Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 335 pages. In a society where trust is in short supply and democracy weak, the Mafia sells protection, a guarantee of safe conduct for parties to commercial transactions. Drawing on the confessions of eight Mafiosi, Diego Gambetta develops an elegant analysis of the economic and political role of the Sicilian Mafia. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday Page & Co., 1st, 1924, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, title on spine faded, 306 pages. Stated first edition. Signs of former library book but clean internally. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf.
Hardcover. Indianapolis/ New York, Bobbs-Merrill, reprint, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket, 464 pages, b&w illustrations. First published in 1940, a fascinating look at the oil industry as it was pre-World War 2. "Here is the romantic story of a unique and all-important industry, told with the informality and charm of an evening's chat by an open fire. So significant to our life has oil become that wars have been fought for it, and wars may be lost for want of it". Small sticker to front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Softcover. Canada, Penguin Books, reprint, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 640 pages. The Western world is full of paradoxes. We talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet we've never been under more pressure to conform. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about invasive government, yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are deteriorating. All these problems, John Ralston Saul argues, are largely the result of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the past 400 years, our "rational elites" have turned the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts--"Voltaire's bastards"--whose cult of scientific management is empty of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertain-ment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose ordinary citizens are increasingly excluded from the decision-making process. In this wide-ranging anatomy of modern society and its origins--whose "pages explode with insight, style and intellectual rigor" (Camille Paglia, The Washington Post)--Saul presents a shattering critique of the political, economic and cultural estab-lishments of the West. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Stanford CA, Hoover Institution Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 280 pages, b&w illustrations, endpapers map. A study of the development of the trade union movement in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) after the Second World War, which places them in the context of wider social and industrial change in the country. Clean copy.
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.
 "The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protectionby: Diego Gambetta")
 "The Way Out - A Forecast of Coming Changes in American Business and Industry by: Filene, Edward A.")
 "When Horses Walked on Water: Horse-Powered Ferries in Nineteenth-Century America (SIGNED COPY)by: Kevin J. Crisman, Arthur B. Cohn")