business

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. Boston, Little Brown , 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in black. Color frontispiece, b&w illustrations by Henry Pitz. Previous owner's inscription, name on half-title page. "Edward Morrell suddenly steps from the freshman class at Harvard into the interior of Brazil where, he has heard, a young man may earn money provided he has courage. A jealous rancher intends to destroy the foreigner's lumber business, killing if necessary the owner and young Morrell"

Hardcover. NY, Atria Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. In this genre-defying work of cultural history, the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keatons unique creative genius in the context of his time. Born the same year as the film industry in 1895, Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville. Beginning in his early twenties, he enjoyed a decade-long stretch as the director, star, stuntman, editor, and all-around mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies ever made, including Sherlock Jr., The General, and The Cameraman. Even through his dark middle years as a severely depressed alcoholic finding work on the margins of show business, Keatons life had a way of reflecting the changes going on in the world around him. He found success in three different mediums at their creative peak: first vaudeville, then silent film, and finally the experimental early years of television. Remainder mark on top edge, otherwise like-new.

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.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, orange cloth boards with blue stamped titles and decorations. Illustrated in b&w and color by Adrienne Adams. Candy Floss has a very happy life with the carnival, helping the little dog Cocoa and a painted horse Nuts bring business into the "coconut shy" stall of their beloved Jack. This is an unusual story because Jack is a grown-up young man who cares for Nuts and Candy Floss just as much as he does for his real live dog, considering them all his "partners" and Candy Floss his "luck." It shows that some people can hear doll wishes, no matter how old they get on the outside.Then the family gets mixed up with a spoiled, unhappy little girl named Clementina Davenport. She wants to buy Candy Floss and naturally Jack will not sell her, but Clementina is not used to being refused, and she causes everyone a lot of trouble, as spoiled, unhappy people so often do. There is some wear, fraying to bottom edge of front cover, small ink date to front fly leaf, otherwise clean, very good.

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, St Martin's Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED by author Diane Mott Davidson directly on the title page; The first Goldy Bear Mystery. Someone put rat poison in the coffee at the banquet and police have shut down Goldy's catering business until the matter is cleared up. Since this is Goldy's only source of income, Goldy decides she'd better do a little sleauthing of her own. Laid in is a pink sheet of recipes from Goldy's Kitchen. Clean, collectible copy of the first book in the series.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover 192 pages. On September 25, 1890, the Mormon prophet Wilford Woodruff publicly instructed his followers to abandon polygamy. In doing so, he initiated a process that would fundamentally alter the Latter-day Saints and their faith. Trading the most integral elements of their belief system for national acceptance, the Mormons recreated themselves as model Americans. Mary Campbell tells the story of this remarkable religious transformation in Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image. One of the church's favorite photographers, Johnson (1857-1926) spent the 1890s and early 1900s taking pictures of Mormonism's most revered figures and sacred sites. At the same time, he did a brisk business in mail-order erotica, creating and selling stereoviews that he referred to as his "spicy pictures of girls." Situating these images within the religious, artistic, and legal culture of turn-of-the-century America, Campbell reveals the unexpected ways in which they worked to bring the Saints into the nation's mainstream after the scandal of polygamy.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, Angel City Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, illustrated boards, 100 pages. We may never be able to toast Frank Sinatra with a Flame of Love martini, join Jimmy and Gloria Stewart over calf's liver and onions, or share a steaming bowl of Boiled Beef Belmont with the President and Mrs. Reagan on Tuesday nights. But we can come close. CHASEN'S has every great recipe that kept the stars coming back for more, plus its fascinating text stirs delivers the dish on the restaurant and its famous fans. Recipes include the world famous Chasen's Chili that Elizabeth Taylor had air-freighted to the Cleopatra set in Italy, the Chicken Pot Pie served to Queen Elizabeth, the Shirley Temple cocktail that Chasen's bartender invented for the curly-topped star, and a host of other favorites including Deviled Beef Bones, Banana Shortcake, Sole Hitchcock, Coupe Snowball, and the dish President Reagan always ordered, Boiled Beef Belmont.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages, pictorial boards. A lighthearted exploration of pop culture's fascination with gag and practical joke novelty items celebrates the history of the industry, exploring the originality, if tastelessness, of such items as the Whoopee Cushion, the artificial ink spot, and the rubber chicken.

Hardcover. NY, HarperOne, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 300 pages, b&w illustrations. The long-awaited and wildly entertaining memoir of the star of stage and screen, the legendary Chita Rivera-three-time Tony Award-winner, Kennedy Centers honoree, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.She was born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero-until the entertainment world renamed her. But Dolores-the irreverent side of the sensual, dark and ferocious Chita-was always present center stage, and was influential in creating some of Broadway most iconic and acclaimed roles, including Anita in West Side Story the part that made her a star-Rosie in Bye Bye, Birdie, Velma in Chicago, and Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Written in gratitude to her fans and with the hope that new generations may learn from her extraordinary experience, Chita takes us behind the curtain to reveal the highs and lows of one extraordinary show business career-the creative fermentation, the ego clashes, the miraculous discoveries, the exhilaration when it all went right, and the disappointment when it all went wrong. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The director Michael Cimino (1939-2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven's Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino's sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era.Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton's Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker. Based on extensive interviews with Cimino's peers and collaborators and enemies and friends, most of whom have never spoken before, it unravels the enigmas and falsehoods, many perpetrated by the director himself, which surround his life, and sheds new light on his extraordinary career. This is a story of the making of art, the business of Hollywood, and the costs of ambition, both financial and personal.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The first biography of critically acclaimed then critically derided filmmaker Michael Cimino--and a reevaluation of the infamous film that destroyed his career. The director Michael Cimino (1939-2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven's Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino's sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton's Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, pages. Citizen Coors is the riveting saga of an American dynasty. From the moment the destitute Prussian Adolph Coors stows away on a Baltimore-bound ship in 1868 to the worldwide expansion of the billion-dollar Coors Brewing Company, Citizen Coors is a headlong American tale of triumph over bare-knuckle competition. The Coors family does it the old-fashioned way, through fearsome devotion to product, rejection of modern marketing, and refusing to borrow so much as a nickel.But the family almost rides its principles into the ground. "Nobody will ever choose a beer on the basis of a thirty-second ad," Bill Coors is fond of saying at a time when his two main competitors, Anheuser-Busch and Miller, are spending upward of a billion dollars a year on ads. He won't even allow a ring-pull can. The brewery's decline and recovery are dizzying. But Citizen Coors is more than a business story. Here is Adolph, the founder,in 1929, distraught over Prohibition, hurling himself to his death from a hotel balcony. Here is Bill,ten years later, yearning for the wider world but forced back to the brewery by a single glance from his father. Here is Joe, Jr., raised to rule yet suddenly banished for marrying without permission. Here is Peter, prevented from rescuing the company precisely because he has been trained to do so. Here is kidnapping and murder. Here are generations of Coors men broken against the iron will of their fathers. Here is a second suicide, eerily similar to the first.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 366 pages. In this lively study, Rachel Sherman goes behind the scenes in two urban luxury hotels to give a nuanced picture of the workers who care for and cater to wealthy guests by providing seemingly unlimited personal attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews and extended ethnographic research in a range of hotel jobs, including concierge, bellperson, and housekeeper, Sherman gives an insightful analysis of what exactly luxury service consists of, how managers organize its production, and how workers and guests negotiate the inequality between them. She finds that workers employ a variety of practices to assert a powerful sense of self, including playing games, comparing themselves to other workers and guests, and forming meaningful and reciprocal relations with guests. Through their contact with hotel staff, guests learn how to behave in the luxury environment and come to see themselves as deserving of luxury consumption. These practices, Sherman argues, help make class inequality seem normal, something to be taken for granted. Throughout, Class Acts sheds new light on the complex relationship between class and service work, an increasingly relevant topic in light of the growing economic inequality in the United States that underlies luxury consumption. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Rochester VT, Park Street Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 246 pages. A lavishly illustrated history of coca wine and the revolutionary advertising methods that made it a world-wide success. Follows 19th-century pharmacist Angelo Mariani's interest in coca from medical uses to the development and healing effects of his world-famous coca wine, Vin Mariani. In this full-color illustrated history of coca wine, the first of its kind, author Aymon de Lestrange follows Mariani's interest in coca from its medicinal applications to the creation of the tonic wine. The author explores the botany of coca, how it differs from cocaine, its traditional use in pre-Columbian America, and scientific studies on coca from the 17th through 19th centuries, including from Sigmund Freud, who was a known user. He describes the introduction of coca in the U.S. and France and the many coca preparations then available at drugstores. He also studies the introduction of cocaine in these two countries and the prohibition laws that followed.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 298 pages. Commodifying Communism is an ethnographic study of the role of personal ties between private entrepreneurs and local officials in the organization of China's emerging market economy. It is based on almost two years of fieldwork in Xiamen City, Fujian, one of China's five special economic zones. A close examination of how private business is conducted through these ties sheds light on the dynamism of China's market economy and its political consequences. Clean copy.

Hardcover. San Diego CA, Idea & Design Works/ IDW, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 319 pages. Color and b&w strips from the newspapers between 1927 and 1929. Little Orphan Annie -- the original female comics hero -- takes on chiseling business men and a gang of thieves, armed only with her sharp wit and a good left hook. Then she helps her surrogate parents by nursing "Daddy" Warbucks to health and helping save the Silos' family farm. And only that little chatter-box could become a cross between Robinson Crusoe and Dr. Doolittle when she and Sandy are shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Softcover. Baltimore, Gateway Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 164 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED BY HAAS on the title page. This is the story of a 19th century German-American industrialist who made his fortune manufacturing hard rubber combs thanks to his friendship with Charles Goodyear and his invention, vulcanized rubber. Poppenhusen founded a town, College Point, New York, and became a much-loved philanthropist funding churches, libraries and an educational institute that is today both a National and New York City landmark, the Institute that bears his name. He was an innovator in education introducing the first free kindergarten for his workers and the people of the town, perhaps the first corporate day care facility in the U.S. He made the catastrophic mistake of getting involved in the railroads in the late 1860's and used his vast fortune to bring about the consolidation of what has come down to us today as the Long Island Railroad.

Hardcover. Philsdelphia, J. B. Lippincott, reprint, 1890, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark brown clot stamped with gilt lettering on front cover, 326 pages plus publisher's ads in rear. Hopton was a Yorkshire miner's son, collier manager, and crusader for mine safety. This book was a bestselling treatise advocating improved ventilation and other safety improvements in mine construction and operation, written in a conversational question and answer format. Black and white diagrams throughout including folding frontispiece. Reprinted from the 8th English edition. Front hinge cracked, 2" tear to spine at bottom rear, otherwise a sound, clean copy.

Softcover. Detroit MI, Burroughs Adding Machine Company, 1st, 1910, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Gray cardboard covers with brown cloth spine, two-color title label on front. 179 page booklet promoting their new product-an adding machine. Illustrated with photos (several in color) and diagrams and charts. This is the original printing of 1910. Small name on half-title page, otherwise clean, sound.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 407 pages. Color and b&w illustrations. Details the history of cotton and how it has impacted the textile and garment trade. Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colorful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalized economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialization of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Assouline, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages. Celebrates its centennial in 2004 with a global operation in more than 25 countries. With wit, spirit, and luminous images, Orla Healy tells the inspiring story of Coty, both the man and the company..

Hardcover. US, Harper Design, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 224 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Color / Black and white pictures throughout.