biography

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 898 pages, b&w illustrations. Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene. Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage, and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain. Bailey examines Roth's rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike, and William Styron, and reveals the truths of his florid love life, culminating in his almost-twenty-year relationship with actress Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House. Clean copy. (After sexual assault allegations about Bailey surfaced, Norton stopped shipping the book and pulverized the remaining copies.)

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, 1st, 1936, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bound in black cloth with design of a phoenix on the front cover. No dust jacket. First edition with Published in October 1936 on copyright page and no additional printings noted. Fading to the spine. 852 pages. A complete collection of D H Lawrence's unpublished essays. Discoloration to black cloth along bottom of front cover and spine, Interior is bright and clean.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 464 pages. An autobiography from this important photographer. Includes numerous color and black and white images. A record of the photographic career of David Douglas Duncan, LIFE photographer and chronicler of wars from 1939 to Vietnam. From Picasso's private life and his unknown paintings to never-photographed treasures in Moscow's Kremlin, to America's historic 1968 Presidential Convention (also NBC's first photo-news one-man report), the results of Duncan's exuberance and keen eye are finally assembled in Photo Nomad. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Washinton DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages, b&w photos. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. Hine became famous for his photographs of immigrants at Ellis Island, child laborers and European war refugees, and for his later celebrations of industrial workers.

Softcover. New York, Rizzoli , 1st, 1995, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-paginated. Softcover. B&w and color photographs throughout. Binding cracked between two pages. Otherwise clean, tight copy.

London, Hutchinson, 1st UK, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover with dust jacket. Black & white photos. Very small closed tear on spine of dust jacket. An account of his life and work. Ponting became the official photographer of Scott's second expedition to the South Pole. With 77 black and white photographs taken on his travels.

Hardcover. Germany, Steidl, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 288 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Photographs of President Abraham Lincoln spanning over 20 years. Tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 340 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Riverhead , 1st, 2001-11-12, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 198 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Filled with fame, fortune, tragedy, excess, betrayal, and salvation, a powerful glimpse into the life of Picasso and his first family, as told by his granddaughter, reveals his controlling ways and alcoholism that led to the destruction of their family and how she learned to come to terms with the blessings and curses of the Picasso legacy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1st US, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 588 pages, several color plates. Before Picasso became Picasso-the iconic artist now celebrated as one of France's leading figures-he was constantly surveilled by the French police. Amid political tensions in the spring of 1901, he was flagged as an anarchist by the security services-the first of many entries in an extensive case file. Though he soon emerged as the leader of the cubist avant-garde, and became increasingly wealthy as his reputation grew worldwide, Picasso's art was largely excluded from public collections in France for the next four decades. The genius who conceived Guernica in 1937 as a visceral statement against fascism was even denied French citizenship three years later, on the eve of the Nazi occupation. In a country where the police and the conservative Academie des Beaux-Arts represented two major pillars of the establishment at the time, Picasso faced a triple stigma-as a foreigner, a political radical, and an avant-garde artist. Picasso the Foreigner approaches the artist's career and art from an entirely new angle, making extensive use of fascinating and long-overlooked archival sources. In this groundbreaking narrative, Picasso emerges as an artist ahead of his time not only aesthetically but politically, one who ignored national modes in favor of contemporary cosmopolitan forms. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise a bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 267 pages. Hardcover. Color illustrations throughout. Very clean inside and out. From the front flap: "This stimulating book is the first comprehensive examination of Picasso's political commitment, his motivations to join the French Communist Party, and his contributions as an active member. Guertje R. Utley assesses the impact Communism had on the artist's life and explores how Picasso's political beliefs and the doctrines of the Communist Party affected his artistic production."

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st US, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages, illustrated throughout in full color and b&w. Light edgewear to dust jacket, faint foxing to bottom edge. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan Company, 1st US, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 461 pages. Laval began his career as a socialist, but over time drifted far to the right. Following France's defeat and armistice with Germany in 1940, he served in prominent roles in Philippe Petain's Vichy Regime, first as the vice-president of the Council of Ministers from 11 July 1940 to 13 December 1940, and later as the head of government from 18 April 1942 to 20 August 1944. After the liberation of France in 1944, Laval was arrested by the French government under General Charles de Gaulle. In what was widely regarded as a flawed trial, Laval was found guilty of plotting against the security of the State and collaboration with the enemy, and after a thwarted suicide attempt, he was executed by firing squad. His manifold political activities left a complicated and controversial legacy, resulting in more than a dozen conflicting biographies of him. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise a bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The work of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), whose orderly black-and-white squares, punctuated occasionally by primary colors are instantly recognizable, played a crucial role in shaping the avant-garde art of the twentieth century. Each section of this visual journey through his life and career takes its inspiration from the location of one of Mondrian's studios and traces his path from Amsterdam to Paris, and via the Dutch village of Laren to London and New York. Each of these locations represents a distinct stage in the development of Mondrian's art: from the naturalistic paintings of the 1890s and the experimental neo-Impressionist works of the early twentieth century to his involvement with the De Stijl movement and his famous grid paintings, and finally the bold dynamism of his late work in the United States, inspired by the rhythms of jazz and the buzzing metropolis. As Mondrian's art took the simplification of form to an extreme, the walls of his studios became an ever-changing surface made up of cardboard rectangles painted in primary colors, white, and gray. Illustrated by a wealth of paintings as well as personal photographs, documents, and texts written by Mondrian himself, the book captures every facet of this uncompromising artist's quest to represent the spirit of the modern world. Illustrated in color throughout

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 287 pages. Pieter Bruegel (ca. 1525-1569), generally considered the greatest Flemish painter of the sixteenth century, was described in 1604 by his earliest biographer as a supremely comic artist, few of whose works failed to elicit laughter. Today, however, we approach Bruegel's art as anything but a laughing matter. His paintings and drawings are thought to conceal profound allegories best illuminated with scholarly erudition. In this delightfully engaging book, Walter S. Gibson takes a new look at Bruegel, arguing that the artist was no erudite philosopher, but a man very much in the world, and that a significant part of his art is best appreciated in the context of humor. In his illuminating examination of the witty and amusing elements in Bruegel's paintings, prints, and drawings in relation to the sixteenth century European culture of laughter, Gibson reminds us exactly why Bruegel was one of the most original artists of his time. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, DialBooks, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 340 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY STEVEN KELLOGG WITH ILLUSTRATION ON FRONT FLY LEAF. Dust jacket shows light rubbing. Cover boards show light edgewear, tight copy.

Hardcover. UK, Sutton, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 243 pages, 16 pages of b&w photos. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 600 pages. Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this masterful biography: the Wright who was haunted by his father, about whom he told the greatest lie of his life. And this, we see, is the Wright of many other neglected aspects of his story: his close, and perhaps romantic, relationship with friend and early mentor Cecil Corwin; the eerie, unmistakable role of fires in his life; the connection between the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the murder of his mistress, her two children, and four others at his beloved Wisconsin home.In showing us Wright's facades along with their cracks, Hendrickson helps us form a fresh, deep, and more human understanding of the man. Clean copy.

Softcover. Rutland, VT, Geo Chalmers Co., Inc, 1st Edition, 1924, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 21 pages. Softcover. Commemorative pamphlet. B/w labeled illustrations ("Photo-Gravures") throughout. String bound with light blue string(see image). Tanning and other agewear throughout. Front cover has small tear at bottom left (see image). Also included: official Certificate of Membership to the "Home Town Coolidge Club" dated August 15, 1924. Published to commemorate President (1923-29) Calvin Coolidge's roots in Vermont.

Hardcover. New York, Viking, 1st thus, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 135 pages. Previous owners name at top right edge of front endpaper. Minor foxing to preliminary pages. Maroon cloth covers with narrow section of fade at top edge of front cover. Dust jacket with edgewear, light chipping and tiny holes along folds - jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1916, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, chocolate-colored cloth with bright gilt stamping. Introduction and short biography by William Archer. First Edition with "published December, 1916 on copyright page with Scribner device. Small notation on inside rear cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 3rd pr., 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 159 pages. Biographical profile by Anna Farova, 131 photographs beautifully reproduced in tritones.

Hardcover. Lexington KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages, in a bright unclipped dust jacket, b&w illustrations. Pola Negri (1897-1987) rose from an impoverished childhood in Warsaw, Poland, to become one of early Hollywood's greatest stars. After tuberculosis ended her career as a ballerina in 1912, she turned to acting and worked under legendary directors Max Reinhardt and Ernst Lubitsch in Germany. Negri preceded Lubitsch to Hollywood, where she quickly became a fan favorite thanks to her beauty, talent, and diva personality. Known for her alluring sexuality and biting artistic edge, she starred in more than sixty films and defined the image of the cinematic femme fatale. Author Mariusz Kotowski brings the screen siren's story to English-speaking audiences for the first time in this fascinating biography. At the height of her fame, Negri often portrayed exotic and mysterious temptresses, headlining in such successes as The Spanish Dancer (1923) and Forbidden Paradise (1924), before returning to Europe in the 1930s. The devastating effects of World War II soon drove her back to the United States, where she starred in Hi Diddle Diddle (1943) and pursued her vaudeville career before retiring from the entertainment industry. Kotowski also illuminates Negri's dramatic personal life, detailing her numerous love affairs-including her engagement to Charlie Chaplin and her romance with Rudolph Valentino-as well as her multiple marriages. This long-overdue biography not only paints a detailed portrait of one classic Hollywood's most intriguing stars and the film industry's original Jezebel, but also explores the link between Hollywood and European cinema during the interwar years.

Hardcover. Norwich CT, The Henry Bill Publishing Company, 1st, 1887, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown buckram covers with gilt lettering on spine. Frontispiece portrait, 525 pages. James Gillespie Blaine (1830 -1893) was an American statesman and Republican politician who represented Maine in the US House of Representatives from 1863 to 1876, serving as Speaker of the US House of Representatives from 1869 to 1875, and then in the United States Senate from 1876 to 1881 He twice served as Secretary of State (1881, 1889-1892), one of only two persons to hold the position under three separate presidents (the other being Daniel Webster), and unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for President in 1876 and 1880 before being nominated in 1884 In the general election, he was narrowly defeated by Democrat Grover Cleveland. The original edition, here nicely rebound, previous owner's signature otherwise a clean, bright copy.