biography

Hardcover. NY, David McKay, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly soiled dust jacket. 167 pages illustrated by Ruth Sheetz. The Morse's became innkeepers on Martha's Vineyards, leaving city life in New York. This is the story of Beach Plum Inn. Light tanning to front fly leaf where newspaper clipping was laid in, otherwise clean.

Softcover. US, Somogy Art Publishers , 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 320 pages. Softcover with little to no wear on edges. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. Bringing the famed Parisian illustrator to light, this biography centers on Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, who studied at the prestigious Royal Academy but failed to win the coveted Prix de Rome. The study relates that the subject reacted to this disappointment by throwing aside all hopes of a traditional artistic career and hastening out into the thoroughfares of Paris to sketch everything in sight, living an errant, bohemian existence and succumbing increasingly to an obsession with drawing. Detailed and engaging, this recollection demonstrates that, despite his personal eccentricities, Saint-Aubin was employed as an artist all his life.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 589 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark on bottom text block. Tight copy. Light rubbing to dust jacket.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Three hardcover volumes in a pictorial slipcase, 1056 pages. Few cartoonists ever had as lavish a tribute as a three-volume-slipcased collection, but few are as deserving as Wilson. Collecting 50 years worth of his monthly single page gag cartoons from Playboy, it's a definitive overview of a remarkable talent and viewpoint. Considering the timeframe, Wilson's fabled black humor and art style remain remarkably consistent--as time passes, the drawing renders into slightly blobbier shapes that retain all of their wit just the same--but the source and degree of the humor is a constant. Although best known for his slightly lugubrious subjects--monsters, witches, corpses, vampires and skeletons are frequent visitors to these pages--Wilson also targets consumerism, materialism, and other basic human foibles. As publisher Gary Groth writes in a biography in the third volume, He has constructed a world that is eerily family, unsettlingly recognizable and lethally consistent. Beautifully designed and printed, the books contain cut-out pages, and the slipcase itself becomes a window for a trapped photo of Wilson. Text extras include Wilson's prose short stories and an appreciation by Neil Gaiman.

Softcover. Italy, Instituto E Museo Di Storia Della Scienza, 1st, 1970, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 54 pages. Softcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. Foxing on edges and preliminary/back pages. Does not affect text or illustrations. Wrapper in good condition.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2010, Haerdcover in a bright dust jacket. 354 pages, b&w illustrations. Galileo (1564-1642) is one of the most important and controversial figures in the history of science. Tackling Galileo as astronomer, engineer and author, the author places him at the centre of Renaissance culture. He traces Galileo through his early rebellious years onwards: his move to Florence seeking money, status, and greater freedom to attack intellectual orthodoxies; his trial for heresy and narrow escape from torture; and his house arrest and physical (though not intellectual) decline. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, IL, NTC Publishing Group, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 256 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. A unique collection of photographs offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes visual chronicle of baseball players from the 1930s, '40s, and '50s

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster , 1st US, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday & Company, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, stated first edition, 256 pages, b&w photos. "This is the completely fascinating, thorough and dispassionate biography of Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, the Swedish girl who became "one of the great ornaments and excitements of her age." Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, Stewart Tabori & Chang, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages. Oversized. Green cloth cover with some bumping to edges and corners. Dust jacket has slight wear to edges. Color and b&w illustrations and photographs throughout. A clean, bright copy.

Softcover. London, Phoenix Press, reprint, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 718 pages. One of history's greatest reformers, Garibaldi won his first battle against Aegean Pirates, his last battle against German Dragoons. He went to jail in Russia and led Brazilian rebels in the field. He was twice an admiral and seven times a general, a high government official in at least five countries, became Commander in Chief of the Uruguayan Army, Dictator of Sicily and Freeman of the City of London.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 482 pages with index. The first sustained analysis of the cult of the legendary Italian hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary leader and popular hero, was among the best-known figures of the nineteenth century. This book seeks to examine his life and the making of his cult, to assess its impact, and understand its surprising success. For thirty years Garibaldi was involved in every combative event in Italy. His greatest moment came in 1860, when he defended a revolution in Sicily and provoked the collapse of the Bourbon monarchy, the overthrow of papal power in central Italy, and the creation of the Italian nation state. It made him a global icon, representing strength, bravery, manliness, saintliness, and a spirit of adventure. Handsome, flamboyant, and sexually attractive, he was worshiped in life and became a cult figure after his death in 1882. Lucy Riall shows that the emerging cult of Garibaldi was initially conceived by revolutionaries intent on overthrowing the status quo, that it was also the result of a collaborative effort involving writers, artists, actors, and publishers, and that it became genuinely and enduringly popular among a broad public. 33 b&w illustrations.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1923, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with gilt stamping, top edge gilt. 400 pages with index. 4 b&w plates including a frontis portrait of the editor/publisher. Inscription, light note on front fly leaf, otherwise clean. Gilt lettering on spine has fading/chipping.

Hardcover. New York, Beaufort Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 375 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 206 pages. Famously unabashed, W. Eugene Smith was photography's most celebrated humanist. As a photo essayist at Life magazine in the 1940s and '50s, he established himself as an intimate chronicler of human culture. His photographs of war and disaster, villages and metropolises, doctors and midwives, revolutionized the role of images in journalism, transforming photography for decades to come. When Smith died in 1978, he left behind eighteen dollars in the bank and forty-four thousand pounds of archives. He was only fifty-nine, but he was flat worn-out. His death certificate read "stroke," but, as was said of the immortal jazzman Charlie Parker, Smith died of "everything," from drug and alcohol benders to weeklong work sessions with no sleep. Lured by the intoxicating trail of people that emerged from Smith's stupefying archive, Sam Stephenson began a quest to trace his footsteps. In Gene Smith's Sink, Stephenson merges traditional biography with rhythmic digressions to revive Smith's life and legacy. Traveling across twenty-nine states, Japan, and the Pacific, Stephenson profiles a lively cast of characters, including the playwright Tennessee Williams, to whom Smith likened himself; the avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, with whom he once shared a Swiss chalet; the artist Mary Frank, who was married to his friend Robert Frank; the jazz pianists Thelonious Monk and Sonny Clark, whose music was taped by Smith in his loft; and a series of obscure caregivers who helped keep Smith on his feet. The distillation of twenty years of research, Gene Smith's Sink is an unprecedented look into the photographer's potent legacy and the subjects around him. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York , PowerHouse Books, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 192 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout. Every city-dweller has seen them, and ever city-dweller could list the telltale signs: the fur, the gold, the hats, the cars. They are the original macks, the original players. They are Big City pimps--the heroes of gangsta rap. Bob Adelman and Susan Hall dive headlong into their world in the classic investigative docudrama Gentleman of Leisure: A Year in the Life of a Pimp, an in-depth exploration of the underworld figures that populate our streets at night. The first book of its kind, Gentleman of Leisure, originally published in 1972 and now reproduced in a facsimile edition, is a collection of photographs and interviews dramatically documenting the private life of a pimp and his prostitutes. The people who appear in this book are not models: they are real people with real lives. Only their names have been changed to protect the guilty, their stories are real. Armed only with a camera and a tape recorder, Adelman and Hall entered the lives of the pimp Silky and his women. What they found flew in the face of prevailing prejudices: stripped of stereotype and myth, the pimps and whores that shared their tales were complex people embroiled in romantic dramas, with a code of behavior as intricate as the Mafia's, and a defined sense of self.

Hardcover. New York , PowerHouse Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 192 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout. Every city-dweller has seen them, and ever city-dweller could list the telltale signs: the fur, the gold, the hats, the cars. They are the original macks, the original players. They are Big City pimps--the heroes of gangsta rap. Bob Adelman and Susan Hall dive headlong into their world in the classic investigative docudrama Gentleman of Leisure: A Year in the Life of a Pimp, an in-depth exploration of the underworld figures that populate our streets at night. The first book of its kind, Gentleman of Leisure, originally published in 1972 and now reproduced in a facsimile edition, is a collection of photographs and interviews dramatically documenting the private life of a pimp and his prostitutes. The people who appear in this book are not models: they are real people with real lives. Only their names have been changed to protect the guilty, their stories are real. Armed only with a camera and a tape recorder, Adelman and Hall entered the lives of the pimp Silky and his women. What they found flew in the face of prevailing prejudices: stripped of stereotype and myth, the pimps and whores that shared their tales were complex people embroiled in romantic dramas, with a code of behavior as intricate as the Mafia's, and a defined sense of self.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover on a lightly worn dust jacket, 641 pages, b&w illustrations. This is the first full-length biography of the man historian Michael Beschloss calls the keystone figure in the history of American intelligence. Allen Dulles (1893-1969) served in the Office of Strategic Services in Europe during WWII and was named director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1953, serving under Eisenhower and Kennedy. In an overlong, sometimes tedious narrative, Grose (Israel in the Mind of America) describes how Dulles oversaw the firm establishment of the CIA in the Washington power structure during the Eisenhower years (his older brother, John Foster Dulles, was then the Secretary of State), only to be forced out after the CIA's failure in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Later appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy, Dulles became its most diligent member, according to Grose, and a supporter of the view that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Other controversial issues explored include Dulles's exploitation of ex-Nazi Reinhard Gehler's spy network in the early years of the Cold War, and whether JFK authorized, or even knew about, CIA attempts to liquidate Castro. Grose delves unenlighteningly into Dulles's shortcomings as husband and father; he kept a mistress or two and spent little time at home.

Hardcover. Peacham VT, The Perpetua Press, 1st, 2002, Hardcover in the publisher's cream-colored linen over boards with spine and upper board gilt-stamped black leather labels. No dust jacket, as issued. 88 pages, only 500 copies printed. A collection of interviews done with Shaw from 1924 - 1945. Bright and clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Mason/Charter,, 1st US, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 355 pages. Bibliography, appendix, notes, index. This biography reveals both the public and private sides of George Canning, and is also a study of international opportunism in an age when "empire" was an exalted concept. Name on front fly leaf,otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Dial Press, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 216 pages. Thirty-five color plates including frontispiece plus numerous black and white plates. Dust jacket worn, chipped.

Hardcover. NY, St Martins Press, 3rd pr, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 404 pages, with black & white photographs. Minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1st , 1983, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 312 pages, illustrated throughout with drawings in b&w. Black blind-stamped boards, brown cloth spine with gilt title. White pictorial dust jacket. Light wear to covers and spine, else a very nice, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 2nd pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 304 pages. In this book, a revised edition of the original published in England in 1957, Herbert Butterfield explores the sources of myths, errors and inferences concerning the reign of King George III. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.