biography

Hardcover. Philadelphia, David McKay, 1st thus, 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering and black stamped detail to front board, gilt decorative detail/ lettering to spine, top edge gilt, portrait frontispiece with facsimile signature and dedication to David McKay with tissue guard, 2 pull-out sections of facsimile handwritten autobiography notes by author. Bright, clean copy.

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."

Softcover. Prestel, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 96 pages. Roland Penrose met Lee Miller's lips a year before he met the rest of her - in a painting by Man Ray. It was a fitting introduction for two artists who were linked by an art movement that delighted in chance encounters. Together they forged a life joined by a common cause - surrealism. This illustrated joint biography tells the story of how a fashion model turned photographer and an English Quaker turned art collector and surrealist painter influenced modern art with their vision and passion, and created a life together that was in itself a work of art.

Hardcover. New York, Monacelli Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The first book to examine how her career as a model and fashion photographer illuminates her life story and connects to international fashion history from the late 1920s until the early 1950s.

Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pale rose boards with photo label on front cover. Over one hundred of the most outstanding photographs taken by photographer, model, and surrealist muse Lee Miller, Introduced to photography at an early age, Lee Miller honed her craft in Paris, where she associated with the Surrealists and avant-garde artists including Jean Cocteau and Picasso. Together with Man Ray she accidentally discovered the distinctive technique of solarization to create mesmerizing halo effects. After establishing her own photographic studio in New York, where she became a prominent commercial photographer, she then moved to the Middle East and Europe before becoming the official war photographer for Vogue, a period during which she took many of her most iconic photographs. This evocative book collects Lee Miller's most famous documentary, fashion, and war works, as well as photographs of Miller, all carefully compiled by her son the photographer Antony Penrose, with a foreword by actress Kate Winslet, Cllean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Ballantine Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Daughter Vernona Gomez honors her late father with a well-researched biography of Yankee great Vernon "Lefty" Gomez. From the time he was a child Lefty wanted to be a baseball player. His strength was in his determination to achieve his goal while at the same time being a willing learner from those who had knowledge to pass on to him. In other words he was coachable and aware of his limitations. Gomez played during the heyday of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and later Joe DiMaggio. Lefty was The Yankee Clipper's roommate for several years, and taught the quiet DiMaggio life in the big leagues. The book provides numerous anecdotes of the Yankee greats of this time period which enrich the book a great deal. Gomez was there when Ruth supposedly called his "shot" in Wrigley Field during the 1932 World Series. He was also there when Gehrig was stricken with illness and had to prematurely retire from the game. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Koln GR, Taschen, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 336 pages. One remarkable woman, five remarkable careers: Leni Riefenstahl is the exception to the rule. From dancer to actress to film-maker to photographer to diver, she has excelled in each field and is one of the most important and controversial artists of the 20th century. Her contributions to the art and technique of film-making were vast, most notably in her epochal film "Olympia" (1938). Critically acclaimed during the 1930's for her work under the Hitler administration and harshly criticized after the war, Riefenstahl surged on, completing the famous "Tiefland" in 1954. In the 1960s and 70s she traveled to Africa and extensively photographed East Africa and the Nuba tribes in Sudan, publishing three books. Ready for yet another change, she took up deep-sea diving at the age of 71, beginning a new chapter as an underwater photographer.Though she has attracted much attention throughout her life and has been the subject of many books, articles, and films, Leni Riefenstahl Five Lives is the first book to showcase her entire career in pictures. Produced in collaboration with Riefenstahl herself, the book includes her most famous images as well as many previously unpublished pictures from her private archives.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 400 pages. The definitive biography of Leni Riefenstahl, the woman best known as "Hitler's filmmaker," one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities of the twentieth century. It is the story of huge talent and huger ambition, one that probes the sometimes blurred borders dividing art and beauty from truth and humanity. Relying on new sources--including interviews with her colleagues and intimate friends, as well as on previously unknown recordings of Riefenstahl herself--Bach gives us an exceptional work of historical investigation that untangles the past and is also an objective but unsparing appraisal of a woman of spectacular gifts corrupted by ruthless personal ambition.

Softcover. UK, Abacus, reprint, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 468 pages, b&w illustrations. Presents a revealing biography, based on primary sources, of the life and works of Riefenstahl and her role as photographer and filmmaker in Germany and during the Nazi regime. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. Woodstock NY, Overlook Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with minor edge wear. Over 300 photographs (many in color), most never-before published, chronology, select recordings and videotapes, index. Text taken from Lenya's interviews, private conversations, letters, and other writings provide captivating glimpses into her on-stage and off-stage world. Married to Kurt Weill, the pair brought their talents to American theater when they left Nazi Germany in the 1930s. She gave unforgettable performances on stage and screen ('Threepenny Opera', 'Cabaret' etc) and established herself as one of the twentieth century's most enduring and talented performers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Charlottesville, NC, University Press of Virginia, 1st, 1983, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 140 pages + 163 b&w prints. Monograph of a painter who carried the standard of realism through the 20th century while the artistic movement raced toward abstraction. Red cloth with gilt lettering to spine and white pictorial dust jacket. Like new, in shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 606 pages, b&w illustrations. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean copy. An extraordinary selection of revealing letters to and from one of the titans of 20th-century music. Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician--a brilliant conductor who attained international super-star status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals (West Side Story), symphonies (Age of Anxiety), choral works (Chichester Psalms), film scores (On the Waterfront), and much more. Bernstein was also an enthusiastic letter writer, and this book is the first to present a wide-ranging selection of his correspondence. The letters have been selected for the insights they offer into the passions of his life--musical and personal--and the extravagant scope of his musical and extra-musical activities.

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster, First Edition, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 599 pages. Hardcover. Wine cloth boards with gilt titles to spine & illustrated, sepia toned endpapers. Profusely illustrated in full color & black & white, images beautifully presented to accompany text. Bright dust jacket with marginal wear. Clean & unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, First Edition, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 335 pages. Hardcover. Ivory boards with black printed titles to mustard cloth spine. Dust jacket with moderate toning & light wear to edges. Previous owner's signature to front flyleaf. Illustrations in bw throughout. Clean & unmarked copy.

Hardcover. NY, Johnson Reprint Corporation, reprint, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 192 pages, illustrated with 22 color plates and 177 in b&w. Contents: 1). Preface. 2). Major events in Leonardo's life. 3). The river. 4). The fiction. 5). Hercules. 6). Leda. 7). Bacchus. 8). Epilogue. 9). Bibliography. 10). Index. Smaller ownership sticker on inside front cover otherwise bright and clean.

Softcover. Authors Choice Press, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, b&w illustrations, 216 pages. Originally published in 1973 and covers the early and essential years of her life and career. The story of a shy girl from Mississippi who became a world opra star told in a sympathetic light.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Co., 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 144 pages. Lester Beall, who died in 1969, was the first graphic designer to receive a one-man exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (in 1937) and was awarded the 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Institute of Graphic Artists, a sign of his importance in American graphic design. In full color, this book documents the work of his pioneering 44-year career-advertising, corporate-identity programs, product styling, packaging, exhibits, murals, annual reports, posters, books, and magazines for a wide range of clients, including the U.S. government, the International Paper Company, Martin Marietta Corporation, and many others.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 302 pages. Celebrated Author Roger Angell has warmly Inscribed to an friend and signed on the title page ("For Carl - All best, Roger Angell ". The book contains the childhood baseball recollections from America's premier observer of the world of baseball and life. Angell was the long time contributor to The New Yorker. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 595 pages, with black & white photographs. Minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight. In the course of his flamboyant career as an all-purpose activist, Saul Alinsky went from organizing working-class ethnics in one of Chicago's most blighted neighborhoods to mapping out strategies for the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. He enlisted allies-from Catholic clergymen to labor unionists and black activists-in battles waged against opponents from slumlords to the Eastman Kodak corporation. The range of Alinsky's activities, the intensity of his beliefs, and his exhilarating mixture of crudeness and calculation almost vibrate off the pages of this passionate and inspiring biography.

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 240 pages. An illustrated biography of Smith by Ben Maddow. Includes a wide range of Smith's images and various subject matter and includes some of his most iconic images. A clean and tight very good copy in gray cloth boards. The definitive volume on W. Eugene Smith's life and work, containing his major photo-essays, the portrait work, and spanning his career from his days aboard an aircraft carrier, through the breadth of Pittsburgh, to the human suffering explicit in his last great essay from Minamata. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Brentano's , reprint, 1904, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, cloth spine with printed paper label; gray printed paper over cardboard boards. In 1669, a Parisian bookseller published a slim volume called Portuguese Letters, which unveiled a love affair between a young Portuguese nun and a French officer that had occurred a few years earlier during a war-torn period in Portugal. The book contained 12 passionate love letters from the nun when the officer was forced to return to France. The letters took Paris by storm. They spoke of love in a manner so direct, so precise, and so raw, they sent shivers of recognition through the sophisticated stratums of polite society. Equally remarkable was the mystery that surrounds the letters: the author was unknown, and most people assumed they were the fictional product of a French aristocrat. Copy of the 1817 London edition including a frontispiece portrait of the nun writing a letter. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dodd Mead, 1st US, nd, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth, gilt lettering on the spine, 320 pages including index. First published in 1888, this work reproduces for the first time in full the letters sent by the English gentlewoman Dorothy Osborne (1627-95) to Sir William Temple (1628-99) during their courtship. Osborne first met Temple on the Isle of Wight in 1648, but both their families opposed the relationship and the couple were not able to marry until 1654. Osborne's letters are highly engaging, especially notable for their political and social commentary as well as for the details they reveal about her daily life and the clandestine courtship. Believed to be the first US edition, no date indicated. Clean copy. Spine cloth worn at top.

Softcover. AuthorHouse, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages. Softcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. B/w illustrations throughout. Wrapper and pages clean. This book is the story of just one newly graduated nurse told in her own words in her letters home saved by her parents and friends. It is one of the few stories of nurses in the Pacific area.

Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A collection of the letters by the influential writer of Atlas Shrugged and other acclaimed works offers a unique view of her world, in both the personal and the professional spheres. 681 pages, clean copy.