Hardcover. Portland, Paul E. Merrill, 1st, 1979, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 166 pages plus additional 28 page pamphlet laid-in. Hardcover. Both hardcover and pamphlet illustrated with full color and black & white photographs. Both book and pamphlet have musty odor. Dust jacket with wear and tape repaired tears along edges. Clean, unmarked pages.
Softcover. Logan Airport, Northeast Airlines, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 64 pages, profusely illustrated with b&w photos. No author but with opening statement by Bill Michaels, President of the airline at the time. Lively commemorative booklet published by Northeast for its employees on July 31, 1972, the day before officially merging with Delta. Features many black & white photos of personnel, advertising and operations. Clean copy.
NY, Hearst Books International, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Black & white and color photos and illustrations. 191 pages. Light edgewear to dust jacket.
Hardcover. NY, PublicAffairs, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 350 pages. Before the "Big Three," even before the Model T, the race for dominance in the American car market was fierce, fast, and sometimes farcical. Car Crazy takes readers back to the passionate and reckless years of the early automobile era, from 1893, when the first US-built auto was introduced, through 1908, when General Motors was founded and Ford's Model T went on the market. The motorcar was new, paved roads few, and devotees of this exciting and unregulated technology battled with citizens who considered the car a dangerous scourge, wrought by the wealthy, that was shattering a more peaceful way of life. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 360 pages, b&w illustrations. Tells the fascinating story of the family that built the mighty Dodge empire and grew into a powerful and wealthy dynasty and became plagued by excesses and scandal. Embossed stamp to half-title page otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket. 253 pages, INSCRIBED BY TAYLOR on the title page. Previous owner's inscription on half-title page, otherwise clean. First Mail West recounts the colorful history of stagecoach lines on the Santa Fe Trail during the height of overland traffic from 1850 to 1879. Desert, rain, snow, wind, outlaws, Indians, buffalo stampedes, and business competitors challenged, and sometimes scuttled, the operation of stage lines between Missouri and New Mexico. The author describes the topography, roads, rolling stock, stations, accommodations, and natural and human dangers along the trail, and analyzes the fierce competition between independent lines for passenger traffic and federal mail contracts.
Hardcover. Lanham MD, Rowman & Littlefield , 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy pictorial boards, 173 pages, b&w illustrations. In roughly one hundred years - from the 1870s to the 1970s - dining on trains began, soared to great heights, and then fell to earth. The founders of the first railroad companies cared more about hauling freight than feeding passengers. The only food available on trains in the mid-nineteenth century was whatever passengers brought aboard in their lunch baskets or managed to pick up at a brief station stop. It was hardly fine dining. Seeing the business possibilities in offering long-distance passengers comforts such as beds, toilets, and meals, George Pullman and other pioneering railroaders like Georges Nagelmackers of Orient Express fame, transformed rail travel. Fine dining and wines became the norm for elite railroad travelers by the turn of the twentieth century. The foods served on railroads - from consomme to turbot to souffle, always accompanied by champagne - equaled that of the finest restaurants, hotels, and steamships. Bright, clean copy.
Hardcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 276 pages, b&w illustrations. Few people have had as profound an impact on the history of New York City as William J. Wilgus. As chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad, Wilgus conceived the Grand Central Terminal, the city's magnificent monument to America's Railway Age. Kurt C. Schlichting here examines the remarkable career of this innovator, revealing how his tireless work moving people and goods over and under Manhattan Island's surrounding waterways forever changed New York's bustling transportation system. After his herculean efforts on behalf of Grand Central, the most complicated construction project in New York's history, Wilgus turned to solving the city's transportation quandary: Manhattan - the financial, commercial, and cultural hub of the United States in the twentieth century - was separated from the mainland by two major rivers to the west and east, a deep-water estuary to the south, and the Harlem River to the north. Wilgus believed that railroads and mass transportation provided the answer to New York City's complicated geography. His ingenious ideas included a freight subway linking rail facilities in New Jersey with manufacturers and shippers in Manhattan, a freight and passenger tunnel connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn, and a belt railway interconnecting sixteen private railroads serving the metropolitan area.
Hardcover. London, Dennis Dobson, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 76 pages, hardcover. Illustrated in color by Ronald Searle. PREVIOUSLY OWNED BY SEARLE'S AGENT (John Locke) with his stamp on front fly leaf. Very good condition. Dust jacket has age tanning to spine, one chip at bottom of spine.
Hardcover. Lyons Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 142 pages illustrated in color. For many children of the sixties, the gift of a Schwinn was a ticket to freedom, a chance to feel the wind on their face and the steady rotation of rubber at their feet. The Schwinn took many through their childhood adventures, with memories filled of after school, free-range bike rides around the neighborhood with friends, the late afternoon sun shining off of the gleaming painted frame and stainless steel fenders. The 1960s and 70s saw a boom of Schwinn Sting-Rays, which appealed to young riders who had to have the hottest 'muscle' bike in town, and sold like hotcakes to parents everywhere scrambling to get the best Christmas present ever for their kids. From its early years dominating the youth market with Sting-Rays to the teen-friendly Varsity and Continental models to its most recent parent-friendly iterations of the Easy-Steer and Roadster Trikes, the Schwinn weaves itself through 120 years of American history. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Motorbooks , 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 156 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Ever since the automobile was made accessible to the masses, car dealerships have been special places where desires, sweaty palms, and that new-car smell are distilled into an intoxicating elixir of freedom and ownership. From Art Deco showrooms of the '30s to modern glass-walled superstores, this nostalgic road trip revisits the architecture, marketing, and business practices that have become inextricably associated with auto retailers. A fascinating text accompanies an equally compelling collection of archival photography recalling past and present car dealer phenomena like new model previews and grand openings (i.e., soaped showroom windows, veiled cars, search lights), promotions and giveaways (banners, literature, buttons, pens, pedal cars, ashtrays, and anything else dealers could use to help make a sale), business practices from early-century animal trade-ins to today's refreshing Saturn-style service, customer relations and service centers, and nontraditional automotive outlets like Sears-Roebuck and hardware stores. Sidebars highlight innovative dealerships and those that have been in business for decades. Bumpto bottom corner otherwise clean, very good.
Hardcover. NY, Hill & Wang , 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 251 pages. Completed in 1825 and enlarged between 1836 and 1862 at the initial cost of $7 million, the Erie Canal not only created an economic revolution in the region but fostered new and unique communities made up of entrepreneurs, canal workers, and farmers. Utilizing a variety of primary resources, but especially the Canal Board Papers, Sheriff (history relates the social history of those who lived, worked, and traveled the Erie Canal before the Civil War. This previously untold story is laced with accounts by businessmen who saw the canal as opportunity, immigrant laborers looking for steady work, and farmers who transported their produce by canal boat. Although all of these groups relayed their complaints, claims, and concerns to the Canal Board, we do not know the responses they received. Still, the issues raised tell a great deal about the local impact of the Erie Canal, and herein lies the strength of the book. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Liveright, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Years before Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris electrified the nation, a group of daredevil pilots, most of them veterans of the World War I, brought aviation to the masses by competing in the sensational transcontinental air race of 1919. The contest awakened Americans to the practical possibilities of flight, yet despite its significance, it has until now been all but forgotten. In The Great Air Race, journalist and amateur pilot John Lancaster finally reclaims this landmark event and the unheralded aviators who competed to be the fastest man in America. His thrilling chronicle opens with the race's impresario, Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, who believed the nation's future was in the skies. Mitchell's contest--critics called it a stunt--was a risky undertaking, given that the DH-4s and Fokkers the contestants flew were almost comically ill-suited for long-distance travel: engines caught fire in flight; crude flight instruments were of little help in clouds and fog; and the brake-less planes were prone to nosing over on landing. The race was a test of endurance that many pilots didn't finish: some dropped out from sheer exhaustion, while others, betrayed by their engines or their instincts, perished. For all its tragedy, Lancaster argues, the race galvanized the nation to embrace the technology of flight. A thrilling tale of men and their machines, The Great Air Race offers a new origin point for commercial aviation in the United States. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, National Railway Publication Company, 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, original printed paper wrappers, 1536 pages. Thick handbook for the railroad steamboat trade, with detailed schedules, maps, advertisements, all pertaining to the shipment of goods. Printed on thin, cheap stock that's tanning. Still very good wth clear tape reinforcement to spine.
Hardcover. Seattle, University of Washington Press , 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 229 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. At first glance it may appear that this volume is one more in a line of celebratory tributes to the power of the industry, full of the colorful advertisements and optimistic tributes to the railroad as the builder of civilization across a majestic landscape. Nearly every page contains an illustration that invites quick perusal. But the text skillfully interprets the images and balances the story that railroads originally told about the region, one that boosted their properties and promoted settlement and travels along their lines . . . . The authors have effectively distilled a large body of historiography into one readable and engaging volume. Clean.
Hardcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 292 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED BY BOTH AUTHORS on the title page. Additionally INSCRIBED BY COHN on the dedication page. Kevin J. Crisman and Arthur B. Cohn show how a confluence of geographic, technological, economic, and social conditions in the United States and Canada turned an ancient idea into a practical alternative to more expensive and dangerous steamboats. Reviewing evidence from travelers' memoirs, regional histories, pictorial records, and the only horseboat ever studied by archaeologists - a wreck on the floor of Lake Champlain's Burlington Bay, in Vermont - the authors trace the evolution of horseboats from early mechanisms that forced the animals to walk in tight circles to "endless floor" treadmills that resembled modern exercise machines. In a lively narrative interspersed with quotes from passenger accounts, the book charts the rise and demise of horseboat businesses on the Hudson River, as well as in New York City, St. Louis, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The authors also describe and record the underwater excavation of the Lake Champlain wreck, revealing a wealth of detail about the construction and operation of a typical treadwheel horseboat of the 1830s and 1840s. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Metro Books, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The late nineteenth century brought a transportation explosion in North America and Europe, much of it produced by the steam engine, which by that time had become strong and versatile enough to power ocean-crossing vessels and large freight trains. Where Rails Meet the Sea tells the exciting story of how the transportation industry was revolutionized by steam power and how the industry in turn changed the face of the world. Written by an expert in the history of ships and trains and heavily illustrated throughout in color and b&w.
Hardcover. Wine Country Trucks Publishing, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial cloth, 146 pages, color photos throughout. For decades, trucks have played a crucial role in the Wine Country of Northern California. This volume offers these old timers a chance to tell their lifelong tales. A large concentration of wineries and businesses from Napa and Sonoma counties have a rusted relic or a restored classic truck parked somewhere on their property. Sixty of these timeless treasures are featured with over 150 magnificent photos and fascinating stories of America's yesteryear. Several were props in movies. One entered the Great Race and drove across the country on America's back roads. Another was a local moonshine runner. Clean copy, no dust jacket.