culture

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2nd pr., 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 387 pages. Softcover. Black & white illustrations throughout. Faded spine. Light shelf wear to cover. Pen marks to three pages. Otherwise clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 536 pages. Illustrated in color and black-and-white. A landmark study of California's visual arts and poetry, 1925 to 1975, Utopia and Dissent demonstrates the profound influence this regional culture had on American art and thought. Bookselle's label on rear cover, wrinkle to page 513, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. University of South Carolina Press, Supreme Council, Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 269 pages. " ...a fascinating journey through the history of Scottish Rite in America. This comprehensive pictorial history provides valuable insights into the critical role masons have played throughout our nation's history." b/w, sepia, & color plates throughout. In Valley of the Craftsmen, the story of "higher degree" Freemasonry is depicted through portraits, official papers, material objects, photographs, buildings, and stagecraft. Featuring many previously unpublished images, Valley of the Craftsmen begins with rare illustrations of the English and French philosophical sources that were projected upon an American landscape vitalized and transformed by the concept of fraternity. The story is framed by American popular culture and the serious private effort of individual men in small towns and expansive cities who were intent on developing a moral life in service to their communities. Clean copy.

Softcover. El Paso TX, Cinco Puntos Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 96 pages. One evening, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Jose Galvez heard Luis Alberto Urrea read "Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Be in a Poem" with its chant-like repetitions and its evocation of Chicano manhood. As Luis read each line, an image clicked in Jose's memory, and he knew that he had already taken that photograph. The result of that experience is this remarkable book.A unique collaboration of two acclaimed artists, Vatos is a tribute to Latino men who are too often forgotten, ignored and misrepresented by the larger culture-children playing in the streets, migrant workers toiling for a better life, homeboys in the barrio, young men with their girlfriends and their mothers, blue collar workers, activists on the streets, sons, uncles, fathers, and grandfathers. Vatos recognizes their joys, their sorrows, their tenderness and their strength. Through Galvez' photographs and Urrea's words, they will not be forgotten. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Madras, The Adyar Library, Reprint, 1953, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-paginated. Hardcover. Text in Sanskrit and English. Previous owners name on front endpaper with brief note opposite. Light, neat notes in pen and pencil on some pages in first section of text. Overall, very good.

Hardcover. New York, Mark Batty Publisher, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 127 pages. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Photographic study documenting the development of vending machines around the world.

Hardcover. NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still sealed in publisher's shrinkwrap. 550 pages. Seventeenth-century Delft has traditionally been viewed as a quaint town whose artists painted scenes of domestic life. This important book revises that image, showing that the small but vibrant Dutch city produced fine examples of all the major arts--including luxury goods and sophisticated paintings for the court at The Hague and for patrician collectors in Delft itself. The book traces the history and culture of Delft from the 1200s through the lifetime of the city's most renowned painter, Johannes Vermeer. The authors discuss at length some ninety major paintings (seventeen by Vermeer), forty drawings, and a choice selection of decorative arts, all of which are reproduced in full color. Among the paintings are state portraits, history pictures, still lifes, views of palaces and church interiors, illusionistic murals, and refined genre pictures by Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. The rich works on paper encompass exquisite drawings by Delft artists and sketches of the town by visiting artists. Included in the decorative arts are tapestries, bronze statuary, silver, Delftware, and glass. The volume concludes with an essay that takes the reader on a walk through seventeenth-century Delft. It is accompanied by maps of the city's neighborhoods that indicate major monuments and the homes of patrons, art dealers, and painters.

Hardcover. Waterbury VT, Vermont People Project, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. SIGNED BY MILLER on the title page. Photographs and text about native Vermonters discussing their life and the change they have seen in Vermont during the latter part of the 20th Century as the state turns from a rural, agriculture society. They are a disappearing culture. Clean copy.

Softcover. Montpelier, Vermont Historical Society, 1st, 1980, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 102 pages. Softcover. Illustrated with black & white photographs and drawings. Foxing and stains on covers. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 275 pages, b&w photos. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Lawyer, educator, novelist, radio and television scriptwriter, film director and screenwriter, wartime intelligence operative, and full-time radical romantic, Abraham Lincoln Polonsky was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to be an informer. This biography helps us understand the relationship between art and politics in American culture.

Hardcover. New York, Penguin Press, First Edition, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 642 pages. Hardcover. Grey cloth boards with silver titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Crisp dust jacket with only minor wear. Very clean & unmarked. Crisp, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 254 pages. Spine slightly cocked. Dust jacket shows light wear. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Columbia OH, Ohio State University Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 368 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to corners. While "freaks" have captivated our imagination since well before the nineteenth century, the Victorians flocked to shows featuring dancing dwarves, bearded ladies, "missing links," and six-legged sheep. Indeed, this period has been described by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson as the epoch of "consolidation" for freakery: an era of social change, enormously popular freak shows, and taxonomic frenzy. Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain, edited by Marlene Tromp, turns to that rich nexus, examining the struggle over definitions of "freakery" and the unstable and sometimes conflicting ways in which freakery was understood and deployed. As the first study centralizing British culture, this collection discusses figures as varied as Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man"; Daniel Lambert, "King of the Fat Men"; Julia Pastrana, "The Bear Woman"; and Laloo "The Marvellous Indian Boy" and his embedded, parasitic twin. The Victorian Freaks contributors examine Victorian culture through the lens of freakery, reading the production of the freak against the landscape of capitalist consumption, the medical community, and the politics of empire, sexuality, and art. Collectively, these essays ask how freakery engaged with notions of normalcy and with its Victorian cultural context.

Softcover. NY, Harper Torchbooks, reprint, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 397 pages. "Few works that I know convey the excitement of the intellectual life of nineteenth-century England as immediately as Gertrude Himmelfarb's Victorian Minds. The essays are remarkable no less for the cogency of their wit than for the range and precision of their scholarship" ` ~ Lionel Trilling. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 266 pages. Christian religion's influence on secular Victorian culture, especially literature. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Paris, J. Hetzel, Reprint, 1867, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 636 pages. Hardcover. French text only. Previous owners name at top left corner of preliminary page dated 1868. Gilt title and decorations on red leather spine with embossed pebbled cloth covers. Satirical black & white illustrations by Jean-Jacques Grandville. Marbled endpapers. All edges gilt. Light rubbing to cover edges and spine. Small area of discoloration on lower section of front cover. Clean, bright pages.

Hardcover. Center for American Places, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 184 pages. Professor and photographer John Willis is well aware of the exploitation that sometimes occurs when photographers enter impoverished communities for a project. So, in 1992, when he first traveled to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the southwest corner of South Dakota, he assured the elders of the Oglala Lakota Sioux that he would not be exhibiting any of the images he took while there. Over time, however, Willis earned the respect and trust of the community, and the elders--hoping that the photographs might bring aid to their community--urged him to show his work. The product of several visits to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Views from the Reservation is meant to open our eyes, minds, and hearts to the life, culture, and conditions of the Oglala Lakota people.

Hardcover. Chicago, IL, Center for American Places, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 184 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Includes CD. The product of several visits to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Views from the Reservation is meant to open our eyes, minds, and hearts to the life, culture, and conditions of the Oglala Lakota people. With his insightful and complex images Willis enlists several other voices to offer a more complete story: writer Kent Nerburn, who contributes an original essay; Lakota elders and Pine Ridge High School students, who offer poems; Emil Her Many Horses, the associate curator of the National Museum of the American Indian, Kevin Gover, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs, and Oglala Lakota artist Dwayne Wilcox. Accompanying the book is Heartbeat of the Rez, a compact disc collecting traditional songs compiled by the author, the elders, and KILI, the radio station of the reservation.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st English, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 143 pages, b&w photographs throughout. A very clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Society for Visual Anthropology, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, magazine format, 180 pages. illustrated collection of provocative essays, occasional pieces, and dialogues with contributions from anthropologists, from cultural, literary and film critics and from image makers themselves. Special Issue on feminist approaches to the visualization of culture, other essays and reviews. Clean.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Society for Visual Anthropology, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, magazine format, 180 pages. illustrated collection of provocative essays, occasional pieces, and dialogues with contributions from anthropologists, from cultural, literary and film critics and from image makers themselves. Special Issue on feminist approaches to the visualization of culture, other essays and reviews. Clean.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 316 pages, b&w illustrations. The history, theoretical frameworks, methodology, and pedagogy of the new field of visual culture; current debates and the possibility for future consensus. In recent years, visual culture has emerged as a growing and important interdisciplinary field of study. Visual culture regards images as central to the representation of meaning in the world. It encompasses "high" art without an assumption of its higher status. But despite the current proliferation of studies and programs in visual culture, there seems to be no consensus within the field itself as to its scope and objectives, definitions, and methods. In Visual Culture, Margaret Dikovitskaya offers an overview of this new area of study in order to reconcile its diverse theoretical positions and understand its potential for further research. Clean copy. Uncommon in the hardcover.

Hardcover. France Loisirs , 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 144 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Bastienne Schmidt's photographs are images of both life and death. Mercilessly direct, these pictures from Latin America - the fruits of intensive work over the past few years - bring to an existential fact of our lives, a truth we in western societies are only too happy to hide behind a facade of casual diversions and consumable "beauty"; the immediate presence of death. It takes courage to look at these pictures, for in the faces of these people from another culture we are confronted, violently and with an authenticity we cannot ignore, with the very destiny we refuse to accept. Moreover, Bastienne Schmidt shows us the naked truth that underlies not only our inability to look our own death in the face, but also our tendency to disregard the violent deaths of others, failing to recognize the value of "mere" life as we do, so long as they die far enough away from our own doorsteps.

Softcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press,, 1st pbk., 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 254 pages, b&w illustrations. This volume is a study of Mesopotamian literature from the beginnings of the Bronze Age to the fall of Babylon as an independent state in the 6th century BCE. Part I of this volume deals with the history and culture of the region from the Sumerians to the Persian conquests. Part II treats the development of poetic forms and the mythology and religion upon which much of the poetry is based. Clean copy.