biography

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2nd pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 505 pages with b&w illustrations. Amazing detail, yet easily flowing narrative of the governor who preceded FDR, who--with Frances Perkins assistance as Industrial Commissioner--shaped a state's humane response to sweatshops, immigration. His 1928 presidential campaign faced burning Klu Klux Klan crosses and harrassment when he ventured outside the Northeast. After losing to Herbert Hoover he left his successor to Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a working government and blueprint for social reform that Roosevelt would later put to use as President. Name on half title page, otherwise clean internally.

Hardcover. NY/Chicago, Fleming H. Revell, 10th pr., 1915, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover. Black & white frontis photograph of Muir (repeated on dust jacket). 11 other plates plus map. Dust jacket worn, chipped (about half of spine missing).

Hardcover. London, Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1st UK, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth, frontis. portrait, 223 pages. First UK edition of this Einstein biography written by Rudolf Kayser, a German literary historian and husband to Albert Einsteins stepdaughter, writing under the pseudonym Anton Reiser. Foreword by Albert Einstein. First published in the US in 1930. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 176 pages. Albert Renger-Patzsch, together with August Sander and Karl Blossfeldt, was one of the undisputed pioneers of twentieth-century German photography. Indeed, what Sander achieved in portrait photography and Blossfeldt in plant photography, Renger-Patzsch achieved in his renderings of objects and the material world. As a protagonist of the movement that came to be known as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), he wanted to record, phenomenologically as it were, the exact appearance of objects -- their form, material, and surface. Thus he rejected any kind of artistic claim for himself. Believing that the photographer should strive to capture the "essence of the object," he called for documentation rather than art.

Softcover. London, Picador , reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 757 pages, b&w illustrations. Albert Speer was Hitler's architect before the Second World War. Through Hitler's great trust in him and Speer's own genius for organisation he became, effectively from 1942 overlord of the entire war economy, making him the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. Sentenced to twenty years imprisonment in Spandau Prison at the Nuremberg Trails, Speer attempted to progress from moral extinction to moral self-education. How he came to terms with his own acts and failures to act and his real culpability in Nazi war crimes are the questions at the centre of this book. The author had access to Speer, his family and friends and his private papers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeto NJ, Princeton University Press, 3rd Ed., 1948, Book: Very Good, Hardcover set, Volume 1: The life and art of Albrecht Durer 311 pages. Volume 2: Handlist, Concordances, and Illustrations 208 pages. 325 Illustrations. A beautiful 2 volume set with detailed biography and detailed information on paintings, prints and drawings. Both volumes are cloth bound hardback with gilt lettering on front and spine of each volume. Previous owner's name on front fly leaves. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1974, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, first American edition. SIGNED BY BEDFORD on the half-title page. 769 pages plus index, b&w illustrations. Light damp-wrinkling to pages in last third of book. Lacks dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 384 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, Scribner, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 384 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to edges. Color and black & white images throughout. Tight copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 617 pages. An enlarged and revised edition of the 1974 book. This biography begins not with one of the universally known incidents of Alexander's life, but with an account of his father, Philip of Macedonia, whose many-territoried empire was the first on the continent of Europe to have an effectively centralized government and military. What Philip and Macedonia had to offer, Alexander made his own, but Philip and Macedonia also made Alexander form an important context for understanding Alexander himself. Yet his origins and training do not fully explain the man. For the general reader, the book, redolent with gritty details and fully aware of Alexander's darker side, offers a gripping tale of Alexander's career. Full backnotes, fourteen maps, and chronological and genealogical tables serve readers with more specialized interests. Mild foxing to text block, clean copy.

Hardcover. Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 270 pages illustrated throughout with photographs in sepia and drawings in b&w. Autobiography of a Canadian-born sculptor of Western subjects, considered one of the best sculptors of horses in the world. Black cloth spine with red paper boards, no dust jacket. Black pictorial slipcase with light wear. Beautiful copy. Like new.

Hardcover. NY, Macy-Masius Publishers, 3rd pr., 1927, Hardcover in gray cloth covers with gold paper label on spine and front board. Top edge gilt. Tipped-in b&w frontispiece of Smith's portrait by Wilfred Jones. Biography of four time Governor of New York and 1928 Democratic Presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, MA, New York Graphic Society, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 335 pages. 134 black-and-white illustrations. Bibliography and index. Dust jacket slightly sun-faded. Examines Steiglitz's revolutionary role in the American avant-garde from the turn of the century to 1917. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 259 pages, b&w, some color illustrations. Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was an enormously influential artist and nurturer of artists even though his accomplishments are often overshadowed by his role as Georgia O'Keeffe's husband. This new book from celebrated biographer Phyllis Rose reconsiders Stieglitz as a revolutionary force in the history of American art.Born in New Jersey, Stieglitz at age eighteen went to study in Germany, where his father, a wool merchant and painter, insisted he would get a proper education. After returning to America, he became one of the first American photographers to achieve international fame. By the time he was sixty, he gave up photography and devoted himself to selling and promoting art. His first gallery, 291, was the first American gallery to show works by Picasso, Rodin, Matisse, and other great European modernists. His galleries were not dealerships so much as open universities, where he introduced European modern art to Americans and nurtured an appreciation of American art among American artists. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 148 pages. This book celebrates the achievements of Alice Guy Blache (1873-1968), the first woman motion picture director and producer. From 1896 to 1907, she created films for Gaumont in Paris. In 1907, she moved to the United States and established her own film company, Solax. From 1914 to 1920, Guy Blache was an independent director for a number of film companies. Despite her immensely productive and creative career, Guy Blache's indispensable contribution to film history has been overlooked. She entered the world of filmmaking at its nascent stage, when films were seen primarily as a medium in the service of science or as an adjunct to selling cameras. Working with Gaumont cameramen and cameras and the new technical advances for the projection of film, she became one of the film pioneers ushering in the new era of motion pictures as a narrative form. Written by cinema history experts and curators, this handsome volume brings to light a critical new mass of Guy Blache's film oeuvre in an effort to restore her to her rightful place in film history.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with light edgewear, 400 pages.This adventurous book charts the origins of the local "market cooking" culture that we all savor today. When Francophile Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971, few Americans were familiar with goat cheese, cappuccino, or mesclun. But it wasn't long before Waters and her motley coterie of dreamers inspired a new culinary standard incorporating ethics, politics, and the conviction that the best-grown food is also the tastiest. Based on unprecedented access to Waters and her inner circle, this is a truly delicious rags-to-riches saga.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. B&w photos, 185 pages. Twenty years after his death, George Balanchine still dominates the world of ballet. Not only have his works been danced by the New York City Ballet continuously since 1948, but they also have been performed by more than two dozen other companies throughout the world. In clear and elegant writing, Terry Teachout brings to life the dramatic story of George Balanchine, a Russian emigre who fell in love with American culture, married four times and kept a mistress on the side, and transformed the art of ballet forever. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St Martins Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 707 pages, b&w illustrations. Born in poverty, and self-educated while working in a print shop, William Lloyd Garrison was one of the United States' greatest crusading editors, putting out a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, for 35 years, beginning in 1831. A product of the rough and tumble political journalism of the day, Garrison wrote with extreme passion and from an uncompromising point of view. Yet the man who emerges from the pages of All on Fire is a deeply thoughtful person who, despite barely escaping lynch mobs himself, had a great sense of humor and a very polite demeanor. Historians have tended to minimize Garrison's impact on America, and some consider him a fringe character. But Henry Meyer, in this hefty biography, places Garrison at the center of his century, noting that Garrison's thought and tactics influenced not only the country's changing view of slavery, but also inspired the incipient feminist movement. The Lincoln administration noted Garrison's influence by inviting him to help raise the flag over the recaptured Fort Sumter. All on Fire goes into great detail on Garrison's life and work, providing the close and copious examination this activist's life fully deserves. Clean copy.

Softcover. Guilford, CT, Lyons Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 352 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Color illustrations throughout. With his life's work, and in All Told, LeRoy Neiman captured sports heroes, movie stars, presidents, dishwashers, jet-setters, jockeys, and more than a few Bunnies at the Playboy Mansion.

Softcover. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 325 pages with index, b&w illustrations. Sarah Gillespie Huftalen led an unconventional life for a rural midwestern woman of her time. Born in 1865 near Manchester, Iowa, she was a farm girl who became a highly regarded country school and college teacher; she married a man older than either of her parents, received a college degree later in life, and was committed to both family and career. A gifted writer, she crafted essays, teacher-training guides, and poetry while continuing to write lengthy, introspective entries in her diary, which spans the years from 1873 to 1952. In addition, she gathered extensive information about the quietly tragic life of her mother, Emily, and worked to preserve Emily's own detailed diary. Taken together, Emily's and Sarah's extraordinary diaries span nearly a century and thus form a unique mother/daughter chronicle of daily work and thoughts, interactions with neighbors and friends and colleagues, and the destructive family dynamics that dominated the Gillespies. Sarah's consciousness of the abusive relationship between her mother and father haunts her diary, and this dramatic relationship is duplicated in Sarah's relationship with her brother, Henry, Suzanne Bunkers' skillful editing and analysis of Sarah's diary reveal the legacy of a caring, loving mother reflected in her daughter's work as family member, teacher, and citizen. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Syracuse, New York, Syracuse University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 264 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. A few black and white pictures throughout.

Hardcover. Cambridge, MA, Cosmos Press, 1st, 1945, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. INITIALED BY AUTHOR on title page. 65 pages, b&w photographic plates. Blue boards w/ light soiling, fading. Light foxing to edges, front fly leaves and title page. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 594 pages. A landmark in postwar American literary criticism, forty-one extended essays on contemporary poets, including Robert Bly, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin, Denise Levertov, and James Merrill. Blending biography, textual analysis, and philosophical reflection, it defined a generation's poetic discourse. The book stands as both a map of mid-century American verse and a statement of Howard's erudite critical voice. Light shelfwear, fraying to top, bottom of dust jacket spine. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Morton Grove IL, Albert Whitman & Co , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An adaptation of the author's biography, Land of Enchantment, describes her eventful 1852 journey with her mother and brother from Kansas to California over the Santa Fe trail in a large wagon train. Lovely detailed watercolors illustrate her narrative. Clean copy.