art history

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Quirk Books, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 255 pages. A hilarious spotlight on the strangest second bananas in superhero comics, including junior partners, animal assistants, and even heinous henchmen (sidekicks of the villain world). Complete with vintage art and publication details. Batman has Robin. Captain America has Bucky. And Yankee Doodle had Dandy. Being a superhero is hard work, which is why so many comics characters rely on a sidekick for help. Someone who can watch the hero's back, help search for clues, or, if nothing else, give the hero someone to talk to. But just as not every superhero achieves the glory of Batman, not all sidekicks are as capable as the Boy Wonder. In The League of Regrettable Sidekicks, author Jon Morris discusses some of the strangest iterations of the sidekick phenomenon, and in the process explores how important these characters were to comic book storytelling.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Quirk Books, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 255 pages. A hilarious spotlight on the strangest second bananas in superhero comics, including junior partners, animal assistants, and even heinous henchmen (sidekicks of the villain world). Complete with vintage art and publication details.Batman has Robin. Captain America has Bucky. And Yankee Doodle had Dandy. Being a superhero is hard work, which is why so many comics characters rely on a sidekick for help. Someone who can watch the hero's back, help search for clues, or, if nothing else, give the hero someone to talk to. But just as not every superhero achieves the glory of Batman, not all sidekicks are as capable as the Boy Wonder. In The League of Regrettable Sidekicks, author Jon Morris discusses some of the strangest iterations of the sidekick phenomenon, and in the process explores how important these characters were to comic book storytelling.

NY, Random House, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An advisor to presidents, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and tireless champion of progressive government, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., was also an inveterate letter writer. Indeed, the term "man of letters" could easily have been coined for Schlesinger, a faithful and prolific correspondent whose wide range of associates included powerful public officials, notable literary figures, prominent journalists, Hollywood celebrities, and distinguished fellow scholars. The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. reveals the late historian's unvarnished views on the great issues and personalities of his time, from the dawn of the Cold War to the aftermath of September 11. Here is Schlesinger's correspondence with such icons of American statecraft as Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, and, of course, John and Robert Kennedy (including a detailed critique of JFK's manuscript for Profiles in Courage). There are letters to friends and confidants such as Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Gore Vidal, William Styron, and Jacqueline Kennedy (to whom Schlesinger sends his handwritten condolences in the hours after her husband's assassination), and exchanges with such unlikely pen pals as Groucho Marx, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bianca Jagger. Finally, there are Schlesinger's many thoughtful replies to the inquiries of ordinary citizens, in which he offers his observations on influences, issues of the day, and the craft of writing history.

Hardcover. NY, Benjamin Blom, reprint, 1971, Hardcover, oversize folio, brick red boards with gilt lettering and black etchings on the front. 1971 reissue of the commemorative edition published in Antwerp, 1642, by Meursius, with descriptive text by Casperius Gervatius and engravings, after design Of Peter Paul Rubens, by Theodor van Thulden. Clean, bright copy, no dust jacket. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, reprint, 1987, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 242 pages. Scholars have only recently discovered that the human body itself has a history. Not only has it been perceived, interpreted, and represented differently in different epochs, but it has also been lived differently, brought into being within widely dissimilar material cultures, subjected to various technologies and means of control, and incorporated into different rhythms of production and consumption, pleasure and pain. The eight articles in this volume support, supplement, and explore the significance of these insights. They belong to a new historical endeavor that derives partly from the crossing of historical with anthropological investigations, partly from social historians' deepening interest in culture, partly from the thematization of the body in modern philosophy (especially phenomenology), and partly from the emphasis on gender, sexuality, and women's history that large numbers of feminist scholars have brought to all disciplines. Lightly worn copy, clean, solid binding.

Hardcover. Taschen, reprint, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 396 pages. It was an age of mighty heroes, misunderstood monsters, and complex villains. With the publication, in November 1961, of Fantastic Four No. 1, comics giant Marvel inaugurated a transformative era in pop culture. Through the next two decades, the iconic Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the X-Men leapt, darted, and towered through its pages. Captain America was resurrected from his 1940s deep-freeze and the Avengers became the World's Greatest Super Heroes. Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and dozens more were added to the pantheon, each with their own rogues' gallery of malevolent counterparts. Over 50 years later, these thrilling characters from the '60s and '70s are more popular than ever, fighting the good fight in comics, toy aisles, and blockbuster movies around the world.In The Marvel Age of Comics 1961-1978, legendary writer and editor Roy Thomas takes you to the heart of this seminal segment in comic history-an age of triumphant character and narrative innovation that reinvented the super hero genre. With hundreds of images and insider insights, the book traces the birth of champions who were at once epic in their powers and adversaries and grounded in a world that readers recognized as close to their own; relatable heroes with the same problems, struggles, and shortcomings as everyone else. By the '70s, we see how the House of Ideas also elevated horror, sword and sorcery, and martial arts in its stable of titanic demigods, introducing iconic characters like Man-Thing, Conan, and Shang-Chi and proving that their brand of storytelling could succeed and flourish outside of the capes and tights. Clean, like new copy.

Hardcover. Titan Books, Revised Ed., 2016, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Reacting to the appearance of Superman in Action Comics in 1938, Marvel introduced Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch in their new publication the following year, and have since entertained readers with the adventures of Spider-Man, Captain America and The Fantastic Four, among many other characters. This illustrated celebration charts the history and development of Marvel Comics and its characters up to 2016 day and contains early sketches, artworks, covers, comic strip excerpts and pieces of memorabilia.

Hardcover. London, Humanities Press, Revised Ed., 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, A Historical and Critical Essay. Analyzes the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Gilbert, Boyle, and Newton to establish the reasons for the triumph of the modern scientific perspective. Hardcover, blue cloth with bright gilt lettering on spine, 343 pages. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Brooklyn NY, Handprint, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover with illustrated boards, 40 pages. n his magnificent interpretation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow s poem, Christopher Bing seamlessly weaves history and imagination into a rich portrait of an American hero. A meticulous researcher, Bing includes material that provides texture to history, maps that follow the British campaign to quell the rebellious citizenry, as well as the patriot s ride into the Massachusetts night of April, 1775. Documents firmly affixed into the book, including the British general s orders to his troops and Revere s own deposition relating the events, give the reader not only a visual experience but a tactile one as well. Far more than a brilliantly presented history lesson, this book represents a tour de force of coherent artistic vision. In an extraordinary series of rich and moody engravings, from the mysteriously shimmering rigging of the British sloop, The Somerset, looming in a moonlit Boston harbor to the taut urgency of a man and his horse galloping at a combustible moment in the American experience, this book illuminates our country s past unlike any other. Small inscription on inside front cover, otherwise clean.

Softcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st pbk., 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 304 pages. Profusely illustrated in b&w. Piranesi has a powerful appeal for our time. His brilliance as a graphic artist, his transformation of the European vision of Classical antiquity, and his themes of fantasy have been the focus of considerable study in recent years. But though these aspects are important for an appreciation of Piranesi's visual significance, they have tended to obscure other factors essential for a complete understanding of his unique achievement. In this copiously illustrated study, John Wilton-Ely - one of the world's foremost authorities on Piranesi - offers a full reappraisal of the complex personality of an astonishingly versatile artist. His book covers every aspect of Piranesi's life and work, emphasizing especially his importance as a pioneer of Roman archaeology, the high quality of his technical illustrations, and his role in the great Graeco-Roman debate of the 1760s. The author brings to life the Enlightenment world of the artist's ideas - fundamentally bound up with the birth of Neo-Classicism - and the search for an appropriately modern form of expression; and he shows the practical and influential form taken by these ideas in Piranesi's architectural projects, his designs for furniture and decorative schemes and his imaginative restoration of antiquities. 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. University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 512 pages. Historians, biographers, and scholars of John James Audubon and natural history have long been mystified by Audubon's 1843 Missouri River expedition, for his journals of the trip were thought to have been destroyed by his granddaughter Maria Rebecca Audubon. Daniel Patterson is the first scholar to locate and assemble three important fragments of the 1843 Missouri River journals, and here he offers a stunning transcription and critical edition of Audubon's last journey through the American West. Patterson's new edition of the journals--unknown to Audubon scholars and fans--offers a significantly different understanding of the very core of Audubon's life and work. Readers will be introduced to a more authentic Audubon, one who was concerned about the disappearance of America's wild animal species and yet also loved to hunt and display his prowess in the wilderness. This edition reveals that Audubon's famous late conversion to conservationism on this expedition was, in fact, a literary fiction. Maria Rebecca Audubon created this myth when she rewrote her grandfather's journals for publication to make him into a visionary conservationist. In reality the journals detail almost gratuitous hunting predations throughout the course of Audubon's last expedition.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 199 pages illustrated in color. This book provides a new way of thinking about eighteenth-century French art and visual culture by prioritizing production over reception. Abandoning the ideologically driven discourse that distinguished fine from decorative art between the 1690s and 1770s, The Mobile Image reveals how the two have been inextricably bound from the earliest stages of artistic instruction through the daily life of painters' workshops. In this study, author David Pullins defines artisanal and artistic means of learning, seeing, and making through a system of "mobile images": motifs that were effectively engineered for mobility and designed never to be definitive, always awaiting replication and circulation. He examines the careers of Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Francois Boucher, situating them against a much broader cast of actors--such as printmakers, publishers, anonymous studio assistants, and architects, among others--to place eighteenth-century painting within a wider context of media and making. clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 8th pr., 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 220 pages with black & white illustrations. A thorough study of the art of the Indian silversmiths of the Southwest. Includes the history of the craft as well as names and localities of pioneer artisans. Bookplate on inside front cover, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 532 pages. In a preface written for this paperback edition, Professor Hay examines some of the changes in Renaissance scholarship since the first publication of this volume in 1957. Successive chapters examine the social and economic structure of a continent about to establish trade and colonies in the New World, the intellectual and artistic movements which made up the Renaissance, the position of the Church on the eve of the Reformation, the political inheritance of the Middle Ages, with its rising nation states, and the growth of the Ottoman Empire. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 280 pages. This American art history book explores the early cultural development of the movement in Chicago, pulling from previously unpublished primary sources. 20 color reproductions along with black and white photographs and sketches and a timeline in the back. First study of Modernism in Chicago, examining the struggle between the "old guard's" ideals of traditional 19th century art versus an "avant garde" of painters, illustrators, photographers, and sculptors. Focuses on the cultural context in which art evolved. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Onassis Foundation, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 131 pages illustrated in color. The Origins of El Greco focuses on the evolution of the multifaceted relationship of Cretan painters with Western art during this rich period. The icon painters in the workshops on Crete in the 15th and 16th centuries-the setting in which El Greco was trained-were renowned for their skill in painting impeccable panels not only in the traditional Byzantine manner but also in a style inspired by Western models. The Origins of El Greco presents an extraordinary group of 15th and 16th century paintings, including works by El Greco. The color-illustrated catalogue features detailed descriptions of all 46 masterpieces included in the exhibition, some of them published for the first time, as well as 3 informative essays: Anastasia Drandaki, Curator, Byzantine Collection, Benaki Museum, Athens writes on "Between Byzantium and Venice: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries", Olga Gratziou, Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology, University of Crete writes on "Cretan Architecture and Sculpture in the Venetian Period" and Nicos Hadjinicolaou, Professor Emeritus in Art History, University of Crete, and Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, writes on "Early and Late El Greco". Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages. The meaning of a painted portrait and even its subject may be far more complex than expected, Tamar Garb reveals in this book. She charts for the first time the history of French female portraiture from its heyday in the early nineteenth century to its demise in the early twentieth century, showing how these paintings illuminate evolving social attitudes and aesthetic concerns in France over the course of the century.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with a small closed tear to front panel. 187 pages, 117 b.w. photos, index, bibliography, 187p., notes. A scholarly monograph, addressing our image of the Chinese artist, the painters' livelihood, studio & hand. A grand essay, giving us the kind of insights to really appreciate the full art of Chinese painters & paintings.

Softcover. New Haven, New Haven Colony Historical Society, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 100 pages in color illustrated wrappers. 45 b&w illustrations from a catalogue of 227 works in the collection. Preface by Robert R. MacDonald. Clean, tight copy

Hardcover. NY, John Wiley & Sons , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 170 pages, color illustrations. n The Passionate Collector: Eighty Years in the World of Art, you'll follow this fascinating financial figure and great patron of the arts from the streets of 1920s Paris to the museums of New York as he develops the eye of a connoisseur and begins to collect great contemporary art.Vivid detail puts you in the center of the action as Neuberger collects the brilliant artists of his time-Milton Avery, Jackson Pollock, Ben Shahn, Edward Hopper; works with legendary art dealers Paul Rosenberg, Betty Parsons, Sidney Janis, and Leo Castelli; and befriends avid collectors, including the incomparable Duncan Phillips. You'll follow Neuberger as he strives to further the cause of contemporary American artists by exhibiting, lending, and donating from his growing collection, and becoming an activist for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney. You'll also see how the Neuberger Museum of Art was created at the urging of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and how it continues to fascinate art enthusiasts today. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Malden MA, Blackwell , 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 311 pages, b&w illustrations. A succinct narrative of Iranian history from the time of Cyrus the Great in 558 BC to the present day. The book traces events from the rise of the Persian empire, through competition with Rome and conquest by the Arabs, through to the re-establishment of a Persian state in the sixteenth century, and finally the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the establishment of the current Islamic Republic. For each period, the author utilizes the most recent scholarship in order to examine Iran's political, social, and cultural history. He presents this history within an analytical framework which focuses on rulership as the central theme of identity for Iranians. He also considers the part played in Iranian identity by land, political culture, religion, and the arts. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Berkeley Boulevard Books, 1st thus, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 325 pages, b&w illustrations. Brimming with concert information, the histories of their songs, profiles of band members, tour highlights, Phish-filled anecdotes, articles by fans and editors, and more, this book is the ultimate guide to this popular band. Clean, bright copy. Like new.

Softcover. NY, Museum of Modern Art, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 156 pages. A guide to the mediums visual language through works by such early masters as Atget, Cartier-Bresson, Evans, Strand and Weston. It contains 172 illustrations that reveal the range of the photograph from the early days of the mediums development to the mid-1960s.