biography philosophy

Softcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st US, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, Advance Reading Copy, 408 pages. The seven-foot Dirk Nowitzki is one of the greatest players in basketball history. The Dallas Maverick's legend revolutionized the sport, redefining the role of the big man in the modern game. Dirk moved differently: flexible and fast, confident and in control. He thought differently, too. On the court, his shots were masterful-none more venerated than his signature one-legged flamingo fadeaway, a move that lives on in the repertoire of today's most skilled NBA players. How did this lanky kid from the German suburbs become an all-time top ten scorer and NBA champion? How can a superstar stay so humble? Award-winning novelist and sportswriter Thomas Pletzinger spent over seven years traveling with Nowitzki. He witnessed Dirk's summer workouts, involving fingertip pushups and the study of the physics, and spent days discussing literature and philosophy with Holger Geschwindner, Dirk's enigmatic mentor and coach. Watching Nowitzki in empty gyms and in packed arenas with 30,000 fans, Pletzinger began to understand how Dirk and Holger's philosophical insights on performance, creativity, and freedom enabled his success and longevity. This proof edition lacks the photo section. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 3rd pr., 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 316 pages. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy, and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism. Remarkably, the two were best friends for most of their adult lives, sharing what Dennis Rasmussen calls the greatest of all philosophical friendships. The Infidel and the Professor is the first book to tell the fascinating story of the friendship of these towering Enlightenment thinkers-and how it influenced their world-changing ideas. The book follows Hume and Smith's relationship from their first meeting in 1749 until Hume's death in 1776. It describes how they commented on each other's writings, supported each other's careers and literary ambitions, and advised each other on personal matters, most notably after Hume's quarrel with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University at the Clarendon Press, 2nd Ed., 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 709 pages. B&W frontispiece portrait of Hume and folding family tree to rear. Mossner's Life of David Hume remains the standard biography of this great thinker and writer. First published in 1954, and now updated, in response to an overwhelming interest in Hume's brilliant ideas. Containing more than a simple biography, this exemplary work is also a study of intellectual reaction in the eighteenth century. In this new edition are a detailed bibliography, index, and textual supplements, making it the perfect text for scholars and advanced students of Hume, epistemology, and the history of philosophy. It is also ideal for historians and literary scholars working on the eighteenth century, and for anyone with an interest in philosophy. Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 408 pages. The only biographical account of More by one of his contemporaries. Ward's almost hagiographical tone is testimony to the high regard in which More was held by his admirers. This account testifies to the continuing impact of More's ideas in the enlightenment. This volume prints the only modern edition of Ward's biography printed in 1710 together with the manuscript account of More's writings published here for the first time. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes, reprint , 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bright blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 488 pages. VOLUME 1 ONLY of a two volume set. Originally published in 1876. Name on front fly leaf, light pencil marking to about 25 pages.

Softcover. NY, Macmillan, reprint, 1963, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 674 pages, b&w illustrations. According to Keynes' biographer, "Keynes' contributions to the theory of economics tended to be closely related to his practical proposals, and these in turn were also influenced by his general philosophy. An understanding of the background of his thought is indispensable for a correct interpretation of his conclusions. Furthermore, I venture to think that those who come after will be interested in Keynes, not only on account of his teachings and influence, but also for what he was in himself. If I am right in supposing that he was one of the greatest Englishmen of his age, then it is expedient that an attempt should be made to bring together all the varied aspects of his character and interests into a single biography." Light shelfwear.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 310 pages. A facsimile reprint of the 1911 edition. One of 9 volumes in More's collected works. Includes Parts One and Two. Name on front fly leaf otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 535 pages. This work contains Shaftesbury's philosophical notebooks from 1698 to 1712. It includes reflections on such topics as the natural affections, good and evil, God, self, the passions, pleasure and pain, nature, life, and philosophy, as well as a brief Life of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, by his son. A reprint of the 1900 edition. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 2nd pr., 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, navy cloth, gilt spine lettering. B/W frontispiece. 174 pages with index. Owner's name to front fly leaf, light spotting to rear cover, clean otherwise. Kierkegaard reflects on his lifetime of writing and understanding of his varied works. The work was written in 1848, published in part in 1851 (as On my Work as an Author), and published in full posthumously in 1859. This work explains his pseudonymous writings and his personal attachment to those writings.

Softcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 416 pages. In this definitive biography, Justin Wolff places Benton in the context of his tumultuous historical moment-as well as in the landscapes and cultural circles that inspired him. Thomas Hart Benton-with compelling insights into Benton's art, his philosophy, and his family history-rescues a great American artist from myth and hearsay, and provides an indelibly moving portrait of an influential, controversial, and often misunderstood man.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bright green cloth with gilt and black stamping, 548 pages. Illustrated from photographs, facsimiles, plates. Study of Jefferson's mind based on contributions of "French thinkers" on his political philosophy. Inscription on inside front cover, otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 265 pages illustrated in b&w. From Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody's Fool, comes Three Rocks, a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic strip Nancy. But this graphic novel is about more than a single comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception to 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers--a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve. Nancy is hailed as the "perfect" comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape--just enough to communicate environment to the reader. This distillation is exemplary of the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, a comic strip about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip--the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 449 pages, b&w illustrations. Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don't tell half of Cobb's tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: "Ty Cobb could cause more excitement with a base on balls than Babe Ruth could with a grand slam," one columnist wrote. When the Hall of Fame began in 1936, he was the first player voted in.But Cobb was also one of the game's most controversial characters. He got in a lot of fights, on and off the field, and was often accused of being overly aggressive. In his day, even his supporters acknowledged that he was a fierce and fiery competitor. Because his philosophy was to "create a mental hazard for the other man," he had his enemies, but he was also widely admired. After his death in 1961, however, something strange happened: his reputation morphed into that of a monster--a virulent racist who also hated children and women, and was in turn hated by his peers. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, Verso, 1st Thus, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 174 pages. Softcover. Light marginal wear to covers. Clean & unmarked.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st pbk, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 755 pages. Walter Benjamin is one of the twentieth century's most important intellectuals, and also one of its most elusive. His writings-mosaics incorporating philosophy, literary criticism, Marxist analysis, and a syncretistic theology-defy simple categorization. And his mobile, often improvised existence has proven irresistible to mythologizers. His writing career moved from the brilliant esotericism of his early writings through his emergence as a central voice in Weimar culture and on to the exile years, with its pioneering studies of modern media and the rise of urban commodity capitalism in Paris. That career was played out amid some of the most catastrophic decades of modern European history: the horror of the First World War, the turbulence of the Weimar Republic, and the lengthening shadow of fascism. Now, a major new biography from two of the world's foremost Benjamin scholars reaches beyond the mosaic and the mythical to present this intriguing figure in full. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 474 pages, b&w illustrations. "A "heroic" and "fascinating" biography of John Cage showing how his work, and that of countless American artists, was transformed by Zen Buddhism". (The New York Times). Where the Heart Beats is the story of the tremendous changes sweeping through American culture following the Second World War, a time when the arts in America broke away from centuries of tradition and reinvented themselves. Painters converted their canvases into arenas for action and gesture, dancers embraced pure movement over narrative, performance artists staged "happenings" in which anything could happen, poets wrote words determined by chance.

Hardcover. Carbondale IL, Southern Illinois University Press, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 524 pages. Top edge gilt. This fifth volume of Horace Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in Camden" is the first to appear in print without the benefit of a final reading by the author. His wife, Gertrude Traubel, corrected only obvious slips and unnecessary repetitions, checking references that seemed unclear. While the manuscript was sometimes difficult to decipher, it was never in disjointed notes, but always a continuous narrative. Final volume of Horace Traubel's compilation of his daily conversations with poet Walt Whitman, capturing much of the poet's philosophy. Traubel was Whitman s intimate friend, biographer, and literary executor. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2000, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 398 pages. The seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community of Amsterdam the age of twenty-four for 'horrendous heresies', and was eventually reviled by all religious authorities for claiming that human beings are parts of a single, unified nature, that God is identical with nature, and that reason, not revelation, supplies the truth of any aspect of God. Undeterred, he made this thesis the basis for a rational crusade against superstition and prejudice. Dr Gullan-Whur's biography, the first for twenty-eight years, shows how Spinoza's central philosophical beliefs developed within the context of his own life. Drawing on very recent scholary research and making detailed reference to primary sources, some not previously explored, the author focuses on the philosopher's attempt to act solely through reason in the face of turbulent personal and national circumstances. This new approach demolishes the myth that Spinoza was a lofty ascetic. It exposes his emotional and sexual vulnerabilit arrogance and misogyny, yet shows his living philosophical experiment to be shrply relevant today. Clean copy.