culture

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf , 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 314 pages. Contrasting the Victorian system of virtues - respectability, self-help, discipline, cleanliness, obedience, orderliness - with the opportunistic, superficial morality of modern society, an intellectual historian calls for a deeper commitment to moral responsibility. According to Himmelfarb, Victorian "manners and morals" created a society that emphasized a strong family life for all classes and gave rise to a prosperous economy and the early feminist and social service movements. Furthermore, the influence of these virtues caused the incidence of illegitimate births and violent crimes to drop significantly and remain low until the 1960s. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Unable to cope with his huge inheritance, Jonathan Whalen searches for an escape in the drug culture. Stated First Edition with B in letter line. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press , 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A psychological mystery with haunting overtones, this novel focuses on a priest tormented by the loss of the Gaelic culture, by the increasing worldliness of religion and by his own sexual desires. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, New York University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 240 pages. Under the influence of European historians, scholarship about the Dutch in America has generally emphasized what was derived from the urban and merchant character of the Netherlands, particularly the single province of Holland in the seventeenth century. But it was among the farmers of New York and New Jersey, according to David Steven Cohen, rather than the urban merchants of Albany and New York City, that a distinctive Dutch-American regional subculture arose, thrived, and survived through the end of the nineteenth century. By examining the life of the early emigrant Dutch settlers, the author constructs a picture of their culture through the farmhouses they built, the landscapes they cultivated, and the tools and equipment they used, relating it all to the structure of their families, their folklore, and folklife. It was in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, according to Cohen, that a change occurred in the culture of the Dutch in America by which they became Dutch-American, and the most striking material evidence of this transformation was in the development of a new type of farmhouse, which began to replace those still traceable to the Netherlands.Thirty black-and-white illustrations. Many pages with light pencil notations.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st UK, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 431 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with minor wear, 278 pages. A re-examination of the roles played by authors, readers, scribes and texts in medieval literature, which describes how consideration of marks on the physical manuscript - elements added by scribes and readers - can shed light on interpretive issues that have puzzled modern readers. Light underlining to 18 pages in first chapter.

Softcover. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2nd pr., 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 440 pages, b&w illustrations. George Stocking has been widely recognized as the premier historian of anthropology ever since the publication of his first volume of essays, Race, Culture, and Evolution, in 1968. As editor of several publications, including the highly acclaimed History of Anthropology series, he has led the movement to establish the history of anthropology as a recognized research specialization. In addition to the study Victorian Anthropology, his work includes numerous essays covering a wide range of anthropological topics. The eight essays collected in The Ethnographer's Magic consider the emergence of anthropology since the late nineteenth century as an academic discipline grounded in systematic fieldwork. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, Penguin Books , reprint, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 553 pages. The Europeans is richly enthralling, panoramic cultural history of nineteenth-century Europe, told through the intertwined lives of three remarkable people: a great singer, Pauline Viardot, a great writer, Ivan Turgenev, and a great connoisseur, Pauline's husband Louis. Their passionate, ambitious lives were bound up with an astonishing array of writers, composers and painters all trying to make their way through the exciting, prosperous and genuinely pan-European culture that came about as a result of huge economic and technological change. This culture - through trains, telegraphs and printing - allowed artists of all kinds to exchange ideas and make a living, shuttling back and forth across the whole continent from the British Isles to Imperial Russia, as they exploited a new cosmopolitan age. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, no dust jacket, 313 pages. This book is an explicitly comparative, anthropological analysis of the societies of the eastern and western highlands of Papua New Guinea. Particular societies have been documented by anthropologists since the 1950s yet until this book's publication in 1987, there had been relatively few attempts at rigourous comparison of the findings. This book argues that the highlands cannot be treated as a homogeneous region, socially, culturally, historically or environmentally. Rather, societies of the eastern highlands have followed markedly different paths of development in the past to those of the western highlands, and it is upon this divergence that a comparative treatment of the twentieth century should be mounted. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 314 pages, index, b&w illustrations. This is an archaeological perspective on the elaborate system of chiefdoms found in the islands of Polynesia. While the growth and development of complex social and political systems in this region have long interested anthropologists and ethnographers, the islands' rich sources of archaeological data have since been exploited. The author combines this fresh archaeological data with comparative ethnographic and linguistic materials to present an innovative and perceptive account of the processes of culture change in the islands over three millennia. Using comparative ethnography, lexical reconstruction and direct archaeological evidence, the author reconstructs the broad outlines of Ancestral Polynesian Society, from which the diverse societies of the Polynesian region descended. Major processes of cultural change are analysed in detail, including colonization, adaptation to changing environments, development of intensive production and social conflict and competition. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 256 pages. In this unique blend of historical fiction and cutting-edge suspense, author Diane Wei Liang succeeds in delivering an incredible mystery veiled behind the red curtain of contemporary Chinese life and culture. Set in Beijing "The Eye of Jade" introduces readers to the enigmatic Mei Wang, the country's first successful female private investigator, and her struggle to uncover the location of a rare and treasured artifact that is believed to have been absconded from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution. For Wang this is a task of special importance, and can only stand to make her later life and reputation glimmer, but as she soon finds in the back alleys, this is not going to be easy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 403 pages. Hardcover. 65 illustrations, 40 in full color. Price clipped dust jacket worn with tape repairs, fading - jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. "An account of the life and death of an art, of the men who made it and of the lusty age in which they flourished. 65 illustrations, including 40 in full color." Index, glossary, bibliography, appendices, artist biographies, chronology. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University, 1st, 1987, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 227 pages, b&w illustrations. In this penetrating study, Carl Brasseaux looks beyond long-standing mythology to provide a critical account of early Acadian culture in Louisiana and the reasons for its survival. He convincingly dispels many received notions about the routes Acadians traveled from Nova Scotia to Louisiana, their original settlement sites, and the patterns of their subsequent migrations within the state, and closely examines the relations of Louisiana's Acadians with their black, Spanish, Indian, and Creole neighbors. In adapting to subtropical Louisiana, with its turmoil of alternating French and Spanish regimes, the Acadians exhibited industry, pragmatism, individualism, and the ability to close ranks in the face of a general threat. As Brasseaux reveals, Acadians' cohesiveness and insularity preserved the core elements of their culture and helped them adjust to new physical and social demands. Names, inscription to front fly leaf, interior clean and bright.

Hardcover. NY/London, Routledge, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 283 pages, b&w illustrations. " Richard Schechner explores the nature of ritualised behavior and its relationship to performance and politics. A brilliant and uncontainable examination of cultural expression and communal action, THE FUTURE OF RITUAL asks pertinent questions about art, theatre and the changing meaning of 'culture' in today's intercultural world. It is richly illustrated with over 50 photos of pereformances and public events." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Illustrated in b&w and color. Clean copy.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, reprint, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 436 pages, b&w illustrations. Eighteenth-century women have long been presented as the heroines of traditional biographies, or as the faceless victims of vast historical processes, but rarely have they been deemed worthy of historical inquiry. "The Gentleman's Daughter" provides an account of the lives of genteel women - the daughters of merchants, the wives of lawyers and the sisters of gentlemen. Based on a study of the letters, diaries and account books of over 100 women from commercial, professional and gentry families, mainly in provincial England, "The Gentleman's Daughter" challenges the view that the period witnessed a new division of the everyday worlds of privileged men and women into the separate spheres of home and work. Amanda Vickery invokes the women's own accounts of their lives to argue that in the course of the 18th and early 19th centuries the scope of female experience did not diminish - in fact, quite the reverse. Contrary to orthodoxy, in the 18th century there was neither a loss of female freedoms, nor a novel retreat into the home. In their own writing, genteel women throughout the Georgian era singled out their social and their emotional roles: kinswoman, wife, mother, housekeeper, consumer, hostess and member of polite society. Clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 248 pages. Name on front fly leaf whited out, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, yellow wrappers, 258 pages. Examines the unique religious brotherhoods of Morocco, tracing their origins to two saints from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Sidi Ali ben Hamdush and Sidi Ahmed Dghughi. Known for their dramatic and sometimes controversial rituals, such as trance dances and acts of self-mutilation, the Hamadsha are healers who address spiritual and psychogenic ailments through symbolic and therapeutic practices. Their activities, deeply rooted in the Moroccan cult of saints, reflect a complex interplay of Islamic mysticism, local traditions, and social dynamics. Through these rituals, the Hamadsha incorporate patients into their brotherhoods, providing them with new roles and a symbolic framework to articulate and resolve personal and societal tensions. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, historical analysis, and psychoanalytic perspectives, this study explores the Hamadsha's history, their organizational structure, and their relationship with Moroccan culture and religion. It examines the saints' tombs as focal points of veneration, the social dynamics of the brotherhoods, and their therapeutic methods, including pilgrimages and trance dances. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light gray boards with a blue cloth spine, 268 pages. The author's passionate concern for Africa and for the human spirit is evident in this portrait of the "First People" of southern Africa, the Bushmen. Van der Post describes his desert travels, the splendid landscape and wildlife, and his encounters with the Bushman, an elusive culture. Drawings by Maurice Wilson. SIGNED BY VAN DER POST on the front fly leaf. No dust jacket, Clean copy.

Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, in a dust jacket with light fade to edges, 322 pages, b&w illustrations. For the Foi people who live on the edge of the central highlands of Papua New Guinea, the flow of pearl shells is the "heart" of their social life. The pearl shell is the exchange item that mediates the creation of their most important sexual and social roles. The Heart of the Pearl Shell analyzes a number of myths of the Foi people, elegantly bringing together significant ethnographic materials in a way that has important implications for the development of social theory in anthropology and in Melanesian studies. Scholars of semiotic-symbolic anthropology and of comparative religion will also share the author's interest in the meaning and role of mythology in Foi culture. Instead of relying on orthodox methods of Freudian or structuralist interpretation, James Weiner assumes there is a dialectical relationship between the images of Foi myth and the images of the Foi's social world. He demonstrates how each set of these images is dependent upon the other for its creation. This innovative study locates Foi social meaning in the re-creation and attempted solution of the moral dilemmas that are crystallized in mythology and other poetic usages.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 373 pages. Color and b&w photographs. Water stain on back cover. Dust jacket has some small tears. A pictorial record, with accompanying text, of German society, culture, and politics, from the Weimar Republic to Hitler's last public appearence, detailing the rise of Nazism and Hitler's public and private lives.

Softcover. Athens, Greek Ministry of Culture, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 183 pages. Richly illustrated catalog for an exhibition in Washington on art from the Geometric, Orientalizing and Archaic periods. With a preface by Melina Mercouri. The chapters are: life in early Greece; the alphabet of history; the art of the Greek dark ages; geometric art; chart of vase shapes; vase painting; terracottas; bronzes; sculpture in stone. Clean copy.

Softcover. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 277 pages. Starting in the 1980s, anti-immigrant discourse shifted away from the "color" of immigrants to their religion and culture. It focused in particular on newcomers from Muslim countries--people feared both as terrorists and as products of tribal societies with values opposed to those of secular Western Europe. Leo Lucassen tackles the question of whether the integration process of these recent immigrants will fundamentally differ in the long run (over multiple generations) from the experiences of similar immigrant groups in the past. For comparison, Lucassen focuses on "large and problematic groups" from Western Europe's past (the Irish in the United Kingdom, the Poles in Germany, and the Italians in France) and demonstrates a number of structural similarities in the way migrants and their descendants integrated into these nation states. Lucassen emphasizes that the geographic sources of the "threat" have changed and that contemporaries tend to overemphasize the threat of each successive wave of immigrants, in part because the successfully incorporated immigrants of the past have become invisible in national histories. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, American Italian Historical Association, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 244 pages, 35th Conference of the American Italian Historical Association . "'Italian Americans and World War II, ' explores many facets of the dynamic period of the 1940s and the consequences of war and peace. Scholars within AIHA and outside the academy have been slow to recognize the significance of World War II, now recognized as a seminal event in Italian-American life and culture. . . . "This volume is dedicated to all Italian Americans who lived and died, fought and prayed during World War II." Clean copy.