Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 592 pages, b&w illustrations. Samuel Fuller, independent director-producer extraordinaire, tells the story of his life, a life that spanned most of the twentieth century. His twenty-nine tough, gritty pictures made from 1949 to 1989 set out to capture the truth of war, racism, and human frailties, and incorporate some of his own experiences. He writes of his years in the newspaper business--selling papers as a boy on the streets of New York, working for Hearst's New York Journal American, first as a copyboy, then as personal runner for the famous Hearst editor in chief Arthur Brisbane. His film Park Row was inspired by his years as a reporter for the New York Evening Graphic, where his beat included murders, suicides, state executions, and race riots--he scooped every other New York paper with his coverage of the death by drug overdose of the legendary Jeanne Eagels. Fuller talks about directing his first picture (he also wrote the script), I Shot Jesse James . . . and how, as a result, he was sought after by every major studio, choosing to work for Darryl Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox. We see him becoming one of the most prolific, independent-minded writer-directors, turning out seven pictures in six years, among them Pickup on South Street, House of Bamboo, and China Gate. He writes about making Underworld U.S.A., a movie that shows how gangsters in the 1960s were no longer seen as thugs but as "respected" tax-paying executives . . . about the making of the movie Shock Corridor--about a journalist trying to solve a murder in a lunatic asylum--which exposed the conditions in mental institutions . . . and about White Dog (written in collaboration with Curtis Hanson), a film so controversial that Paramount's then studio heads, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, refused to release it. Clean copy.
Hardcover. North Clarendon VT, Tuttle Publishing, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, gorgeous color paintings on every page by Lak-Khee Tay-Audouard. Adventures of the Treasure Fleet is the amazing story of seven epic voyages and their larger-than-life commander, Admiral Zheng He.Beginning in 1405, Admiral Zheng He led more than 300 gigantic, brightly-painted ships across the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean and all the way to the distant coast of Africa. The admiral and his crew battled pirates and raging storms, and were amazed by the people and ways of life in distant lands. At each port, Chinese goods were traded for pearls, precious stones, herbs and medicines which were given as tribute to China's powerful emperor when the ships' returned home. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Palazzo Editions, reprint, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 209 pages. Illustrated in color by Robert Ingpen. Around the World in Eighty Days is an evocation of an era when all travel was an adventure - and Jules Verne's tale of a race against the clock has never lost its power to thrill. Set in 1872, Mr. Phileas Fogg, a gentleman of precision and predictability, and his manservant, the ever resourceful Passepartout, ride through India on an elephant, sail the South China Sea in the teeth of a typhoon and cross the snow-covered plains of the American Wild West in order to fulfill a wager that the journey can be completed in just eighty days. Clean copy.
Softcover. Honolulu, University of HawaiinPress, 2nd pr., 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 362 pages, b&w illustrations and photos. China's Old Dwellings is the most comprehensive critical examination of China's folk architectural forms in any language. It begins by tracing the interest in Chinese vernacular buildings in the twentieth century. Early chapters detail common and distinctive spatial components, including the interior and exterior modular spaces that are axiomatic components of most Chinese dwellings as well as conventional structural components and building materials common in Chinese construction. Later chapters examine representative housing types in the three broad cultural realms--northern, southern, and western--into which China has been divided. Knapp completes his survey with an exploration of China's old dwellings in the context of the rapid economic and social changes that are destroying so
Hardcover. Bew Haven CT, Yale/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Coming of age in the 1960s, the photographer Danny Lyon (b. 1942) distinguished himself with work that emphasized intimate social engagement. In 1962 Lyon traveled to the segregated South to photograph the civil rights movement. Subsequent projects on biker culture, the demolition and redevelopment of lower Manhattan, and the Texas prison system, and more recently on the Occupy movement and the vanishing culture in China's booming Shanxi Province, share Lyon's signature immersive approach and his commitment to social and political issues that concern those on the margins of society. Lyon's photography is paralleled by his work as a filmmaker and a writer. Danny Lyon: Message to the Future is the first in-depth examination of this leading figure in American photography and film, and the first publication to present his influential bodies of work in all media in their full context. Lead essayists Julian Cox and Elisabeth Sussman provide an account of Lyon's five-decade career. Alexander Nemerov writes about Lyon's work in Knoxville, Tennessee; Ed Halter assesses the artist's films; Danica Willard Sachs evaluates his photomontages; and Julian Cox interviews Alan Rinzler about his role in publishing Lyon's earliest works. With extensive back matter and illustrations, this publication will be the most comprehensive account of this influential artist's work. Clean copy. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. Bew Haven CT, Yale/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Coming of age in the 1960s, the photographer Danny Lyon (b. 1942) distinguished himself with work that emphasized intimate social engagement. In 1962 Lyon traveled to the segregated South to photograph the civil rights movement. Subsequent projects on biker culture, the demolition and redevelopment of lower Manhattan, and the Texas prison system, and more recently on the Occupy movement and the vanishing culture in China's booming Shanxi Province, share Lyon's signature immersive approach and his commitment to social and political issues that concern those on the margins of society. Lyon's photography is paralleled by his work as a filmmaker and a writer. Danny Lyon: Message to the Future is the first in-depth examination of this leading figure in American photography and film, and the first publication to present his influential bodies of work in all media in their full context. Lead essayists Julian Cox and Elisabeth Sussman provide an account of Lyon's five-decade career. Alexander Nemerov writes about Lyon's work in Knoxville, Tennessee; Ed Halter assesses the artist's films; Danica Willard Sachs evaluates his photomontages; and Julian Cox interviews Alan Rinzler about his role in publishing Lyon's earliest works. With extensive back matter and illustrations, this publication will be the most comprehensive account of this influential artist's work. Clean copy. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. Lee Publishers Group, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 285 pages. Preface by Jean Mailey; Introduction by Zhang Ding. Designs in blue and white, fine bright tight copy, unmarked, very good slightly edge-rubbed dj. Collected from the remote areas of China's southwestern provinces, each decorative pattern is rich in beauty and meaning. This royalty-free volume will be an invaluable resource for artists, designers, craftspeople, and any lover of traditional Chinese folk art. Clean copy.
Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 210 pages. In this rich comparative ethnography, Lee describes how two radically different factory cultures have emerged from a period of profound economic change. In Hong Kong, "matron workers" remain in factories for decades. In Guangdong, a seemingly endless number of young "maiden workers" travel to the south from northern provinces, following the promise of higher wages. Whereas the women in Hong Kong participate in a management system characterized by "familial hegemony," the young women in Guangdong find an internal system of power based on regional politics and kin connections, or "localistic despotism." Having worked side-by-side with these women on the floors of both factories, Lee concludes that it is primarily the differences in the gender politics of the two labor markets that determine the culture of each factory. Posing an ambitious challenge to sociological theories that reduce labor politics to pure economics or state power structures, Lee argues that gender plays a crucial role in the cultures and management strategies of factories that rely heavily on women workers. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Damiani, 1st, 2015, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still sealed in publisher's shrinkwrap, 156 pages. Outside the Studio is photographer Greg Gorman's tenth monograph. This book takes Gorman (born 1949) outside the reaches of his studio portrait and figure-study work, for which he is best known, and onto the streets of Southeast Asia-uncharted territory for the artist. Traveling initially on behalf of Epson, giving symposiums on fine art digital printing throughout Singapore, Malaysia, China and India, Gorman got a firsthand look at these very different cultures at the very beginning of the digital revolution. The transition from analogue to digital cameras was another new experience for Gorman, who had shot film for more than 30 years. For Gorman, being in the studio with the likes of Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro was second nature, but being thrust in front of strangers in China, Kuala Lampur, India, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam was a new adventure.
London, Athlone Press, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 151 pages. Previous owner's name inside front cover. Clean otherwise.
Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 270 pages, b&w illustrations. Drawing on the scholarship of folklore, historiography, and literary anthropology, this study traces the evolution of one of China's most enduring and controversial madmen, the legendary southern poet Ch'u Yuan, whose suicide by drowning is still commemorated annually in the colourful Dragon Boat festival. Light pen underlining to several pages of Intoduction, small name on front fly leaf. Otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Boston, David Godine, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 132 pages, 110 ill. (109 color, including covers). Photographs taken on Guggenheim Foundation and Asian Cultural Council Fellowship in 1983 and 1984 in Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, the Philippines, China, Burma, South Borneo, and Vietnam. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap.
Softcover. Washington DC, National Geographic Society, 1st, 1919, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, illustrated with b&w photos, maps, advertisements. Original yellow and black wrappers, spine with light wear, good to very good. Articles include: The Shattered Capitals of Central America, The Isle of Capri, Shantung-China's Holy Land, America's South Sea Sailors.
Hardcover. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 388 pages, hardcover. B&w plates. INSCRIBED BY ECKERT. Light foxing to edge and light wear to bottom edges of cover. According to conventional interpretations, the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 destroyed a budding native capitalist economy on the peninsula and blocked the development of a Korean capitalist class until 1945. In this expansive and provocative study, now available in paperback, Carter J. Eckert challenges the standard view and argues that Japanese imperialism, while politically oppressive, was also the catalyst and cradle of modern Korean industrial development. Ancient ties to China were replaced by new ones to Japan - ties that have continued to shape the South Korean political economy down to the present day.Eckert explores a wide range of themes, including the roots of capitalist development in Korea, the origins of the modern business elite, the nature of Japanese colonial policy and the Japanese colonial state, the relationship between the colonial government and the Korean economic elite, and the nature of Korean collaboration. He conveys a clear sense of the human complexity, archival richness, and intellectual challenge of the historical period. His documentation is thorough; his arguments are compelling and often strikingly innovative.
Hardcover. China, Turner Photo, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 171 pages. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Duotone vintage photographs throughout, bibliography. The Quing Dynasty, which spanned three centuries, from 1644 to 1911, was the last ruling dynasty of China. Before the collapse of the empire ended 2,000 years of Imperialism and ushered in a time of political and economic strife, artists and artisans turned out rich paintings, porcelain plates, vases and photographs--the last having arrived in the country in the 1840s. This publication presents a key selection of photographs of the Southern Chinese coast taken by both Chinese and European photographers. It touches on the cultural exchange between the Chinese and those Western photographers who began to explore the country, like Milton M. Miller, William Saunders and John Thomson. Miller, during a short period in the 1860s, set up a photo studio in Hong Kong and introduced portraiture in the formal Western style of the time to the Chinese upper-middle classes.
Hardcover. Texas A&M University Press;, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 276 pages. Tom Lea was a realist who painted things as they are, but just happened to see more of what they are than most of us do. A muralist, painter, book illustrator, World War II artist-correspondent, historian, novelist, and humanist, Lea died in 2001 after creating in some sixty years a corpus of work that has captivated those who know it. This volume makes available the full range of his vigorous work. Old admirers of Lea's talents will delight in this presentation, and a whole new generation will be awed by the unique contribution he has made. A Southwesterner from multicultural El Paso, Lea gave new vision to the misunderstood lands often thought of as barren wastes. As Kathleen G. Hjerter says in her foreword, in his paintings "the desert's melded colors are vibrant under many subtle gradations of light; the mesas and mountains reach up to a sky enormous enough to hold everyone's soul."But it is not just the southwest. its life and lore that Lea knew. Any subject he portrayed in picture or words (he wrote several outstanding books, including The Wonderful Country) he first researched minutely. Thus, he brought marvelous detail to his portrayal of the Mexican bullfighter, the Australian ranches and Texas cattle of the King empire, and the Indians, pioneers, and ranch hands of his own corner of the world. In the Second World War, as an artist-correspondent for Life magazine, he captured both the weaponry and the emotions of war. On assignment in China he developed a love for that land that gave him not only many subjects for paintings but also his favorite and, in later years, most characteristic medium: Chinese ink applied with a fine brush. This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.
Softcover. Annapolis MD, Naval Institute Press, reprint, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 596 pages. The second part of H. P. Willmott's three-volume history of the war in the Pacific, this work tells how Japan arrived at a situation in which war with the United States was the only means of ensuring long-term security and resolving her immediate problems of access to raw materials and of an unwinnable war in China. Totally balanced in presentation, the book also explains the basis of Allied miscalculations and provides explanations of the defeats that overwhelmed American, British, and Dutch forces throughout Southeast Asia in a little more than three months. Willmott argues that it was Japan's concentration and economy of force that contributed to its success in that early campaign. It was a later decision to disperse forces over a large area, he says, that resulted in Japan's loss of the Coral Sea and Midway battles and ultimately the entire war. Clean copy
Hardcover. London, John Murray, 2nd Ed., 1889, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt, a little rubbed and bumped at edges. 456 pages with color frontispiece map, 139 illustrations of which 27 are full-page and 14 maps of which some are folding. School ex-library copy with spine label, minimal stamping to front endpapers and title page. Previous owner's inscription on half-title page. Interior clean with no marking, all fold-out maps in great condition. NOTE: The Marchesa a schooner yacht sailed from England in 1881 to the seas of China and Japan the East Indies and New Guinea before returning to England in 1884. First published in 1886 as a two volume set.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 364 pages. The Second World War's Pacific conflict was one of the most complex in history. It embrioled peoples from opposite sides of the globe; it was fought in China, across the expanses of the Pacific, and in the jungles of Southeast Asia; and it was devastating in its consequences for civilians and servicemen alike. It saw the first use of atomic weapons, hastened the end of the Western empires in Asia, and marked America's rise to the position of the most powerful nation in the world.Christopher Thorne, whose previous studies of the war in the Pacific have become landmarks in the field, here weaves together both the entire network of international relations surrounding the war and the impact the war had on all the societies involved--Indian as well as American; Australian and New Zealand as well as Japanese; Korean, Chinese, and Southeast Asian as well as British, French, and Dutch. The Issue of War draws on material gathered over many years in the Far East, Western Europe, and the U.S.--material including wartime films, broadcasts, and newspapers,as well as countless private and offical papers. Representing a synthesis of military, diplomatic, economic, intellectual, and social history, it not only places the war in the context of developments before 1941, but illuminates various patterns that cut across the familiar distinctions between Asia and the West or between Japan and the Allies. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown, 1st, 1960, Hardcover, 336 pages, b&w drawings by Lea. Dust jacket with light edgewear, chipping. Novel about Hank Spurling, a Marine hero of the war in the Pacific, who returned to the Cloudrock Mountains in Wyoming. In the early days of World War II, Lea became a war correspondent for Life magazine, executing paintings of action in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, China, North Africa, and Europe. Lea's career thereafter involved both painting and writing, on a variety of subjects but generally reflective of his roots in the Southwest. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 333 pages. With his marvelous eye for detail and his contagious enthusiasm, Ted Conover explores six key byways worldwide. In Peru, he traces the journey of a load of rare mahogany over the Andes to its origin, an untracked part of the Amazon basin soon to be traversed by a new east-west route across South America. In East Africa, he visits truckers whose travels have been linked to the worldwide spread of AIDS. In the West Bank, he monitors highway checkpoints with Israeli soldiers and then passes through them with Palestinians, witnessing the injustices and danger borne by both sides. He shuffles down a frozen riverbed with teenagers escaping their Himalayan valley to see how a new road will affect the now-isolated Indian region of Ladakh. From the passenger seat of a new Hyundai piling up the miles, he describes the exuberant upsurge in car culture as highways proliferate across China. And from inside an ambulance, he offers an apocalyptic but precise vision of Lagos, Nigeria, where congestion and chaos on freeways signal the rise of the global megacity. Clean copy.
Honesdale, PA, Boyds Mills Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 192 pages, Black & white illustrations by Christoher Zhong-Yun Zhn. Review copy. An intimate look at family and village life in southeastern China, approximately 50 years ago. Ying, 10, is raised by her beloved grandmother. Ah Pau is thrifty, wise, and firmly rooted in her culture's traditions and superstitions. She guides Ying and her cousins with a firm and loving hand. As in First Apple (Boyds Mills, 1994), in which the little girl was a year younger, Ying must raise an ambitious amount of money. This time, she must bargain with her mercenary cousin Kee, and deal with the class bully.