biography

Hardcover. University Press of Kansas, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 355 pages. Elected in hard times and serving throughout a catastrophic global war, Franklin Delano Roosevelt confronted crises of epic proportions during his record twelve-year tenure as our nation's chief executive. George McJimsey now provides a fresh account of his much-debated presidency, describing the successes and failures of FDR's landmark administration and offering a new perspective on the New Deal. A welcome synthesis of the best modern scholarship on the Roosevelt administration, McJimsey's study portrays Roosevelt as a pluralist leader whose various New Deal programs empowered the American people to combat America's Great Depression at the grass roots by participating in programs for agriculture, industry, labor, the unemployed, and "underdeveloped" regions. During the depression, Roosevelt hoped to create a "cooperative commonwealth" that would create a strong America at home, as later during World War II he sought to create an international order based on allied cooperation and American leadership.

Hardcover. Boston, Frederick Parker, reprint, 1856, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, embossed brown cloth, 636 pages. B&w frontis with a tissue guard. Ex-lib with stamping, residue to endpapers. Spine cloth chipped along edges, corners bumped. Internally clean, sound copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 347 pages. In this first biography focusing on John Hammond, the charismatic American music producer is brought to life by journalist Dunston Prial. Hammond was renowned for his ability to spot new talent, introducing the world to some of most gifted musicians of early jazz- Billie Holiday, Count Basie, and Charlie Christian. Then, as jazz gave way to pop and rock, Hammond staged an amazing second act discovering Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. 'The Producer' covers Hammond's entire story from his heyday as a music producer to his privileged upbringing as a Vanderbilt. This is a story of an American music in all its rough-edged vitality. Clean copy.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 1956, Softcover, 257 pages. This monograph by a professional thief--with the aid of Edwin H. Sutherland's expert comments and analyses--is a revealing sociological document that goes far to explain the genesis, development, and patterns of criminal behavior. "Chic Conwell," as the author was known in the underworld, gives a candid and forthright account of the highly organized society in which the professional thief lives. He tells how he learned to steal, survive, succeed, and ultimately to pay his debt to society and prepare himself for full and useful citizenship. The Professional Thief presents in amazing detail the hard, cold facts about the private lives and professional habits of pickpockets, shoplifters, and conmen, and brings into focus the essential psychological and sociological situations that beget and support professional crime. Coversworn with small tape repair, name blacked out on title page. Otherwise clean.

Softcover. Portland OR, Amadeus Press, 1st US, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 504 pages. Essays about Purcell by scholars and performers, edited by Burden. -- Illustrated. Includes bibliography. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Unicorn Press, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 580 pages, b&w illustrations. 25 chapters; with a catalog of the writings of Richard Le Gallienne, brief Chronology, and Index in rear. 28 photos and illustrations in section of book including image of Gallienne on frontispiece. Mild fade to spine cloth at bottom. Clean copy.

Yorkshire UK, White Owl, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An in-depth look at the history that shaped the much beloved Herge and the Tintin books. Herge created twenty-four Tintin books which have been translated into more than seventy languages and sold 230 million copies worldwide. The author takes an in-depth look at the man behind the cultural phenomenon and the history that helped shape these books. As well as focusing on the controversies that engulfed Herge, this biography will also look at his personal life, as well as the relationships and experiences that influenced him.

Softcover. NY, International Publishers, 6th pr., 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages. An epic firsthand account of women and labor in the early years of the 20th century. The fiery IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), labor defense and Communist leader writes vividly of her early life. She joined the American Communist Party in 1936 and became its chairwoman in 1961. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral. Illustrated. Index. Clean copy.

Hardcover. University AL, University of Alabama Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, red cloth covers in a lightly worn dust jacket. Here are the passionate memoirs of the French Communard leader, a hero, saint and martyr to the socialists and anarchists battling the injustices of the Third Republic. 202 pages with a bibliography. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Century Company, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 381 pages, b&w illustrations. VOLUME 2 ONLY of a scarce set on the life and works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), an American Beaux-Arts sculptor who is best known for his statues commemorating Abraham Lincoln and Union officers of the Civil War, including Robert Gould Shaw, William Tecumseh Sherman, and John Logan. Edited by his only child, Homer (1880-1953), an artist and museum administrator in his own right. Owner's bookplate on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 503 pages. A vivid and personal portrait of America's greatest political family and its enormous impact on our nation, which expands on the hugely acclaimed seven-part PBS documentary series, bringing readers even deeper into these extraordinary leaders' lives. 796 photographs, some never before seen. Clean copy. This a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 393 pages plus a 16 page index. With eight pages of illustrations and a frontispiece. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Phaidon Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 286 pages. 120 plates and 106 B&W text illustrations. Portrait frontispiece. Light brown cloth cover. Foxing to edges. Otherwise, a clean, tight copy.

Secaucus NJ, Lyle Stuart , 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 301 pages. Will was Gene Fowler's son. Gene Fowler went from journalist in Denver to an in-demand scriptwriter in Hollywood, where he married. His "rat-pack" friends included John Barrymore and W. C. Fields. Here are his son's memoirs of life among such as Ring Lardner, W.C. Fields, William Faulkner, Damon Runyon, Jack Dempsey and others.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 3rd pr., 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 317 pages, b&w photos. This book is a revelation of the fate of a bisexual living part of his life covertly and part of it in the glaring Hollywood lime-light. Here are his complicated romances with Lana Turner, Judy Garland, and Linda Christian, as well as clandestine affairs with members of the same sex.

Hardcover. Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 1st US, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly edgeworn dust jacket. 239 pages including index. Author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins is widely regarded as "the father of the detective story." How curious that his own life has puzzled investigators despite numerous attempts to unravel it. Collins lived a publicly Victorian existence as a contemporary of Dickens, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake in mid-19th-century England. Yet upon his death he left a will dividing his estate equally -- between two mistresses.

Hardcover. Canada, Bond Street Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 378 pages. Published to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad is a brilliant and highly readable biography of a literary figure of world-wide reputation. Conrad's impact has been so profound and far-reaching that, eighty years after his death, he remains an essential cultural reference point. Such phrases as "heart of darkness" and "The horror! The horror!" have entered the language, often cited without an awareness of their original contexts. His popular legacy extends to Latin American fiction, to the spy novel, to the terrorist and anarchist character, and to film. The writers he has influenced range from T. S. Eliot to William Faulkner to V. S. Naipaul and John Le Carre. For a writer of "difficult" fiction he has enjoyed a remarkably wide impact, yet as Marlow proclaims in Lord Jim of the figure whose story he tells,"he was one of us," and so Conrad remains in fascinating ways.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 416 pages. In the summer of 1865, the former exile Dostoevsky found himself trapped in a cheap hotel in Wiesbaden, unable to leave until he'd paid the bill. Having lost the last of his money at the roulette table, his debts hung heavy over his head, his epileptic seizures were worsening, and his wife and beloved brother were dead. Desperate, a story came to him, a way to write himself out of his predicament: the murderer Raskolnikov, the hot, disorienting swirl of St Petersburg, the axe, the terrible crime, and the murderer's paranoia. The book was Crime and Punishment, and from the moment it was published it was a sensation. But how did this haunting tale of guilt come to be, and why does it still hold such a sway over us all these years later? The Sinner and the Saint gives us the story of the creation of a work of literature that has bewitched readers for over a century, and of the two men so central to it: Dostoevsky himself, and Pierre Francois Lacenaire, a notorious murderer and glamorous egoist who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s and whose sensational story provided the germ of the novel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon Books, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light tan boards with pictorial cover in red and black. Sequence of events in Carroll's life and bibliography in back of book. B&w drawings by David Levine. Bright, clean copy, lacks dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Ecco, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 461 pages, b&w illustrations. In this remarkable memoir, the award-winning author shares the ways in which his relationship with his father, combined with his unique childhood, molded him into the scientist, and man, he is today. From Gerd's days as a soldier in Europe to the family's daring escape from the Red Army in 1945 to the rustic Maine farm they came to call home, Heinrich relates it all in his trademark style, making science accessible and awe-inspiring. Remainder line to bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, Frog Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Amy Wallace's first meeting with Carlos Castaneda, the infamous anthropologist-turned-shaman, whose books described meetings with Yaqui Indian spiritual teacher Don Juan. Castaneda's rise was meteoric in the late 1960s as he wrote massive bestsellers, inspired many to experiment with psychedelics, and was dubbed "The Godfather of the New Age". The possibility that Castaneda's experiences may have been fabricated did little to compromise his legend. As the daughter of best-selling novelist Irving Wallace, Amy was rarely shy around famous people. When her father insisted she meet Castaneda, she at first demurred. Little did she know that a delightful first meeting would begin a 20-year friendship, followed by her descent into the dramatic and deeply troubled affair chronicled in this book. Wallace reveals the inner workings of the "Cult of Carlos", run by a charismatic authoritarian in his sixties who controlled his young female followers through emotional abuse, mind games, bizarre rituals, dubious teachings, and sexual excess. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Applause, Revised Ed., 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 326 pages, b&w illustrations. The greatest partnership in the history of the musical, captured in print, wonderfully illustrated. For this new edition, the book has been completely rewritten and substantially expanded to include material on Rodgers' early career with Lorenz Hart as well as his later work, and also features recollections from such theatrical titans as Sheldon Harnick, Martin Charnin, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents. Also, a completely new appendix reveals the details of the continuing worldwide phenomenon of Rodgers and Hammerstein's work. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cleveland, World Publishing Company, 1st US, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 130 pages, illustrated in b&w by David Cobb. Falkus recollects his boyhood, spent fishing, sailing and wildfowling. Clean copy.

Softcover. Urbana, University of Illinois Press , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 361 pages, b&w illustrations. The Stonemans is an eye-opening slice of Americana---a trip through nearly twenty years of country music history following a single family from their native Blue Ridge Mountains to the slums of Washington, D.C., and the glitter of Nashville. As early as 1924 Ernest V. "Pop" Stoneman realized the potential of what is now known as country music, and he tried to carve a career from it. Successful as a recording artist from 1925 through 1929, Stoneman foundered during the Great Depression. He, his wife, and their nine children went to Washington in 1932, struggling through a decade of hardship and working to revive the musical career Pop still believed in. The Stoneman Family won the Country Music Association's Vocal Group of the Year Award in 1967. After Pop's death a year later, some of the children scattered to pursue their own careers. Ivan Tribe relies on extensive interviews with the Stonemans and their friends in this chronicle of a family whose members have clung to their musical heritage through good times and bad.