. Born in Germany where he trained as an artist and art teacher, he fled the Nazis in 1933 and settled in San Francisco, reinventing himself as a photo-reporter. Gutmann captured images of American culture, celebrating signs of a vibrant democracy, however imperfect. His own status as an outsider--a Jew in Germany, a naturalized citizen in the United States--informed his focus on individuals from the Asian-American, African-American, and gay communities, as well as his photography in India, Burma, and China during World War II. This handsome book acknowledges Gutmann's place in the history of photography. Drawing on his archive of photographs and papers at the Center for Creative Photography, it presents both unfamiliar works and little-known contexts for his imagery, linking his photography to his passionate interest in painting and filmmaking, his collections of non-Western art and artifacts, and his pedagogy. In addition to a major essay by Sally Stein, the volume includes an introduction by Douglas R. Nickel, and an overview of the Gutmann archive by Amy Rule.

Hardcover. NY, Philomel Books, 4th pr., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with mild fad to spine. The long-enduring American legend of Johnny Appleseed comes to life in the glorious folk illustrations and spirited storytelling of Will Moses. Everyone knows the story of Johnny Appleseed: how he traveled westward across our young country, spreading apple trees wherever he went and wearing outlandish hats, like a soup pot, on his head. But did you know that Johnny Appleseed was a real person? Born John Chapman in 1774, he grew up in a family of twelve children, and as a young man, struck out to find the frontier. It was along this journey that he discovered the wonders of apple trees, and where he had his life adventures. In the tradition of his great-grandmother, Grandma Moses, Will Moses's much-loved folk art perfectly illustrates this American tale.

Hardcover. St. Paul MN, Minnesota Historical Society, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 294 pages. Lightly illustrated with a few full-page and in-text photographs. The journals of Joseph N. Nicollet, an important explorer who documented the geography of the Coteau plains and large parts of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers (and of course, Minnesota). Nicollet was well-known for recording the Native American names of the places he explored. INSCRIBED BY BOTH BRAYS on the title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 2nd pr., 1922, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, marbled boards with gray cloth spine, 333 pages plus index. Endpapers map. Janet Schaw, a supporter of the Crown, illustrates the extent to which the American Revolution had, by 1775, become a close, personal insurgency, pitting neighbor against neighbor. Schaw was a young, well-educated Scottish woman who traveled to North Carolina to visit her older brother Robert, the owner of a plantation on the Cape Fear River near Wilmington. She arrived in March of 1775 and while in North Carolina witnessed, among other things, land clearing through controlled burning and the killing of an alligator. More important, she observed a society that was splitting asunder under the stress of revolutionary politics. The decisions of the Wilmington Committee forced men and women along the Cape Fear to take sides. Worn covers with spine cloth coming loose. Binding is solid.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 4th pr., 1927, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, marbled boards with a gray cloth spine, title label on spine, 343 pages, endpapers map, top edge gilt. Journey of Janet Schaw, a Scottish woman who traveled through the American colonies and the Caribbean in the late 18th century. Her observations provide firsthand accounts of colonial society, politics, slavery, and daily life on the eve of the American Revolution. With historical notes and context by the editor, this work offers valuable insight into the era from a unique perspective. Bookplate on inside front cover, otherwise clean.

Softcover. NY, MJF Books, reprint, 1997, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 191 pages plus index. In 1834, Osborne Russell joined an expedition from Boston, under the direction of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, which proceeded to the Rocky Mountains to capitalize on the salmon and fur trade. He would remain there, hunting, trapping, and living off the land, for the next nine years. Journal of a Trapper is his remarkable account of that time as he developed into a seasoned veteran of the mountains and experienced trapper. Clean copy.

Softcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 351 pages. George Wilkins Kendall, who founded the New Orleans Picayune in 1837, was a restless, impatient, and colorful character in an exciting era. For thirty years he guided the Picayune and built it into a powerful force in behalf of America's westward expansion. Kendall's vigorous editorials championed the cause of the infant Republic of Texas. When the Texan Santa Fe Expedition was organized in 1841, for the purpose of occupying New Mexico (then still under Mexican rule), Kendall left his editorial chair to participate--and was marched off to Mexico as a captive for seven months when the expedition was overwhelmed at Santa Fe. A few years later, when Kendall accompanied American forces invading Mexico during the Mexican War, he became America's first war correspondent--reporting directly from the battlefront. His effective "courier expresses" brought the first news of each battle to an eager nation, including President Polk, who often read news of the war in Kendall's Picayune before hearing it from his field commanders. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Woodstock VT, Countryman Press, 4th pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 416 pages, b&w illustrations. Now largely forgotten, the massacres of 1675 to 1676, known as King Philip's War, ended the harmonious relations that had existed between native Americans and the colonists since their arrival at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Tensions had been rising as the number of settlers grew, and the pillaging of an outlying farm by affronted young braves escalated into open hostilities. Pitched battles were fought from Rhode Island to Maine. Hundreds of English died as farmers fled and cowered behind stockades or in the few port towns. Thousands of natives were slaughtered and the rest dispersed or sold into slavery in the West Indies. The savagery resulted in the clearing of the native populations from southern New England and the unopposed expansion of the New England colonies. It also became the brutal model on which the United States came to deal with its native peoples. King Philip's War tells the story with such close attention to detail that each ambush, each burned-out farm, becomes a vivid image. The authors make abundant use of maps and photographs of old sites to enable the reader to follow the course of the war: the book forms an exhaustive guide for the armchair historian or anyone wishing to visit the monuments and battlefields today. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2nd pr., 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Black & white photos. 337 pages. Dj price clipped