biography china

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 592 pages, b&w illustrations. Samuel Fuller, independent director-producer extraordinaire, tells the story of his life, a life that spanned most of the twentieth century. His twenty-nine tough, gritty pictures made from 1949 to 1989 set out to capture the truth of war, racism, and human frailties, and incorporate some of his own experiences. He writes of his years in the newspaper business--selling papers as a boy on the streets of New York, working for Hearst's New York Journal American, first as a copyboy, then as personal runner for the famous Hearst editor in chief Arthur Brisbane. His film Park Row was inspired by his years as a reporter for the New York Evening Graphic, where his beat included murders, suicides, state executions, and race riots--he scooped every other New York paper with his coverage of the death by drug overdose of the legendary Jeanne Eagels. Fuller talks about directing his first picture (he also wrote the script), I Shot Jesse James . . . and how, as a result, he was sought after by every major studio, choosing to work for Darryl Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox. We see him becoming one of the most prolific, independent-minded writer-directors, turning out seven pictures in six years, among them Pickup on South Street, House of Bamboo, and China Gate. He writes about making Underworld U.S.A., a movie that shows how gangsters in the 1960s were no longer seen as thugs but as "respected" tax-paying executives . . . about the making of the movie Shock Corridor--about a journalist trying to solve a murder in a lunatic asylum--which exposed the conditions in mental institutions . . . and about White Dog (written in collaboration with Curtis Hanson), a film so controversial that Paramount's then studio heads, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, refused to release it. Clean copy.

Softcover. self-published, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 267 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. The autobiography of an American missionary recalling her travel and adventures in China and later Africa. Clean copy with mild warp to book.

Hardcover. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Asia Center, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 544 pages. Minor corner and edge wear, spine bump, otherwise, spotless and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 601 pages, b&w photos. Light wear to edges and covers of pictorial dust jacket, else a very nice, tight copy. Our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A major historical biography of George C. Marshall--the general who ran the U.S. campaign during the Second World War, the Secretary of State who oversaw the successful rebuilding of post-war Europe, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize--and the first to offer a complete picture of his life. While Eisenhower Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, MacArthur, Nimitz, and Leahy waged battles in Europe and the Pacific, one military leader actually ran World War II for America, overseeing personnel and logistics: Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army from 1939 to 1945, George C. Marshall. This interpretive biography of George C. Marshall follows his life from his childhood in Western Pennsylvania and his military training at the Virginia Military Institute to his role during and after World War II and his death in 1959 at the age of seventy-eight. It brings to light the virtuous historical role models who inspired him, including George Washington and Robert E. Lee, and his relationships with the Washington political establishment, military brass, and foreign leaders, from Harry Truman to Chiang Kai-shek. It explores Marshall's successes and failures during World War II, and his contributions through two critical years of the emerging Cold War--including the transformative Marshall Plan, which saved Western Europe from Soviet domination, and the failed attempt to unite China's nationalists and communists.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Algonquin Young Readers, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 113 pages. Hardcover. Extensive color illustrations by James McMullan throughout. Illustrated paste downs and end papers. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. McMullan explained, "In my late seventies I decided to organize my memories of my childhood before and during the Second World War into a coherent narrative. The tension of our lives when the Japanese army took over our town in China and the subsequent anxieties of traveling from country to country with my mother has imprinted the incidents of those years into my memory with an enduring lucidity that defies the otherwise fading recall of my aging mind."

Hardcover. Jefferson NC, McFarland Publishing, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with white lettering. 176 pages, b&w illustrations. In 1945, the author found herself in the monsoon-drenched jungles of Assam, caring for soldiers in the China-Burma-India theater of war. Nothing in her nurse's training had prepared her for the tropical diseases her patients faced, nor had her experiences readied her for a hospital where men spat on the floor, rats were pervasive, and patients were as likely to sell their medicine as swallow it. What made the experience tolerable was Nurse Camp's romance with one of the airmen who flew the Hump, supplying O.S.S. troops behind Japanese lines and carrying General Joseph Stillwell's Chinese troops to fight the battle of North Burma. She accompanied her future husband on some of his missions. Based, in part, on letters she wrote to her parents, this is the poignant story of one nurse's experience in World War II and how her service changed her life forever. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, First Edition, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 354 pages. Hardcover. Black cloth boards with gilt titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Dust jacket with only light marginal wear. Clean & unmarked.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 361 pages. During the Cold War years of the 1950s, William F. Knowland was one of the most important figures in American politics. As the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, the wealthy California newspaper heir was recognized and respected by millions. His influence with President Eisenhower led to Earl Warren's appointment as chief justice, and Knowland set in motion a U.S.-China policy that remains part of our international direction today. Yet he committed suicide in 1974, following a personal decline that included political humiliation, a ruined marriage, and the loss of his family fortune. This is the first full-scale biography of Bill Knowland, written by two journalists who came to know him after he left Washington in 1958. Gayle B. Montgomery was a political editor at the Oakland Tribune, the newspaper owned by Knowland's father, the power-wielding Joseph R. Knowland. James W. Johnson was a Tribune editorial writer. Both men worked with Knowland when he returned to the newspaper after giving up his Senate seat in a failed bid to become governor of California. Knowland lost the governorship race to Edmund G. (Pat) Brown; had he won, many observers felt Knowland would have had a clear shot at the White House. This is a book not only about Mr. Republican, but also one that illuminates the strengths and deficiencies of Republican party politics during the years when the party was at its zenith. In portraying the life of Bill Knowland, the authors cast a glaring light both on the machinations of political power and on the Republican establishment's aspirations in the Warren-Eisenhower era. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, British Library, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 224 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Ernest Cromwell Peake arrived in the Hankow region of inland China in 1899, the first medical missionary to attempt to bring modern medicine to the rural Chinese. Black and white images throughout.

Softcover. New York, Phaidon Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 316 pages. Softcvoer with vinyl wrappers. Black and white pictures throughout. This is the first visual history of China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and includes the only complete set of surviving photographs to document the entire period. It is drawn from thousands of original negatives that were hidden for nearly 40 years by photographer Li Zhensheng, at great personal risk, and accompanied by his own personal story. Zhensheng brings to light in this historical record one of the most turbulent, controversial, and under-documented periods in modern history.

Hardcover. NY, Dial Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 300 pages, b&w illustrations. The children's book author has won the Newberry Medal and National Book Award. Now in these fascinating stories from her life, she reveal the origins of her book characters from events in her life; from China with missionary parents to single life in Japan to life in Maryland with four children. Filled with personal photos and letters. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, John Day Co., 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. A biography of Sun Yat-Sen, founder of the short-lived Chinese Republic. Dust jacket spine faded, bookplate inside front cover.

Hardcover. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 3rd pr., 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 439 pages, b&w illustrations with fold-out map of Polo's travels in rear. First published in 1931, this is the 1950 third printing. None of the manuscripts which have come down to us represents the original form of Marco Polo's narrative, but it is clear that certain texts are closer to the lost original than others. Entrusted with the task of preparing a new Italian edition of Marco Polo, Benedetto discovered many unknown manuscripts. He carefully edited the most famous of the manuscripts (the Geographic text) and collated it with the other best known ones. * An invaluable index has been added to Aldo Ricci's of Benedetto's text, which includes all the identifications made in the Geographic text and also later editions by Marsden (1818), Pauthier (1865) and Yule (1871). * The difficulty of following Polo on his many journeys has also been simplified by the process of distinguishing between those places on his main route to China and his return journey by sea to Persia and those places which he visited during his stay in China and those he never visited at all. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf , 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. The author's first book about growing up in Stockton, California with her immigrant parents from a small peasant village in China.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. Drawings by Saul Steinberg. Mississippi author, and war correspondent, who toured the World during WWII for the US Army Service Forces (Supply). Foreword says "This book is a personal record. It has to do with a journey that I made in 1944-45 to Great Britain, France, Belgium, Corsica, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, India, Burma, China."

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.