biography

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 672 pages. 16 pages of photos. What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary--an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story, beginning with Avedon's coming-of-age in New York between the world wars, when cultural prejudices forced him to make decisions that shaped the course of his life. Compounding his private battles, Avedon fought to be taken seriously in a medium that itself struggled to be respected within the art world. Gefter reveals how the 1950s and 1960s informed Avedon's life and work as much as he informed the period. He counted as close friends a profoundly influential group of artists--Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Harold Brodkey, Renata Adler, Sidney Lumet, and Mike Nichols--who shaped the cultural life of the American twentieth century. It wasn't until Avedon's fashion work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late 1970s that he became a household name. Balancing glamour with the gravitas of an artist's genuine reach for worldy achievement--and not a little gossip--plus sixteen pages of photographs, What Becomes a Legend Most is an intimate window into Avedon's fascinating world. Dramatic, visionary, and remarkable, it pays tribute to Avedon's role in the history of photography and fashion--and his legacy as one of the most consequential artists of his time.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 672 pages. 16 pages of photos. What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary--an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story, beginning with Avedon's coming-of-age in New York between the world wars, when cultural prejudices forced him to make decisions that shaped the course of his life. Compounding his private battles, Avedon fought to be taken seriously in a medium that itself struggled to be respected within the art world. Gefter reveals how the 1950s and 1960s informed Avedon's life and work as much as he informed the period. He counted as close friends a profoundly influential group of artists--Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Harold Brodkey, Renata Adler, Sidney Lumet, and Mike Nichols--who shaped the cultural life of the American twentieth century. It wasn't until Avedon's fashion work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late 1970s that he became a household name. Balancing glamour with the gravitas of an artist's genuine reach for worldy achievement--and not a little gossip--plus sixteen pages of photographs, What Becomes a Legend Most is an intimate window into Avedon's fascinating world. Dramatic, visionary, and remarkable, it pays tribute to Avedon's role in the history of photography and fashion--and his legacy as one of the most consequential artists of his time.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 498 pages. The renowned artist offers a humorous take on his own life, discussing among other topics his Bronx childhood, his jazz career, his legendary excesses, and his brief stint in the military. There is the Larry Rivers whose work hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery, and there is the Larry Rivers who himself has hung out in a variety of other, less respectable milieus. Now the artist, musician, friend, lover, and entertaining writer--with help from his old friend playwright Arnold Weinstein--pens perhaps the most outspoken and candid autobiography ever. B&w, some color illustrations. Clean copy.

Art Intitute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial cloth, 251 pages illustrated in color. The extraordinary life of a captivating American artist, beautifully illustrated with his dreamlike drawings Much of Joseph Elmer Yoakum's story comes from the artist himself--and is almost too fantastic to believe. At a young age, Yoakum (1891-1972) traveled the globe with numerous circuses; he later served in a segregated noncombat regiment during World War I before settling in Chicago. There, inspired by a dream, he began his artistic career at age seventy-one, producing some two thousand drawings over a decade. How did Yoakum gain representation in major museum collections in Chicago and New York? What fueled his process, which he described as a "spiritual unfoldment"? This volume delves into the friendships Yoakum forged with the Chicago Imagists that secured his place in art history, explores the religious outlook that may have helped him cope with a racially fractured city, and examines his complicated relationship to African American and Native American identities. With hundreds of beautiful color reproductions of his dreamlike drawings, it offers the most comprehensive study of the artist's work, illuminating his vivid and imaginative creativity and giving definition and dimension to his remarkable biography. Clean copy. NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Effortlessly blending biography, criticism, and memoir, National Book Award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman. Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty--a poet, a New Yorker, and an American--keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work. What is it then between us? Whitman asks. In search of an answer, Doty explores spaces--both external and internal--where he finds the poet's ghost. He meditates on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poet's enduring work: a radical experience of transformation and enlightenment, queer sexuality, and an obsession with death, as well as unabashed love for a great city and for the fresh, rowdy character of American speech. In riveting close readings threaded with personal memoir and illuminated by awe, Doty reveals the power of Whitman's persistent presence in his life and in the American imagination at large. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1973, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket. 401 pages with index. Ex-lib copy with stamp to front fly leaf, envelope on rear endpaper, sticker on dust jacket spine, interior clean.

Hardcover. London, Harrap, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 200 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light soil on top page block, otherwise clean, tight copy. Moderate chipping/rubbing to dust jacket edges now covered in plastic protective sleeve.

Softcover. Jackson Hole WY, self-published, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 341 pages, b&w illustrations. The autobiography of a successful woman rancher in Wyoming. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on front fly leaf. An amusing coming-of-age memoir of a young girl growing up in Newark where her mother was a landlord in an apartment building.

Hardcover. NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 4th pr., 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright. unclipped dust jacket, 340 pages. A compelling, up-close-and-personal portrait of basketball's most inimitable duo. It is also a rollicking ride through professional basketball's best times, the golden age of hoops for the boomer generation. This work tells the story of Magic and Larry from their vantage point and takes the reader inside their fascinating rivalry, with new insights and revealing details about two men who evolved from bitter competitors into lifelong friends. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 474 pages, b&w illustrations. "A "heroic" and "fascinating" biography of John Cage showing how his work, and that of countless American artists, was transformed by Zen Buddhism". (The New York Times). Where the Heart Beats is the story of the tremendous changes sweeping through American culture following the Second World War, a time when the arts in America broke away from centuries of tradition and reinvented themselves. Painters converted their canvases into arenas for action and gesture, dancers embraced pure movement over narrative, performance artists staged "happenings" in which anything could happen, poets wrote words determined by chance.

Hardcover. New York, Watson-Guptill Publications, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 87 pages. 32 color illustrations. Dark blue cloth, gilt lettering to spine. Very nice, clean and tight copy. Dust jacket edgewear on upper corner of spine. In good shape.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 440 pages, colo and b&w illustrations. The first biography in more than twenty years of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is also the first to make extensive use of the artist's private correspondence to tell the story of his life and work. This engaging personal history dispels the popular notion of Whistler as merely a combative, eccentric, and unrelenting publicity seeker, a man as renowned for his public feuds with Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin as for the iconic portrait of his mother. The Whistler revealed in these pages is an intense, introspective, and complex man, plagued by self-doubt and haunted by an endless pursuit of perfection in his painting and drawing. In his beautifully illustrated and deeply human portrayal of the artist, Daniel E. Sutherland shows why Whistler was perhaps the most influential artist of his generation, and certainly a pivotal figure in the cultural history of the nineteenth century. Whistler comes alive through his own magnificent work and words, including the provocative manifestos that explained his bold artistic vision, sparked controversy in his own time, and resonate to this day.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 440 pages, illustrations in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. The first biography in more than twenty years of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is also the first to make extensive use of the artist's private correspondence to tell the story of his life and work. This engaging personal history dispels the popular notion of Whistler as merely a combative, eccentric, and unrelenting publicity seeker, a man as renowned for his public feuds with Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin as for the iconic portrait of his mother. The Whistler revealed in these pages is an intense, introspective, and complex man, plagued by self-doubt and haunted by an endless pursuit of perfection in his painting and drawing. In his beautifully illustrated and deeply human portrayal of the artist, Daniel E. Sutherland shows why Whistler was perhaps the most influential artist of his generation, and certainly a pivotal figure in the cultural history of the nineteenth century. Whistler comes alive through his own magnificent work and words, including the provocative manifestos that explained his bold artistic vision, sparked controversy in his own time, and resonate to this day.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Schenkman Publishing, 1st US, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly faded dust jacket. Written in 1936, long before his fame as a archeologist and anthropologist. He tells the story of his life as an African in White Africa from the time he left his family in search of a new life until he returned as a successful scientist. Leakey vividly describes his experiences as a hunter, gatherer, and farmer, and his encounters with the natural world and the people he met there. He also describes the challenges he and his fellow Africans faced in trying to establish themselves as a minority community in a hostile environment. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lausanne, Acatos, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket., 206 pages. With photographs and reproductions in color and black and white of Lam's paintings and drawings. With facsimile of small booklet by Andre Breton in pocket inside front cover.

Hardcover. Seattle, Mountaineers Books, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 302 pages. Every year wildfires ravage forests, destroy communities, and devastate human lives, with only the bravery of dedicated firefighters creating a barrier against even greater destruction. Throughout the 2016 wildfire season, journalist Heather Hansen witnessed firsthand the heroics of the Station 8 crew in Boulder, Colorado. She tells that story here, layered with the added context of the history, science, landscape, and human behavior that, year-by-year, increases the severity, frequency, and costs of conflagrations in the West. She examines the changes in both mindset and activity around wildfires and tracks the movement from wildfire as something useful, to something feared, to something necessary but roundly dreaded. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Toronto, The Ryerson Press, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 272 pages. Map endpapers, frontispiece, illustrations, bibliography, index. Black and white frontispiece portrait of Grenfell. Endpapers feature a map of Newfoundland and Labrador. The first full biography of the founder of the Grenfell Mission in Labrador and Newfoundland. Lacks dust jacket, clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Bloomsbury, 1st US , 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 359 pages, hardcover. 16 pages of color illustrations. Extensive b&w illustrations and photographs. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Nantier Beall Minoustchine, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. Explore the life of Will Eisner, one of the most influential artists in the history of comics through the most appropriate medium: a graphic novel! From his immigrant roots and childhood in New York, starting his own comics studio and business, and the creation and publication of his beloved comic, The Spirit, through inventing the term ' graphic novel' to convince a general trade publisher to publish the groundbreaking A Contract with God, you'll follow along in Eisner's life journey. With the most prestigious comics awards named after him, Will Eisner is forever celebrated not only in what he created but his unerring belief in comics' capacity to be better, to reach higher, to be a full art form in its own right. This is the life of this man of vision who helped to put comics on the map. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NC, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2nd printing, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 254 pages. Hardcover no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition. Color and black and white illustrations. Explores the fascinating life of Will Eisner , detailing a more than 70-year career in which he spearheaded comics for adult readers and created the first widely accepted graphic novel, A Contract with God.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 220 pages. Will Eisner (1917-2005) is universally considered the master of comics storytelling, best known for The Spirit, his iconic newspaper comic strip, and A Contract With God, the first significant graphic novel. This seminal work from 1978 ushered in a new era of personal stories in comics form that touched every adult topic from mortality to religion and sexuality, forever changing the way writers and artists approached comics storytelling. Noted historian Paul Levitz celebrates Eisner by showcasing his most famous work along-side unpublished and rare materials from the family archives. Also included are original interviews with creators such as Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud, Jeff Smith, Denis Kitchen, and Neil Gaiman--all of whom knew Eisner and were inspired by his work to create their own graphic novels for a new generation of readers.

Hardcover. Oak Knoll Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 216 pages, no dj issued. Will H. Bradley (1868-1962) is widely regarded as one of the masters of book, magazine, and graphic design during the Art Nouveau period. This extensive work also contains a biography of Bradley, a bibliography, and author, title, and publisher indices.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 178 pages. Dust jacket slightly worn and with short tears. Some foxing on endpages, top edge stained red.