biography

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with edge wear, short closed tears. The first full-length biography--and likely the authoritative one for years to come--of the flamboyant black congressman who, as civil-rights gadfly and as libertine, exemplified the gap between our nation's ideals and practices that was given a name in Gunnar Myrdal's ``American Dilemma.'' Blessed with good looks, eloquence, and a bully pulpit (he succeeded his father as head of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the nation's largest black congregation), Powell became ``Mr. Civil Rights'' in the pre-King era by combining agitation and electoral politics. As congressman from Harlem, Powell denounced racist southern colleagues and introduced the ``Powell Amendment'' to deny federal funds to projects or organizations that practiced discrimination. In 1960, he became chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, then the strongest position ever held by a black in the US government. Columbia Univ. political-science professor Hamilton also highlights how the Democratic politician became a thorn in the side of ally and foe alike. Powell was a maverick seldom bound by party (he endorsed Eisenhower for President), duty (a high absentee rate), or conventional morality. Inevitably, after an income-tax evasion trial, a suit filed by a Harlem resident he called a ``bag woman,'' and a European junket with two attractive female aides, Powell was stripped of his chairmanship by the House of Representatives despite his cry of double standards for white counterparts. Blending scholarship and ironic detachment, an admirably balanced treatment of a politician who provoked anything but objectivity during his Marion Barry-like career.

Hardcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 2nd pr., 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 349 pages. Dual biography of two authors of the Declaration of Indepenence, their subsequent feud, and reconciliation. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin , 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, SIGNED BY AUTHOR. 68 pages. Blue covers w/ light edge wear/soil. Previous owner's signature on title page. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers with faded gilt title on spine, 426 pages. A collection of profiles on great thinkers and writers through the ages. B&w frontis of Walt Whitman, 9 other b&w portraits. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 499 pages illustrated in b&w by Thomason. Black cloth with gilt lettering.Marcellin Marbot (1782-1854) was a Napoleonic general who earned recognition for his military memoirs. This issue with illustrations by John Thomason (1893-1944), author, illustrator, and lieutenant colonel in the US Marine Corps. Previous owner's inscription opposite the title page.

London, Morley & Mitchell Kennerley, 1st, n.d., Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth, 3 black & white plates. 32 pages. Green cloth covers.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with minor wear. 532 pages. An essential guide to the life and work of one of America's most controversial writers, Advertisements for Myself is a comprehensive collection of the best of Norman Mailer's essays, stories, interviews and journalism from the Forties and Fifties, linked by anarchic and riotous autobiographical commentary. Laying bare the heart of a witty, belligerent and vigorous writer, this manifesto of Mailer's key beliefs contains pieces on his war experiences in the Philippines (the basis for his famous first novel The Naked and the Dead), tributes to fellow novelists William Styron, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal and magnificent polemics against pornography, advertising, drugs and politics.

Hardcover. London, Heinemann, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 24 illustrations. Genealogical chart of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. These letters were only discovered in the 1970's at Broadlands, the home of Princess Victoria's younger son, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma. These letters bring new light to bear on major world and minor domestic events, from the crisis with the Prussian court in 1888 to the Queen's agonized concern for her haemophilic children and grandchildren, from the assassination of the Tsar of Russia to her stalwart but fruitless efforts to persuade Princess's Victoria's sister to marry the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. Lord Mountbatten's elder daughter, Lady Brabourne, has provided a fascinating introduction. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven , Yale University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 120 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. A glimpse inside the mind and artistic process of a fascinating contemporary cartoonist. Born to working-class parents in a small town in Italy, and reared in Chicago, Ivan Brunetti (b. 1967) was drawn to cartoons and comic strips from an early age. Finding inspiration in Spider-Man and Peanuts, he began crafting his own stories and gradually developed a unique style that he applied to imaginative, sometimes shocking subjects. The dark humor of his graphic novels earned him a cult following, yet his illustrations have had broad appeal. Now recognized as an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, Brunetti has published his work in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 120 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. A glimpse inside the mind and artistic process of a fascinating contemporary cartoonist. Born to working-class parents in a small town in Italy, and reared in Chicago, Ivan Brunetti (b. 1967) was drawn to cartoons and comic strips from an early age. Finding inspiration in Spider-Man and Peanuts, he began crafting his own stories and gradually developed a unique style that he applied to imaginative, sometimes shocking subjects. The dark humor of his graphic novels earned him a cult following, yet his illustrations have had broad appeal. Now recognized as an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, Brunetti has published his work in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others.

Hardcover. NY, Arcade, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 96 pages, profusely illustrated in color and b&w with the author/artist's drawings and photographs. Bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Arcade, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 96 pages, profusely illustrated in color and b&w with the author/artist's drawings and photographs. Bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on a bookplate tipped onto a prelim page.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 380 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on front fly leaf, translated by Andrew Hurley. Minor dust jacket edge wear and rub, small water stain on top and bottom spine edge, otherwise, internally very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Crime, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 544 pages. It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. A brilliant and award winning biographer, Laura Thompson now turns her sharp eye to Agatha Christie. Arguably the greatest crime writer in the world, Christie's books still sell over four million copies each year--more than thirty years after her death--and it shows no signs of slowing. But who was the woman behind these mystifying, yet eternally pleasing, puzzlers? Thompson reveals the Edwardian world in which Christie grew up, explores her relationships, including those with her two husbands and daughter, and investigates the many mysteries still surrounding Christie's life, most notably, her eleven-day disappearance in 1926.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus , 2nd pr., 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 415 pages. Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was 'just' an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn't? As Lucy Worsley says, 'She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern'. She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why - despite all the evidence to the contrary - did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? She was born in 1890 into a world which had its own rules about what women could and couldn't do. With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley's biography is both authoritative and riveting. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Free Press , 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 464 pages, b&w illustrations. A great but frequently overlooked figure in America during the early decades of the 19th century now gets his due. Military historian Eisenhower (son of the late president) describes a natural leader of imposing stature, overweening pride, exceptional courage, and wide learning, who possessed considerable organizational and diplomatic skills along with outstanding martial instincts. As the nation's youngest general, Scott distinguished himself in the War of 1812, and he was a hero of the Mexican War in the 1840s. After a brilliant campaign fought entirely on foreign soil, he stormed and captured Mexico City despite considerable political maneuvering on the battlefield and the homefront by a variety of influential enemies. In peacetime, he served successfully as a diplomat to the Canadians, the British, the Seminoles, and the Cherokees. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Brattleboro VT, Stephen Green Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AIKEN on half title page. Additionally INSCRIBED BY RALPH NADING HILL on the front fly leaf. Appears that Hill obtained signed copies and gave them out to friends. Enclosed is publisher's promotional schedule.

Hardcover. NY, Random House , 3rd pr., 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 230 pages. This autobiography covers the first eleven years in the life of the distinguished Nigerian dramatist and poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, reprint, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 230 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean copy. An autobiography covering the first eleven years of the famed Nigerian poet and dramatist.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury USA, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages. More than thirty years have passed since Al Capp's death, and he may no longer be a household name. But at the height of his career, his groundbreaking comic strip, Li'l Abner, reached ninety million readers. The strip ran for forty-three years, spawned two movies and a Broadway musical, and originated such expressions as "hogwash" and "double-whammy." Capp himself was a familiar personality on TV and radio; as a satirist, he was frequently compared to Mark Twain. Though Li'l Abner brought millions joy, the man behind the strip was a complicated and often unpleasant person. A childhood accident cost him a leg-leading him to art as a means of distinguishing himself. His apprenticeship with Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, started a twenty-year feud that ended in Fisher's suicide. Capp enjoyed outsized publicity for a cartoonist, but his status abetted sexual misconduct and protected him from the severest repercussions. Late in life, his politics became extremely conservative; he counted Richard Nixon as a friend, and his gift for satire was redirected at targets like John Lennon, Joan Baez, and anti-war protesters on campuses across the country. With unprecedented access to Capp's archives and a wealth of new material, Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen have written a probing biography. Capp's story is one of incredible highs and lows, of popularity and villainy, of success and failure-told here with authority and heart.

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.