art history

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 120 pages illustrated in color. Since the first report of cave art (at Altamira in 1879), attempts have been made to explain the purpose of the mysterious drawings. Art for art's sake; totemism; hunting, destructive, or fertility magic; and modern structuralist theories have all been proposed. Clottes and Lewis-Williams propose a new theory emphasizing the shamanic aspects of Paleolithic cave paintings. After an unavoidably technical chapter providing the basics of shamanism, the authors examine Paleolithic paintings from across France and Spain, noting the use of animal figures, composite figures combining both human and animal characteristics, and geometric designs that are all common elements of shamanism. The bulk of the book is both fascinating and thought-provoking, and while it is not likely to be the last word on the subject, it is an important contribution to the field. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Overlook Books, reprint, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 144 pages. The adorable squash-shaped character was so popular it immediately spawned the largest merchandising craze in the nation's history. In the words of Life magazine, the nation was "Shmoo-struck." The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo collects, for the first time in one volume, Capp's essential comic strips about the Shmoo. This is Al Capp and his incisive social criticism at its best.

Hardcover. Montreal, Drawn and Quarterly, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. British cartoonist Tom Gauld (Mooncop, You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, Goliath) has created countless iconic strips for The Guardian over the course of his illustrious career. A master of condensing grand, highbrow themes into one- to eight-panel comics, his weekly strips embody his trademark British humor while simultaneously opening comics to an audience unfamiliar with the artistry that cartooning has to offer. Funny but serious, these postcards allow Gauld to put his impressive knowledge of history, literature, and pop culture on full display-his impeccable timing and distinctive visual style setting him apart from the rest.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 216 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The long-awaited collection of comic strips created in the early 1970s by some 169 contributors from 15 countries from C.C. Beck to Art Spiegelman. What started out as a special insert for Rolling Stone took on a life of its own as writer/editor Michel Choquette traveled the world, commissioning this visual chronicle of the 1960s, only to find himself without a publishing partner or the financial support to continue. Forty years later, readers finally get to experience this legendary anthology as Choquette celebrate the birth, death, and resurrection of The Someday Funnies.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 216 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The long-awaited collection of comic strips created in the early 1970s by some 169 contributors from 15 countries from C.C. Beck to Art Spiegelman. What started out as a special insert for Rolling Stone took on a life of its own as writer/editor Michel Choquette traveled the world, commissioning this visual chronicle of the 1960s, only to find himself without a publishing partner or the financial support to continue. Forty years later, readers finally get to experience this legendary anthology as Choquette celebrate the birth, death, and resurrection of The Someday Funnies.

Softcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, reprint, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 470 pages. On January 10, 1999, a mobster walked into a psychiatrist's office and changed TV history. By shattering preconceptions about the kinds of stories the medium should tell, The Sopranos launched our current age of prestige television, paving the way for such giants as Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. As TV critics for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, New Jersey's The Star-Ledger, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz were among the first to write about the series before it became a cultural phenomenon. Sepinwall and Seitz have reunited to produce The Sopranos Sessions, a collection of recaps, conversations, and critical essays covering every episode. Featuring a series of new long-form interviews with series creator David Chase, as well as selections from the authors' archival writing on the series, The Sopranos Sessions explores the show's artistry, themes, and legacy.

Hardcover. NY, Applause, Revised Ed., 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 326 pages, b&w illustrations. The greatest partnership in the history of the musical, captured in print, wonderfully illustrated. For this new edition, the book has been completely rewritten and substantially expanded to include material on Rodgers' early career with Lorenz Hart as well as his later work, and also features recollections from such theatrical titans as Sheldon Harnick, Martin Charnin, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents. Also, a completely new appendix reveals the details of the continuing worldwide phenomenon of Rodgers and Hammerstein's work. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Quirk Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright acetate dust jacket, 240 pages. Meet more than one hundred of the most heroic female characters in comics history, complete with backstories, vintage art, and colorful commentary. This spectacular sisterhood includes costumed crimebusters like Miss Fury, super-spies like Tiffany Sinn, sci-fi pioneers like Gale Allen, and even kid troublemakers like Little Lulu. With vintage art, publication details, a decade-by-decade survey of industry trends and women's roles in comics, and spotlights on iconic favorites like Wonder Woman and Ms. Marvel, The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen proves that not only do strong female protagonists belong in comics, they've always been there. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Vermont Heritage Press, Revised Ed., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a rubbed, edgeworn dust jacket. Pictorial end papers. B&w illustrations throughout. Intact foldout of "Shelburne Shipyard in Winter" in winter circa 1920. This new edition adds essays by Arthur B. Cohn, director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, on Lake Champlain steamboats and ferries and recent developments in Champlain Valley Maritime archaeology. Clean copy.

Softcover. Urbana, University of Illinois Press , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 361 pages, b&w illustrations. The Stonemans is an eye-opening slice of Americana---a trip through nearly twenty years of country music history following a single family from their native Blue Ridge Mountains to the slums of Washington, D.C., and the glitter of Nashville. As early as 1924 Ernest V. "Pop" Stoneman realized the potential of what is now known as country music, and he tried to carve a career from it. Successful as a recording artist from 1925 through 1929, Stoneman foundered during the Great Depression. He, his wife, and their nine children went to Washington in 1932, struggling through a decade of hardship and working to revive the musical career Pop still believed in. The Stoneman Family won the Country Music Association's Vocal Group of the Year Award in 1967. After Pop's death a year later, some of the children scattered to pursue their own careers. Ivan Tribe relies on extensive interviews with the Stonemans and their friends in this chronicle of a family whose members have clung to their musical heritage through good times and bad.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st thus, 2003, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, illustrated in color by Christopher Bing. A remarkable celebration from the Caldecott Honor-winning artist! A clever young boy outwits a band of voracious tigers and returns home in triumph to a splendid feast of a yard-high stack of pancakes. The story, penned by Helen Brodie Bannerman for her two daughters in 1889, has captured the imagination of readers around the world and across many generations. But the pictures which accompanied her text were crudely stereotypical and hurtful to many. Caldecott Honor-winning artist Christopher Bing has spent almost fifteen years rediscovering the joy and energy of the original story. He respects that Bannerman was writing in an Indian setting and with Indian animals-after all, there are no tigers in Africa-and faithfully adheres to the original text. However, recognizing that the image of Sambo has been used as a symbol of repression of Africans and African-Americans, Christopher Bing celebrates Sambo as proudly African, a child of beauty and joy, wit and resourcefulness.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two large hardcovers in a slipcase, 512 pages. The Story of Marvel Studios is the first-ever, fully authorized, all-access history of Marvel Studios' creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as told by the producers, writers, directors, concept artists, VFX artists, cast, and crew who brought it to life. Year-by-year, project-by-project, the studio's founding and meteoric growth are described through detailed personal stories, anecdotes, and remembrances of noteworthy challenges, breakthrough milestones, and history-making successes. Featuring archival materials, concept art, film stills, memorabilia from cast and crew, and rare promotional art, these volumes will take fans on a journey through Marvel Studios' creative challenges, breakthroughs, and successes of the past decade. These visuals are joined by exclusive interviews with key producers, studio heads, and core cast members such as Kevin Feige, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Evans, and more. Clean, bright set.

Hardcover. London, Cassell, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 239 pages illustrated in color. Issued w/o a dust jacket. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. The New Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 364 pages. Collects the Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian's remarkable conversations with some of the greatest luminaries of film and theater. Originally published under the title The Spectator, this "knowledgeable and perceptive" (Library Journal) look at show business presents the actors directors, playwrights, dancers, lyricists, and others who created the dramatic works of the twentieth century. Among the many highlights in these pages, Buster Keaton explains the wonders of unscripted silent comedy, Federico Fellini reflects on honesty in art, Carol Channing reveals that she is far more serious than she lets on, and Marlon Brando turns the tables and wants to interview Terkel. We learn about crucial artistic decisions in the lives of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee and hear from a range of film directors, from Vittorio De Sica and King Vidor to Satyajit Ray. We even get to witness Terkel playing straight man to a wildly inventive Zero Mostel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 240 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. The story of this most familiar garment, from its emergence in western Europe at the end of the seventeenth century to today. Suit-wearing figures such as the Savile Row gentleman and the Wall Street businessman have long embodied ideas of tradition, masculinity, power and respectability, but the suit has also been used to disrupt concepts of gender and conformity. Adopted and subverted by women, artists, musicians and social revolutionaries through the decades - from dandies and Sapeurs to the Zoot Suit and Le Smoking. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Boston, Back Bay Books, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 246 pages, b&w illustrations. Documents the history of swing music and dancing, covering the important artists, style and fashion, albums, and dance moves of swing. A bright, clean copy that has a light smoker's odor.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st thus, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two volumes in a pictorial cardboard slipcase, quarter bound in purple cloth and decorated boards without jackets, as issued. The Tale of Genji was written in the eleventh century by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady of the Heian court. It is universally recognized as the greatest masterpiece of Japanese prose narrative, perhaps the earliest true novel in the history of the world. Until now there has been no translation that is both complete and scrupulously faithful to the original text. Edward G. Seidensticker's masterly rendering was hailed as a classic of the translator's art. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Singapore, Times Editions-Marshall Cavendish, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 335 pages. The Temples of Lhasa is a comprehensive survey of historic Buddhist sites in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The study is based on the Tibetan Heritage Fund`s official five-year architectural conservation project in Tibet, during which the author and his team had unlimited access to the buildings studied. The documented sites span the entire known history of Tibetan Buddhist art and architecture from the 7th to the 21st centuries The book is divided into thirteen chapters, covering all the major and minor temples in historic Lhasa.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown, and Company, reprint, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in black cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 298 pages. A collection of articles about the theater by Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966), a stage designer and theatrical producer and director. Although he directed only a handful of plays, "his controversial theories of scene design and stagecraft gave him eminence in the European and American theater" (The New York Times). For instance, he favored three-dimensional stage effects and more innovative lighting than the traditional footlights. Craig argues that theatre is not just a form of entertainment, but a powerful medium for social and political change. He advocates for a new kind of theatre that is not bound by traditional conventions and that challenges the audience's expectations. Craig also emphasizes the importance of the actor's body and movement, and he proposes new techniques for training actors to be more expressive and dynamic on stage. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 1st, 2009, Hardcover, 192 pages. The photography of Angus McBean encompasses more than three decades of the history of British theater. His work includes most of the memorable productions of the Old Vic Company and of what is now the Royal Shakespeare Company; opera productions at Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; ballet and operetta at Sadler's Wells; and West End productions of plays and musicals both old and new -- hundreds of productions in all. He was the favorite photographer of Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and Edith Evans, and he photographed countless plays starring John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Alec Guinness, not to mention younger stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Richard Burton, and Elizabeth Taylor. In fact, McBean photographed virtually every great actor of his era, perhaps the most brilliant years in the annals of British theater.His studio was active and eclectic; among his patrons were not only actors, singers, and dancers, but also playwrights, producers, composers, artists, and writers. In his early career, McBean had been a pioneer of surrealist photography, with a highly popular series of "surrealized" portraits that appeared in The Sketch, and, later, of montage and multiple-exposure photography in a long-running series for The Tatler.In 1969, McBean approached Harvard University to initiate the sale of his collection, and in the following year his archive of glass plate negatives, index prints, and programs, together with the copyrights, became a part of the Harvard Theatre Collection, where it remains the most often-requested collection of visual material. The photographs in this book, selected and captioned by the archive's curator, Fredric Woodbridge Wilson, have been carefully reproduced from the original negatives.

Softcover. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 205 pages, b&w illustrations. A comprehensive look at a controversy that continues to fuel debates about the role of public art in America. Since its installation at and subsequent removal from New York City's Federal Plaza, noted sculptor Richard Serra's Tilted Arc has been a touchstone for debates over the role of public art. Installed in 1981, the 10-foot-high, 120-foot-long curved wall of Cor-Ten self-rusting steel instantly became a magnet for criticism. Art critics in the New York Times and the Village Voice labeled it the city's worst public sculpture, and many denounced it as an example of the elitism associated with art and as an obstacle to the use and enjoyment of the plaza. Harriet F. Senie explores the history of Tilted Arc, including its 1979 commission and the heated public hearings that eventually led to its removal in 1989 (it was dismantled and is currently stored in a government warehouse in Maryland). Analyzing the archive of popular opinion, Senie shows how the sculpture was caught in an avalanche of shifting local and national discussions about public funding for the arts. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NP, Somogy Art Publishers, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 96 pages. This fascinating collection of photographs documents a relatively unknown episode of Jewish history in Eastern Europe. Illustrating how the 1920s and 1930s saw the creation and development of "Jewish agricultural colonies" in the Soviet Union, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Romania, this history shows that the aim was to "normalize" Jews by teaching them "productive" professional skills. These recently discovered photographs offer a unique and moving insight into the Jewish experience in central and Eastern Europe before World War II. This edition includes English, French, and Yiddish.

Softcover. Buffalo NY, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 278 pages. Illustrated throughout with 195 b/w plates. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. The Cold War, Sputnik, Joseph McCarthy, Fidel Castro, the Rosenbergs, Marilyn Monroe, Rosa Parks, Father Knows Best and Rebel Without a Cause are just a few of the events, people, and cultural phenomena that marked the decade of the 1950s. This stunning book, a collection of two hundred large-scale duotone photographs of the 1950s culled from the New York Times photo archives, brings this watershed period to life and examines who and what was important and why.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st US, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 522 pages, b&w illustrations. By the end of World War I, Britain had become a laboratory for modernity. Intellectuals, politicians, scientists, and artists-among them Arnold Toynbee, Aldous Huxley, and H. G. Wells-sought a vision for a rapidly changing world. Coloring their innovative ideas and concepts, from eugenics to Freud's unconscious, was a creeping fear that the West was staring down the end of civilization. In The Twilight Years, award-winning historian Richard Overy examines the paradox of this period and argues that the coming of World War II was almost welcomed by Britain's leading thinkers, who saw it as an extraordinary test for the survival of civilization- and a way of resolving their contradictory fears and hopes about the future. Clean copy.