biography

Softcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 240 pages. This comprehensive biography presents the achievements of Brion Gysin, a multi-faceted artist whose work has influenced performers such as David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Recalling the heady atmosphere of the so-called Beat Hotel in Paris in the late 1950s and 1960s, it features first-hand reminiscences by contemporaries, plus a biographical essay and chronological listings. productive literary collaboration with William Burroughs. As well as looking at his work as a sound poet and performance artist, it features reproductions of his paintings and graphics, and examples of his permutated poems and other writings.

Softcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 240 pages. This comprehensive biography presents the achievements of Brion Gysin, a multi-faceted artist whose work has influenced performers such as David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Recalling the heady atmosphere of the so-called Beat Hotel in Paris in the late 1950s and 1960s, it features first-hand reminiscences by contemporaries, plus a biographical essay and chronological listings. productive literary collaboration with William Burroughs. As well as looking at his work as a sound poet and performance artist, it features reproductions of his paintings and graphics, and examples of his permutated poems and other writings.

Hardcover. NY, Citadel Press, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 246 pages, b&w illustrations. Indiana-born Vivian Gordon fluttered to New York in 1920 looking for fame and fortune. Before long, the flame-haired chorus girl parlayed her youth, beauty, and ambition into more profitable means as a tough and glamorous symbol of Prohibition-era excess. She was a speakeasy owner, blackmailer, high-end escort, extortionist, racketeer, and con woman. But given her dangerously intimate associations, Vivian was also a woman who knew too much and who rightfully feared for her life. On February 26, 1931, Vivian's bludgeoned and garroted body was found dumped in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. Now, in the first in-depth biography of its kind, Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist Anthony M. DeStefano unravels her tumultuous life and the headline-making murder that became an obsession for many. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, David McKay Company, 1st, 1929, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 133 pages, illustrated throughout with tipped in b&w plates by M. Boutet De Monvel. Purple cloth with gilt titles. Sun-fade to covers, light tanning to pages opposite plates, else a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. N. P., Privately Printed, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in stapled wrappers, 25 pages. 1/750 copies. Minor wear to covers, else a lovely little pamphlet in excellent shape. An address given to the Friends of the Brown University Libraries.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 487 pages. First full-length biography of Walter in English. Black boards, gray cloth spine with silver titles, illustrated dust jacket, 32 pages of b&w photographic plates on glossy paper. Slight rubbing to dust jacket, clean boards, pages crisp and unmarked; a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Oklahoma Heritage Assn., 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 324 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED BY CO-AUTHOR THOMPSON on the title page.Bryce Harlow was one of the most extraordinary political figures in the United States in the second half of the 20th century. He served four presidents with great honor and distinction. His word was his bond. With his gentle manner and Oklahoma drawl, Harlow advised Presidents on more public issues than perhaps anyone in American history.Dr. Henry Kissinger says Harlow spent his entire adult life studying the ways of Washington, D.C., alternating between participant and observer. Harlow had a deep sense for the Presidency, its power, its majesty, and the awful responsibility it imposes. Clean, unread copy.

Hardcover. Lyons Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 249 pages, b&w illustrations. William McGarvey "Bullet Bill" Dudley (December 24, 1921 - February 4, 2010) led a thrilling career as a professional American football player in the National Football League for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Detroit Lions, and Washington Redskins. With humble beginnings in Bluefield, Virginia he made the football team his junior year, and in 1938 he kicked a 35-yard field goal in the season's finale. Dudley was drafted in the 1942 NFL Draft with the first overall pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1966 and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 1972. During the 1942 season, he led the league in rushing with 696 yards on 162 carries and was then named to the All-Pro team. Steve Stinson revisits his father-in-law's journey from Bluefield, Virginia through his retirement from the NFL and shares everything he brought to communities in between each pivotal moment in Dudley's life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Times Books, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket that shows fading, 360 pages, b&w illustrations, endpaper maps. General John Burgoyne was a British army officer, politician and dramatist. He first saw action during the Seven Years' War when he participated in several battles, mostly notably during the Portugal Campaign of 1762. Burgoyne is best known for his role in the American War of Independence. During the Saratoga campaign he surrendered his army of 5,000 men to the American troops on October 17, 1777. Appointed to command a force designated to capture Albany and end the rebellion, Burgoyne advanced from Canada but soon found himself surrounded and outnumbered. He fought two battles at Saratoga, but was forced to open negotiations with Horatio Gates. Although he agreed to a convention, on 17 October 1777, which would allow his troops to return home, this was subsequently revoked and his men were made prisoners. Burgoyne faced criticism when he returned to Britain, and never held another active command. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 514 pages, b&w illustrations, in a bright dust jacket. Biography of Union general Ambrose Burnside, reassessing his reputation as an "incompetent leader" by viewing his entire career as a soldier during the war: along the Carolina coast, at Antietam, and his capture of Knoxville in East Tennessee, while still recognizing the debacle at Fredericksburg.

Hardcover. NY, Burt Franklin, reprint, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Blue cloth covers, 89 pages, reprint of the 1892 edition

Hardcover. New York, Newmarket Press, 1st US, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 289 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. An tour of Buster Keaton's life and art. Mild rubbing to dust jacket. Creasing to dust jacket front flap. Includes 40 black-and-white photographs. Unmarked. Bright and clean; a tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Delacorte Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY GEYER on the front fly leaf. What is it like to cover revolutions and interview the great revolutionary figures of our time? This lively firsthand account of one of our most eminent foreign correspondents, the first American woman journalist to cover the world on such a scale, provides a glimpse into this glamorous, rewarding, exhausting, and grueling life. About the Author: Georgie Anne Geyer was a foreign correspondent, an author and biographer, and a syndicated columnist for half a century. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages. In the voluminous scholarship that's been written on Paul Cezanne, little has been said about the twenty-four portraits in oil that Cezanne made of his wife, Hortense Fiquet Cezanne, over an extended twenty-year period. In Cezanne's Other: The Portraits of Hortense, Susan Sidlauskas breaks new ground, focusing on these paintings as a group and looking particularly at the differences that render many of them unrecognizable as the same person. She argues that Cezanne sidestepped the conventional goals of portraiture-he avoids representing a consistent, identifiable physiognomy or conventional feminine postures and does not portray the subject's inner life-making lack of fixedness itself his subject, which leads him ultimately to a radical reformulation of modern portraiture. Sidlauskas also upends the notion of Mme Cezanne as the irrelevant and absent spouse. Instead she reveals Hortense Fiquet Cezanne as a presence so crucial to the artist that she became the essential "other" to his ever-evolving "self." Coupling historical texts from philosophy, psychology, and physiology with more recent writings from women's and gender studies, cognitive psychology, and visual culture, Sidlauskas demonstrates that Mme Cezanne offered intimacy at arm's length for the painter who has been dubbed "the lone wolf of Aix."

Hardcover. NY, PublicAffairs, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The legendary television star tells the backstage stories of the classic comedy of Your Show of Shows, Caesar's Hour , and other landmark programs. It is no exaggeration to say that without Sid Caesar, comedy in America would have been a lot less funny. He was the star and guiding force behind Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour , two of the most innovative programs in the Golden Age of Television, and the writers and stars of those shows went on to create the plays, movies, and sitcoms that we now think of as classic American comedy. So many of our greatest comedy writers - Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, Woody Allen -were part of Sid Caesar's creative troupe. Sid was a master not only of comedic performance, but also of developing characters that the audience could relate to, finding the humor in ordinary situations rather than through vaudeville-type gags. His was a comedy truly drawn from the human condition. Caesar's Hours is Sid Caesar 's artistic autobiography, his account of how these great routines were fashioned and performed, and the interactions that gave birth to them. He takes us inside the famed writers' room, the rehearsal studios, and onto the stage itself, where some of the funniest moments in television history came to life. To read his book is to learn why his intelligent and sensitive brand of humor resonates so much with us, even half a century later. Remainder line to bottom edge otherwise clean.

Softcover. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1st pbk, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 376 pages, b&w illustrations. The personal history of Barney Josephson, proprietor of the legendary interracial New York City night clubs Cafe Society Downtown and Cafe Society Uptown and their successor, The Cookery. Famously known as 'the wrong place for the Right people', Cafe Society featured the cream of jazz and blues performers--among whom were Billie Holiday, Big Joe Turner, Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Big Sid Catlett, and Mary Lou Williams--as well as comedy stars Imogene Coca, Zero Mostel, and Jack Gilford, the boogie-woogie pianists, and legendary gospel and folk artists. Spanning half a century from the 1930s to the 1980s, Josephson's narrative depicts both the business and the artistic sides of Cafe Society while exposing the tensions between the club's own progressive interracial openness and the more restrictive social and political climate in which it evolved. Publisher's stamp on bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, University Books, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 312 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations. Marble cover boards, red quarter cloth, gilt title on spine. Red endpapers. Top edge dyed. Previous owner's inscription on title page. Some slight tanning to a few pages from age. Dust jacket unclipped, has some chipping and agewear (see images). Binding good. Spine straight. Pages unmarked. The biography of the European eighteenth century occultist and Mason, Count Allesandro di Cagliostro.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 687 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark on page block, otherwise clean, tight copy. Minor, if any, wear to covers.

Softcover. Cambridge [England] ; New York, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 389 pages. Minor wear to edges of cover. Previous owner's inscription on front flyleaf. Slight foxing on top edge. Inside is bright, clean and unmarked. A nice copy.

Hardcover. NY, Hyperion, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Camp is Eisner's ode to Keewaydin--a Vermont camp that four generations of the Eisner family have attended for 100 years--as well as a guide to growing up, building relationships, and developing the tools of leadership. Through heartwarming anecdotes from his time spent at Keewaydin and stories from his life in the upper echelons of American business that illustrate the camp's continued influence, Eisner creates a touching and insightful portrait of his own youth, as well as a resounding declaration of summer camp as an invaluable national institution. Clean copy.

NY, Carlton Press, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with edgewear. 120 pages with b&w photos. INSCRIBED BY BAKER on the front fly leaf. The author's account of his 2,000 mile trek from Georgia to Maine in 1964. Scarce.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 516 pages includes index, b&w photos. Neil Lanctot's biography of Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella--filled with surprises--is the first life of the Dodger great in decades and the most authoritative ever published. Born to a father of Italian descent and an African- American mother, Campanella wanted to be a ballplayer from childhood but was barred by color from the major leagues. He dropped out of school to play professional ball with the Negro Leagues' Washington (later Baltimore) Elite Giants, where he honed his skills under Hall of Fame catcher Biz Mackey. Campy played eight years in the Negro Leagues until the major leagues integrated. Ironically, he and not Jackie Robinson might have been the player to integrate baseball, as Lanctot reveals. An early recruit to Branch Rickey's "Great Experiment" with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Campy became the first African-American catcher in the twentieth century in the major leagues. As Lanctot discloses, Campanella and Robinson, pioneers of integration, had a contentious relationship, largely as a result of a dispute over postseason barnstorming. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell/ Phaidon, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 239 pages, large format. Profusely illustrated in color, b&w. Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697-1768), known as Canaletto, is one of the most popular of all old master painters. His views of Venice and London are much celebrated and admired. The author traces Canaletto's career from his beginnings as a scene-painter with his father to the work of his later years.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 417 pages, color and b&w illustrations. The Warhol superstar and transgender icon Candy Darling was glamour personified, but she was without a real place in the world. Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York's early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol's films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max's Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play. Yet Candy lived on the edge, relying on the kindness of strangers, friends, and her quietly devoted mother, sleeping on couches and in cheap hotel rooms, keeping a part of herself hidden. She wanted to be a star, but mostly she wanted to be loved. Her last diary entry was: "I shall try to be grateful for life . . . Cannot imagine who would want me." Candy died at twenty-nine in 1974, just as conversations about gender and identity were beginning to enter the broader culture. She never knew it, but she changed the world. Clean copy.