asia

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 192 pages. Includes index and bibliography. Illustrated with 102 plates in full color, many color plates within the text and many diagrams and photographs in black & white. A remainder mark rubberstamped in the shape of a "star" to the bottom edge, otherwise bright and clean.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 300 pages. In this lavishly produced volume, journalist Gaudriault accompanies photographer Rancinan to Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States to interview 23 masters of contemporary photography, paying homage to fashion photographers and photojournalists, traditional chroniclers of their times and conceptual artists. Rancinan's photographs record each encounter in portraits that encapsulate each subject's relationship with his shared discipline. Readers follow paparazzo Ron Galella fending off the camera; Martin Parr, the sardonic chronicler of middle-class British life, having tea in a cafe; Rankin, the creator of the hip magazine Dazed and Confused, hopping into a trashcan filled with his own cast-off images. Gaudriault's short essays quote liberally from her interviews and provide both biographical information and incisive commentary. Several of the older photographers strike an elegiac tone and confess to finding themselves at the end of the eras that gave birth to their visions, but optimism reigns among younger practitioners: David LaChapelle is reinventing himself in Hawaii; Rankin is bearing witness to an age that is still young; and Oliviero Toscani, the radical combination of journalist and marketer behind the Benetton campaigns, describes billboards as the church frescoes of today.

Hardcover. NY, John Day, 1st US, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly edgeworn, price-clipped dust jacket. Another in the author's popular series of early-mid-20th-century travel guides from an Asian perspective, this one representing his first trip across the Atlantic where he brings New York City to life with 120+ of his own pen-and-ink drawings & 17 full-color plates, created using traditional Chinese technique & media, painting on both absorbent paper & sometimes silk. His observations on the life and scenery of America are as oblique and charming as ever, while his experiences round Times Square, along Fifth Avenue, in Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the Bowery, and Harlem are depicted with the postwar charm that would soon be lost forever. In 281 pages with map endpapers, this is the First American Edition (no date in book, but research places it at 1950).

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press , 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, blue clith with gilt lettering on spine, 328 pages. Dr Moore's enterprising book focuses on an apparent paradox: the failure of Sri Lanka's highly politicized smallholder electorate to place on the national political agenda issues relating to the public distribution of material resources. Sri Lanka has more than fifty years' history of pluralist democracy and such issues directly affect the interests of the smallholder population. Yet successive Sri Lankan governments have pursued economic policies favouring food consumers and the state itself at the expense of agricultural producers. In exploring the features of Sri Lanka's history, geography, politics and economy which explain this paradox, the author looks in detail at some of the dominant features of contemporary Sri Lanka: the political consequences of the plantation experience; the persistence of elite political leadership; and the causes and consequences of ethnic conflict. Clean copy, paper tanning slightly.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown & Company, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 408 pages, b&w illustrations. Imperial Green Jade, also known as jadeite, is one of the rarest stones in the world. This volume combines original historical research, a travelogue, and investigative journalism to tell the secret history of jadeite. Clean copy.

Softcover. Kingston, Ian Randle Publishers, 1st pbk, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wrappers, 434 pages with index. The book traces the African ancestral line of Black Jamaicans through to the influence of Asian, European & Spanish rule of the island throughout the ages, culminating with early English white settlers, forging 2-types of Jamaican People. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brick-red cloth covers, 448 pages with index. The attempted modernization of Central Asia by the central Soviet government in the 1920's was a dramatic confrontation between radical, determined, authoritarian communists and a cluster of traditional Moslem societies based on kinship, custom, and religion. The Soviet authorities were determined to undermine the traditional social order through the destruction of existing family structures and worked to achieve this aspect of revolution through the mobilization of women. Gregory J. Massell's study of the interaction between central power and local traditions concentrates on the development of female roles in revolutionary modernization. Women in Moslem societies were segregated, exploited, and degraded; they were, therefore, a structural weak point in the traditional order-a surrogate proletariat. Through this potentially subversive group, it was believed, intense conflicts could be generated within society which would lead to its disintegration and subsequent reconstitution. Marginal notes to about 15 pages, otherwise clean, solid 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, Houghton Mifflin , 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 286 pages, endpaper maps, 60 b&w and color illustrations by Eric Hosking. Dust jacket has edgewear and chipping. Book is very good, tight, clean.

Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 305 pages. The Wrestler's Body tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic. Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes an ethnography of the wrestler's physique that elucidates the somatic structure of the wrestler's identity and ideology.Young men in North India may choose to join an akhara, or gymnasium, where they subject themselves to a complex program of physical and moral fitness. Alter's first-hand description of each detail of the wrestler's regimen offers a unique perspective on South Asian culture and society. Wrestlers feel that moral reform of Indian national character is essential and advocate their way of life as an ideology of national health. Everyone is called on to become a wrestler and build collective strength through self-discipline. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Sydney/London, Murdoch Books , 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 327 pages, color plates. An Asian cookbook written with fresh eyes by an author whose soul lies in Asia but who has adopted techniques and ingredients from the west that endear his recipes to cooks everywhere. Structured by food type - from meat, poultry and seafood to vegetables, and dumplings -Tony Tan's Cooking Class takes readers through the fundamentals of more than 100 beloved dishes, many core to the canon, others dishes that he has made his own. Tan shares insights on the key building blocks, from the art of the wok to understanding the role of oils and fats to noodles 101 and the essential pantry. Beautifully photographed, thoughtfully illustrated and evocatively written, this is the essential book for a new generation on the essential foods and techniques of Asian cuisine from a beloved teacher, cook, writer and respected expert. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wrappers, 160 pages in color. The fabrics of Indonesia have long held an allure. They have now won universal popularity, so much so that local names for techniques of dying and weaving - batik, ikat, tritik - have been adopted internationally as generic terms. The reverence accorded to textile art on the islands is reflected in every area of production; precision of weave and exquisite patterning are testimony to superlative craftsmanship. Lying at the heart of a vast network of trading routes, Indonesia has absorbed a wealth of foreign influences that have spawned an eclectic culture uniquely mirrored in its textile art. Over 200 color plates. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Frederick A. Praeger , 1st, 1966, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. 303 pages, b&w illustrations, maps. Eight years after the Russian capture of Tashkent in 1865, Schuyler, then American consul in St. Petersburg, set out to tour Russia's newly acquired dominions. Traveling entirely by road under primitive conditions, he managed in the space of 18 months to traverse the Steppe Region and record his observations of the Muslim people. Name, date on front fly leaf, no other markings.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton, 1st, 1991, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 254 pages. Red phono disc of Tuvan throat singing still attached. As a stamp-collecting boy always fascinated by remote places, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was particularly taken by the diamond-shaped stamps from a place called Tannu Tuva deep within Outer Mongolia. He hoped, someday, to travel there. In 1977, Feynman and his sidekick - fellow drummer and geography enthusiast Ralph Leighton - set out to make arrangements to visit Tuva, doing noble and hilarious battle with Soviet red tape, befriending quite a few Tuvans, and discovering the wonders of Tuvan throat-singing. Their Byzantine attempts to reach Tannu Tuva would span a decade, interrupted by Feynman's appointment to the committee investigating the Challenger disaster, and his tragic struggle with the cancer that finally killed him. Tuva or Bust! chronicles the deepening friendship of two zany, brilliant strategists whose love of the absurd will delight and instruct. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Hartford, Canfield and Robins, 1st, 1836, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 610 pages. Hardcover with brown leather covers. Heavy soil and wear to the leather. Moderate foxing throughout. Black and white illustrations/engraved plates. Iceland to New Zealand, including the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Water stain to first 40 pages, about one sixth of page. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf. Sound binding.

Hardcover. New Delhi, India, Lustre Press, Roli Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 160 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Stunningly photographed, this album offers a rarely seen view of the snow-clad peaks, mysterious lakes, massive glaciers, and fascinating people of the Himalayas.

Softcover. NY, Thames and Hudson, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 360 pages, Profusely illustrated with 712 photographs, 437 in color. Uzbek architecture, art, textiles, and more. Bright, clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 204 pages. Combines photography with the writings of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author to create a portrait of contemporary Vietnam healed from the war and replete with lush landscapes, customs, villages, traditions, and cities.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, Shambhala, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, red & green patterned wraps. 142 pages with primarily b&w plates, select color & color frontispiece. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Honolulu, University of Hawaii, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 250 pages with 160 color and 20 black & white photographs of the elaborately carved and costumed puppets and portraits of the master puppeteers and carvers, list of Wayang characters, glossary, bibliography. Indonesia's wayang golek puppet theatre is among the world's oldest and richest puppetry traditions, contemporary with Japanese Noh drama and the mystery plays of Europe. In an unclipped dust jacket with some light fading to spine.

Hardcover. New York , Thames & Hudson, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 255 pages, clean hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. B&w photographs throughout by Bischof. His images were influenced by the major photo-movements of his time: the formal concepts of Das Neues Sehen (New Vision), the surrealism of Man Ray, and the documentary tradition of photojournalism. From the 1940s through the early 1950s, he covered World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the Korean War for Life , Paris-Match , and other publications; his most famous series, "Famine in India," appeared in Life in 1951. This first major compilation of Bischof's work is nicely complemented by the text, a joint effort by son Marco and Swiss art historian Magnaguagno that vividly integrates biography and history. Dust jacket with minor edgewear, short closed tear to rear panel.

Hardcover. New York , Thames & Hudson, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 255 pages, clean hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. B&w photographs throughout by Bischof. His images were influenced by the major photo-movements of his time: the formal concepts of Das Neues Sehen (New Vision), the surrealism of Man Ray, and the documentary tradition of photojournalism. From the 1940s through the early 1950s, he covered World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the Korean War for Life , Paris-Match , and other publications; his most famous series, "Famine in India," appeared in Life in 1951. This first major compilation of Bischof's work is nicely complemented by the text, a joint effort by son Marco and Swiss art historian Magnaguagno that vividly integrates biography and history.

Hardcover. NY, Stewart Tabori & Chang , 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 232 pages. Ortner's astonishing photographs portray his love and devotion for the Asian countries he has traversed over a 20-year period. This grand tour of spiritual lands includes natural and architectural sites in Nepal, India, Cambodia, Java, and Bali. The artist's fascination with majestic mountains and remote temples is beautifully captured throughout the book. In his best work, he portrays bizarre Hindu and Buddhist statuary and the faces of disheveled religious mendicants.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 243 pages, b&w drawings by the author. Recounts the author's experiences living among primitive peoples in South America, India, Tibet, Africa, Borneo, New Guinea, and Southeast Asia. Part autobiographical journal, part social-historical novel, Wild Man tracks Tobias Schneebaum's fascinating and almost epic life story, from his earliest contemplation of homoerotic desire through his life in Peru, Borneo, and beyond. Clean copy.