ancient art

Hardcover. NY, Sterling, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with a maroon cloth spine. 12 pages with 6 color pop=ups. Paper-crafting genius Sam Ita gives Jules Verne's engrossing undersea story a unique and amazing presentation. Ita literally takes graphic novels into another dimension with breathtaking designs that pop, flaps that lift, parts that move, and art that astonishes. There's nothing like it out on the market. You won't believe your eyes as you join Captain Nemo on an unforgettable adventure: submarines, sea monsters, and even the lost city of Atlantis (complete with ancient artifacts, temples, and columns) rise from the page as if emerging from the waves. Take a 3-D look inside Jules Verne's visionary submarine; sit with the sailors at their lobster-laden table; pull a lever to move the diving gauge; and face a giant squid as its slippery tentacles attack the Nautilus and her crew. Clean copy with no flaws to the paper cut-outs.

Softcover. NY, Rizzoli, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 160 pages. The mysterious, seductive essence of the night has long entranced the imagination of artists and writers, and now it is the focus of a unique book that pairs evocative black-and-white photography with classic and contemporary poetry. Lynn Saville's photographs, shot after dark in and around New York and at other urban and rural sites in the United States, Portugal, Greece, and India, reveal unusual aspects of familiar cities and monuments as well as the dusky allure of fringe areas such as Manhattan's industrial district and desolate waterfronts. Rich with light and shadow, the photographs suggest the suspenseful, provocative quality of film noir. Accompanying the photographs are 35 poems and poetic excerpts about the night, beginning with Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night," which inspired the book's title and mood. Selected here are works by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Charles Simic, and Octavio Paz, among other award-winning poets, and citations from ancient verse such as the Rig Veda and The Epic of Gilgamesh. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with mild fading to spine. 224 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Acoustic Learning, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy pictorial boards, oblong format. Alley Oop's color time-traveling adventures continue! Come with Alley as he confronts the Ghost of Crummystone Hall, pilots the amazing Perpetual Motion Machine, puts Santa Claus through a weight-loss regimen, befriends an ancient Chinese dragon, and much more! 245 never-before-reprinted strips are presented in this oversize hardcover (9" x 12 1/2 "), covering September 1942 through the end of 1950. Color throughout. Clean, like new. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Chicago, IL, Art Institute of Chicago, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 397 pages. Hardcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. Dust jacket unclipped. Bound in black fabric with gilt title on spine and front cover. Other than a bit of foxing on top edge, clean inside. In very good condition. Published to accompany exhibit at art Institute of Chicago, October 10, 1992-January 3, 1993.

Softcover. London, Barbican Art Gallery, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 168 pages. Color photos throughout. A collection of photographs chosen from Eggleston's earliest photographs taken in the American South and through to his most recent work in England. William Eggleston (born 1939) was a pioneer in exploring the artistic potential of color photography. Eggleston made a name for himself with his eccentric, unexpected compositions of everyday life that were nonetheless rife with implied narrative, elevating the commonplace to art. William Eggleston, born in 1939 in Memphis, is one of the most important contemporary American photographers. From the 1970s onwards, his work has significantly contributed to the recognition of color photography as an artistic medium.

Hardcover. New York , Metropolitan Museum of Art/Abrams, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 305 pages plus bibliography. The richest collection outside of Cyprus of Cypriot antiquities. Built up by General Luigi Palma di Cesnola as the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he acquired most of the art between 1879 and 1900 with works dating from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 300. Over 450 color images with map of the regions from which the art was acquired, this represents an essential item for a knowledge of the art of Cyprus in antiquity in all its forms.

Hardcover. Chicago, Argonaut Inc, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, stated First American Edition. "A New Illustrated Edition Containing: 'Greek Dress' by Ethel Abrahams; 'Chapters on Greek Dress' by Lady Evans." Edited by Marie Johnson. Navy cloth with gold lettering on the spine. Illustrated with 20 plates and with several full-page and in-text illustrations. Combines two works on the history of ancient fashion.

Softcover. London, Penguin Books, 2rd Ed., 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 547 pages, b&w illustrations. Newly revised and containing information from recent excavations and discovered artifacts, Ancient Iraq covers the political, cultural, and socio-economic history from Mesopotamia days of prehistory to the Christian era. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , McGraw-Hill, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, large folio, 159 pages, index, 60 beautiful tipped-in color plates of ancient Mexican sites after photographs by Irmgard Groth. Original gilt-lettered burgundy cloth in original color pictorial dust jacket that has a small chip to top of spine. The author of this book, Ignacio Bernal (1910 - 1992), was an eminent Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist. Bernal excavated much of Monte Alban, originally starting as a student of Alfonso Caso, and later led major archeological projects at Teotihuacan. In 1965 he excavated Dainzu. He was the Director of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology 1962-68 (at the time of this publication) and again 1970-77. In 1965, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bernal was awarded the Premio Nacional in 1969. He was a founding member of the Third World Academy of Sciences in 1983. This book includes 60 hand-mounted colour plates and 1 map (all framable); each chosen by Bernal photographed by Mrs. Irmgard Groth, a gifted photographer whose special field was Mexican archaeology. In these plates we see the extraordinary sculpture of the Omecs; the Pyramid of the Moon of Teotihuacan; the Maya temples of Palenque; the Pyramid of the Niches of Tajin on the Gulf Coast; the temples at the great city of Chichen Itza; the gold ornaments of the Mixtecs at Monte Alban; the temple carved by the Aztecs out of the Cliffside at Malinalco; and many other buildings and artifacts, the surviving testimonials - sometimes exquisite, sometimes aw-inspiring - to the greatness of a long-vanished culture.

Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press. , 1st , 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Illustrated in black & white, 5 color plates. 487 pages + 646 photos, 16 plates in rear. Previous owner's inscription, bookplate on front pastedown. End papers tanned.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This book examines the far-reaching legacy of one of the great myths of classical antiquity. According to Greek legend, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, secretly buried her brother in defiance of the orders of Creon, king of Thebes. Creon sentenced Antigone to death, but, before the order could be executed, she committed suicide. The theme of the conflict between Antigone and Creon - between the state and the individual, between young and old, between men and women - has captured the Western imagination for more than 2,000 years. Antigone and Creon are as alive in the politics and poetics of our own day as they were in ancient Athens. Here, Steiner examines the treatment of the Antigone theme in Western art, literature and thought, leading us to look again at the unique influence Greek myths exercise on twentieth-century culture.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, reprint, 1893, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in dark green cloth covers, 438 pages plus ads. B&W frontis. illustration, Gilt lettering on spine with Collins's facsimile signature in gilt on cover. A volume from the author's collected works. Antonina was begun in April 1846, delayed for a year during the writing of The Memoirs of William Collins, R.A., and published in 1850. It is written in a laborious, deliberately florid style using detail from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and modelled on Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii (1834). The plot is challenging, with many passages reading like a cross between a guide book to ancient Rome (based on Collins's visit in 1837) and a description of his father's paintings. Other sections, particularly the more horrific and violent, are vividly written and there are already indications of Collins's interest in physical handicap and abnormal states of mind, and his dislike of all forms of extremism. The conflict between the imaginative and artistic Antonina and her stern father is reworked to better effect in Collins's next novel, Basil. Antonina received good reviews, sold consistently and was reprinted throughout Collins's lifetime and well into the twentieth century. Exceptionally bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 327 pages, clean copy. Few diseases have exercised the Western imagination as chronically as hysteria--from the wandering womb of ancient Greek medicine, to the demonically possessed witch of the Renaissance; from the "vaporous" salon women of Enlightenment Paris, through to the celebrated patients of Sigmund Freud, with their extravagant, erotically charged symptoms. In this fascinating and authoritative book, Mark Micale surveys the range of past and present readings of hysteria by intellectual historians; historians of science and medicine; scholars in gender studies, art history, and literature; and psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and neurologists. In so doing, he explores numerous questions raised by this ever-growing body of literature: Why, in recent years, has the history of hysterical disorders carried such resonance for commentators in the sciences and humanities? What can we learn from the textual traditions of hysteria about writing the history of disease in general? What is the broader cultural meaning of the new hysteria studies? In the second half of the book, Micale discusses the many historical "cultures of hysteria." He reconstructs in detail the past usages of the hysteria concept as a powerful, descriptive trope in various nonmedical domains, including poetry, fiction, theater, social thought, political criticism, and the arts. His book is a pioneering attempt to write the historical phenomenology of disease in an age preoccupied with health, and a prescriptive remedy for writing histories of disease in the future.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY TATUM on the front fly leaf. In this readable and scholarly work, Tatum looks at the enduring appeal of Apuleius' novel, the sophistication and artistry the work, and places The Golden Ass within its ancient contexts. This is the first book-length study of The Golden Ass. It is aimed at both specialists and a general audience.

Softcover. London, The Trustees of the British Museum / British Museum Press Ltd., 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 224 brilliant pages, laden with illustrations of Assyrian art and artifacts from The British Museum collection. 215 color and 33 black and white illustrations in addition to one map. Beautiful full-color cover with minor wear at corners only. Illustrated title page and half-title page. Crisp text pairs nicely with this rich visual collection. In very good condition overall.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st US, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 224 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Sun fading to dust jacket spine. Light foxing to top edge of text block. An otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Beardsley's work is looked at alongside the work of contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm and W.B. Yeats and against the backdrop of the artistic, literary and social life of fin-de-siecle London, Dieppe and Paris. In addition to the drawings, the book includes examples of Beardsley's innovative book binding, prints and posters, revealing a gallery of portraits and photographs from that decadent period, the "Naughty Nineties." It also explores the diverse influences, such as ancient Greek vase painting and Japanese prints, upon which the young artist freely drew in the formation of his own style.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Candlewick Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, color throughout. This exhilarating graphic-novel edition of an ancient classic honors the spirit of the original as it attracts modern readers. The epic tale of the great warrior Beowulf has thrilled readers through the ages - and has been reinvented for a new generation with Gareth Hinds's masterful illustrations. Grendel's black blood runs thick as Beowulf defeats the monster and his hideous mother, while somber hues overcast the hero's final, fatal battle against a raging dragon. Speeches filled with courage and sadness, lightning-paced contests of muscle and will, and funeral boats burning on the fjords are all rendered in glorious and gruesome detail. Told for more than a thousand years, Beowulf's heroic saga finds a true home in this graphic-novel edition. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to covers. The third volume in Fantagraphics' ongoing reprint of Roy Crane's legendary comedy-action series features what many consider the absolute peak of the series: "Temple of the Swinks," in which Wash and Easy discover an ancient temple with statues of an unknown animal called a swink... a real-life specimen of which shows up! In other stories, Wash and Easy sail for Singapore with a cargo of wild animals, crash land a plane on an island inhabited by (inevitably) pirates and (just as inevitably) beautiful women, and sail the South Seas in a schooner whose villainous captain plans to rob them. When they return to America, Wash Tubbs' pet swink draws huge crowds and a reputation for being worth a million dollars. Then Wash and Easy travel to Peru to rescue an American lost in the jungle and, in the cover-featured story, Easy goes deep sea diving in search of a beautiful girl's lost diamond.

Hardcover. San Diego, Sunbelt Publications, Revised Ed., 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 246 pages, color photographs and illustrations throughout, illustrated end paper. The Great Murals of Mexico's Baja California are one of the five greatest sites in the world for primitive rock art. They rank with those of southern France, northern Spain, northwest Africa, and outback Australia. These Great Murals, created by an unknown people, are without doubt the most distinctive trove of rock art in the Western Hemisphere. The site was unveiled to the modern world in the 1960s by adventure/mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner who brought in UCLA archaeologist Clement Meighan to validate the importance of his find. But it was not until the 1970s, when author/photographer Harry W. Crosby undertook a systematic search for the largely unknown works hidden in the mountains of central Baja that the scope and significance of the find became known. He documented his search and discovery of over 200 previously unreported rock art sites leading to the original publication of The Cave Paintings of Baja California by Copley Books in 1975 which first introduced this cave art to the general public. Since that time, Baja California's Great Murals have been designated a United Nations Heritage Site. This lavishly illustrated full-color account is greatly revised and expanded from the original edition and offers Crosby's unique perspective on the painted sites and painting styles found in different parts of the Great Mural area. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, Art Media Resources, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 305 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light edgewear to cover boards, otherwise clean bright copy. Color pictures throughout. 12x12x1 dimensions. Numbering over 250 works spanning nearly 1500 years, the Dewey collection of ancient Chinese tomb sculpture is exceptional for its breadth and outstanding quality. Representing nearly all figural types, stylistic traditions and themes, it provides a comprehensive visual record with fascinating insights into the customs and fashions, inventions and superstitions of ancient China's ruling elite during the golden age of the Great Silk Road.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 358 pages, color and b&w illustrations. What we call classical art did not simply appear in ancient Rome, or in the Renaissance, or in the eighteenth-century Academy. Endlessly repackaged and revered or rebuked, Greek and Roman artifacts have gathered an amazing array of values, both positive and negative, in each new historical period, even as these objects themselves have reshaped their surroundings. Vout shows how this process began in antiquity, as Greeks of the Hellenistic period transformed the art of fifth-century Greece, and continued through the Roman empire, Constantinople, European court societies, the neoclassical English country house, and the nineteenth century, up to the modern museum. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 1176 pages. We live in an age of disenchantment. The number of self-professed "atheists" continues to grow. Yet many still feel an intense spiritual longing for a connection to what Aristotle called the "eternal and divine." For those who do, but demand a God that is compatible with their modern ideals, a new theology is required. This is what Anthony Kronman offers here, in a book that leads its readers away from the inscrutable Creator of the Abrahamic religions toward a God whose inexhaustible and everlasting presence is that of the world itself. Kronman defends an ancient conception of God, deepened and transformed by Christian belief--the born-again paganism on which modern science, art, and politics all vitally depend. Brilliantly surveying centuries of Western thought--from Plato to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant, from Spinoza to Nietzsche, Darwin, and Freud--Kronman recovers and reclaims the God we need today. Clean copy.

Softcover. Austin, University of Texas Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, yellow wrappers, 287 pages. Light fading to spine. In ancient Mediterranean cultures, diamonds were thought to endow their owners with invincibility. In contemporary United States culture, a foreign-made luxury car is believed to give its owner status and prestige. Where do these beliefs come from In this study of craft production and long-distance trade in traditional, nonindustrial societies, Mary W. Helms explores the power attributed to objects that either are produced by skilled artisans and/or come from 'afar.' She argues that fine artisanship and long-distance trade, both of which are more available to powerful elites than to ordinary people, are means of creating or acquiring tangible objects that embody intangible powers and energies from the cosmological realms of gods, ancestors, or heroes. Clean copy.