california

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 128 pages. Although Stock has been associated with Magnum Photos since 1951 and his work has been collected in numerous books (California Trip; Jazz Street), he remains best known for his unforgettable b&w photographs of Dean, which soared beyond routine celebrity shots. Stock's photo essay in Life, "Moody New Star," attracted attention the same week East of Eden opened in 1955, and in the years since, his photos of Dean have resurfaced in magazines, books and exhibitions. Published on the 50th anniversary of Dean's death, this collection of 80 duotones recaptures the few weeks in 1954 Stock spent with the actor in New York and his Fairmount, Ind., hometown before the two flew back to L.A. for the filming of Rebel Without a Cause. Hyams (James Dean: Little Boy Lost) calls the haunting shot of Dean alone in a rainy Times Square "one of the foremost iconic images of the 20th century." A surreal scene at the Fairmount farm shows Dean banging bongo drums for an audience of cows and pigs, and a peek inside an Actors Studio session is a rarity since Lee Strasberg "almost never let anyone photograph his classes." Stock's own brief memoir of his friendship with Dean is well written, evocative and insightful.

Hardcover. St. Ann's Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 130 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. This first monograph on Fee accompanies two major gallery exhibitions in California. Fee has done editorial photography for such publications as Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly, but this publication focuses on his fine arts work from the past ten years. Fee physically manipulates his photographs and negatives in the darkroom, adding toners and chemical stains that result in beautiful glows of bronze and blue. This effect adds to a sense of decay in his dark, iconographic imagery of America, featured in the photos that make up the first half of this book. Also included are collaborations between Fee and Beat sculptor George Herms.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 232 pages. James Rosenquist's paintings, with their billboard-sized images of commercial subjects, are utterly emblematic of 1960s Pop Art. Their provocative imagery also touches on some of the major political and historical events of that turbulent decade--from the Kennedy assassination to the war in Vietnam. In the first full-length scholarly examination of Rosenquist's art from that period, Michael Lobel weaves together close visual analysis, a wealth of archival research, and a consideration of the social and historical contexts in which these paintings were produced to offer bold new readings of a body of work that helped redefine art in the 1960s. Bringing together a range of approaches, James Rosenquist provides a compelling perspective on the artist and on the burgeoning consumer culture of postwar America.

Hardcover. Steidl, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 148 pages. In this new monograph, Jamey Stillings (born 1955) synthesizes environmental interests with his longstanding fascination with the intersections of nature and human activity. In October 2010, Stillings began a three-and-a-half-year aerial exploration over what has become the world's largest concentrated solar power plant, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert of California. From the simple and stark terrain of the preconstruction landscape to the angular forms of the completed solar plant producing 392 megawatts of electricity on 14 square kilometers of public land, Stillings explores dynamic interactions between raw organic forms of nature and those defined by the project's precise geometric lines. Shot from a helicopter during first and last light, Stillings' black-and-white images intrigue with tight abstractions, oblique views of geologic and geometric forms, and broad open views of the dramatic desert basin.

Hardcover. NY, Library of America, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 970 pages. Joan Didion's influence on postwar American letters is undeniable. Whether writing fiction, memoir, or trailblazing journalism, her gifts for narrative and dialogue, and her intimate but detached authorial persona, have won her legions of readers and admirers. Now Library of America launches its multi-volume edition of Didion's collected writings, prepared in consultation with the author, that brings together her fiction and nonfiction for the first time. Collected in this first volume are Didion's five iconic books from the 1960s and 1970s: Run River, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It As It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer, and The White Album. Whether writing about countercultural San Francisco, the Las Vegas wedding industry, Lucille Miller, Charles Manson, or the shopping mall, Didion achieves a wonderful negative sublimity without condemning her subjects or condescending to her readers. Chiefly about California, these books display Didion's genius for finding exactly the right language and tone to capture America's broken twilight landscape at a moment of headlong conflict and change. Remainder dot to bottom edge, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in very good dust jacket with mild fading to spine. 184 pages plus index, b&w photographs. Light edge wear, protected by mylar cover. A very clean, tight copy. Written from personal recollection and years of research by the friend and writer Steinbeck knew would one day be his biographer. Emphasizes Steinbeck's formative years: boyhood in Salinas, farmhand, seaman, road-gang flunkie, hod carrier, dam builder and pursuit of wine, women and song.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Fraenkel Gallery, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Two volumes in slipcase. Very clean, like new in publishers shrink-wrap. The result of three years of work in California's Central Valley, Katy Grannan's new series The 99 features large-scale color portraits and black-and-white photographs. Grannan's recent photographs are set in the parched landscape and forgotten towns along Highway 99, including Modesto, Fresno and Bakersfield. In her intensely vivid color portraits, the artist works at midday when the sun is direct and the heat is unrelenting, presenting each individual, often simultaneously heroic and vulnerable, against stark, white backgrounds. In the black-and-white photographs, many of her subjects re-appear on Modesto's South 9th Street and along the banks of the Tuolumne River. Everyday rituals, small interactions and moments of beauty on the fringes of society are depicted in detail, conferring significance to what is often overlooked. This large-format, two-volume, slipcased monograph gathers this series for the first time.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Fraenkel Gallery, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Two volumes in slipcase. Both very clean, unmarked copies. Only minor edgwear to slipcase. The result of three years of work in California's Central Valley, Katy Grannan's new series The 99 features large-scale color portraits and black-and-white photographs. Grannan's recent photographs are set in the parched landscape and forgotten towns along Highway 99, including Modesto, Fresno and Bakersfield. In her intensely vivid color portraits, the artist works at midday when the sun is direct and the heat is unrelenting, presenting each individual, often simultaneously heroic and vulnerable, against stark, white backgrounds. In the black-and-white photographs, many of her subjects re-appear on Modesto's South 9th Street and along the banks of the Tuolumne River. Everyday rituals, small interactions and moments of beauty on the fringes of society are depicted in detail, conferring significance to what is often overlooked. This large-format, two-volume, slipcased monograph gathers this series for the first time.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 274 pages, color illustrations, very good paperback & cover (exhibition catalog) The essays are: the art of visual culture: comics; graphic novels; animated cartoons; computer & video games: anime; manga; visual art.

Hardcover. US, Foggy Notion Books/Pasadena Museum of California Art, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 208 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to boards. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Until recently, the figurative artists who dominated the Los Angeles art scene of the 1940s and 50s had largely been written out of art history. L.A. Raw is an attempt to right that wrong. Bringing together works by 41 artists in a variety of media, it traces a lineage that connects postwar figurative expressionism to the 1960s and 70s investigations of politics, gender and ethnicity in art. The featured artists include John Altoon, Wallace Berman, William Brice, Hans Burckhardt, Chris Burden, Cameron, Judy Chicago, Connor Everts, Llyn Foulkes, Charles Garabedian, David Hammonds, Robert Heinecken, John Paul Jones, Kim Jones, Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Rico Lebrun, Paul McCarthy, Arnold Mesches, Betye Saar, Ben Sakoguchi, Barbara Smith, James Strombotne, Jan Stussy, Edward Teske, Joyce Treiman, Howard Warshaw, June Wayne, Charles White and Jack Zajac.

Hardcover. 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 208 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Until recently, the figurative artists who dominated the Los Angeles art scene of the 1940s and 50s had largely been written out of art history. L.A. Raw is an attempt to right that wrong. Bringing together works by 41 artists in a variety of media, it traces a lineage that connects postwar figurative expressionism to the 1960s and 70s investigations of politics, gender and ethnicity in art. The featured artists include John Altoon, Wallace Berman, William Brice, Hans Burckhardt, Chris Burden, Cameron, Judy Chicago, Connor Everts, Llyn Foulkes, Charles Garabedian, David Hammonds, Robert Heinecken, John Paul Jones, Kim Jones, Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Rico Lebrun, Paul McCarthy, Arnold Mesches, Betye Saar, Ben Sakoguchi, Barbara Smith, James Strombotne, Jan Stussy, Edward Teske, Joyce Treiman, Howard Warshaw, June Wayne, Charles White and Jack Zajac. No dj issued, clean copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, North Point Gallery, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 46 pages. Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on front endpaper. Full color illustrations throughout. Minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Tom Shephard is the new homicide detective in swanky Laguna Beach, California, and he's come to town from L.A. after killing a boy in a justifiable homicide. But the rep and the psychological baggage has followed him to Laguna Beach. Shephard has barely found his desk when he's called to the scene of a particularly brutal homicide in which the victim has been doused in turpentine and set ablaze. Shortly thereafter, a second victim is dealt a similar fate, and Shephard finds himself drawn into a complex mystery involving sex, blackmail and murder that stretches back forty years and that also involves members of his own family. Paper tanning slightly. Clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 393 pages. Reaching beyond sensational headlines, Land of the Unconquerable at last offers a three-dimensional portrait of Afghan women. In a series of wide-ranging, deeply reflective essays, accomplished scholars, humanitarian workers, politicians, and journalists-most with extended experience inside Afghanistan-examine the realities of life for women in both urban and rural settings. They address topics including food security, sex work, health, marriage, education, poetry, politics, prisoners, and community development. Eschewing stereotypes about the burqa, the contributors focus instead on women's empowerment and agency, and their struggles for peace and justice in the face of a brutal ongoing war. A fuller picture of Afghanistan's women past and present emerges, leading to social policy suggestions and pragmatic solutions for a peaceful future. Review copy stamp on top edge otherwise like new.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, Art Issues Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 420 pages with index. Christopher Knight is the unprecedented five-time winner of the Chemical Bank Award for Distinguished Newspaper Art Criticism, and was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in criticism. Writing first for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and now for the Los Angeles Times, Knight has developed a new journalistic approach to American art and culture, in which a radical defense of images stands alongside an incisive critique of cultural institutions. Among the 129 essays and reviews collected here are individual writings on internationally important historical figures, such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Tung Ch'i Ch'ang, and douard Manet; contemporary American masters like Edward Ruscha and Mike Kelley; and significant artists virtually forgotten today, such as California's Henrietta Shore and Mexico's Hermenegildo Bustos. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Available Press/Ballantine, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 191 pages. Last Words is the first major collection of poems by a Milwaukee poet born soon after World War II who reached maturity during the late 1960s. It contains his highly acclaimed epic "Factory,"described by Allen Ginsberg as "a definitely powerful epic by one of Whitman's 'poets and orators to come.'" Antler was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He "worked his way through college" in various factories. As John Muir left the University of Wisconsin at Madison for "the University of the Wilderness" in 1863, Antler left the Milwaukee campus for the same destination in 1973. Besides factories, he has explored wildernesses in Upper Peninsula Michigan, Minnesota, Ontario, Colorado, and California. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 536 pages, illustrations in color and b&w. Light edgewear to dust jacket with small tear to upper edge of front cover. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Spokane, WA, Arthur H. Clark Company, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 343 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Covers bound in red, gilt title on spine. Binding tight. Dust jacket unclipped. Dust jacket has a touch of fading, otherwise no rips, in very good condition. Very clean inside and out.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 218 pages. Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi (1130-1200)-a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 423 pages. Volume III only. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Translated from the German by R. F. Brown, et al. The third volume of philosopher G.W.F. Hegel's LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION covers Hegel's philosophical interpretation of Christianity. Taken together, the three volumes establish a critical study, separating the material and publishing it as autonomous units on the basis of a complete re-editing of the sources--a series of actual lectures delivered by Hegel in 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Sotcover, 552 pages. From the complete three-volume critical edition of Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, this edition extracts the full text and footnotes of the 1827 lectures, making the work available in a convenient form for study. Of the lectures that can be fully reconstructed, those of 1827 are the clearest, the maturest in form, and the most accessible to nonspecialists. In them, readers will find Hegel engaged in lively debates and in important refinements of his treatment of the concept of religion, the Oriental religions and Judaism, Christology, the Trinity, the God-world relationship, and many other topics. Name onfront fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Kitchen Sink Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 176 pages, b&w reprints of the early strips. This book contains a complete set of the 1940 daily strips. The first Hollywood adaptation of Li'l Abner was made in 1940. Newspaper columnist Michael Price and the late film historian George Turner provide a fascinating history of this largely forgotten movie, complete with 9 rare stills and lobby cards. The back cover features the very rare Li'l Abner movie poster and another lobby card in full color. Buster Keaton plays Lonesome Polecat in the film but the once hugely popular silent star was in such professional disgrace by 1940 that he was not even listed among the seven acting credits on the film poster! A sidebar provides backgrounds on the producer, director and actors. A second introduction by editor Dave Schreiner provides a political and historical context for the strip itself in 1940. The year begins with Capp's parody of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (also made into a movie this year). Dogpatch is wiped out by turnip termites, so our favorite hillbillies are lured to Boston to pick oranges in winter! Li'l Abner also learns how to woo "Dogpatch style" from Adam Lazonga, whom Schreiner speculates is based on controversial philosopher and free thinker Bertrand Russell or possibly playwright George Bernard Shaw. In another episode Mammy and Pappy Yokum get a 100 year-old letter and rush off to the California gold rush. Earthquake McGoon is introduced in the daily strip this year, as is the popular phrase, "As any fool kin plainly see!" Plus the annual Sadie Hawkins Day Race. The cover is drawn by Peter Poplaski.

Hardcover. New York, Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1st, 1856, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 493 pages. Hardcover. Illustrated with black & white engravings. Foxing to frontis, title page, and occurring to pages surrounding illustrated pages. Brown cloth covers with fading, rubbing moderate wear. Binding is firm. Good + condition.

Hardcover. Boston, David R Godine, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 208 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout. The FSA archive includes the work of dozens of photographers, from acknowledged giants like Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Lange to Marion Post Wolcott and Russell Lee, whose names and work may be less familiar. This book collects work from nine of these trips: Evans in Louisana and Alabama, Shahn in West Virginia, Lange in California, and others, uniting them with Stryker's shooting scripts, letters, and other relevant archival documents. Reproduced in duotone, the 175 photographs in The Likes of Us were all printed from the original negatives at the Library of Congress.