culture

Hardcover. Smithsonian Institution / Victoria and Albert Museum, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Eighty-two watercolors and drawings selected from the extensive Searight Collection in London present a variety of 19th-century artists' encounters with the diverse cultures and dramatic lands of the fabled Ottoman Empire. Complementing the artworks are essays by experts in Middle Eastern studies elucidating the exchange of ideas and influences between East and West. Artists include Edward Lear, Luigi Meyer, David Roberts etc. 128 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Melcher/Virgin, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-Paginated. Illustrated with black & white photographs. Features photographs by Atget, Larry Clark, Walker Evans, Larry Fink, Weegee, Susan Meiselas, and more. Essay by Luc Sante. Slip case and covers show light wear. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Watertown, Charlesbridge, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-paginated. Hardcover. Black & white woodcut illustrations by Michael McCurdy. Bright, clean copy.No dust jacket

Hardcover. NY, Prestel , 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 320 pages. Some of Walker Evans' most iconic images of 20th-century American culture are showcased in this book celebrating his 50-year career. Walker Evans was one of the most important American photographers of the 20th century. His focus on everyday life in America, in both urban and rural settings, makes him also one of the most relatable. This retrospective volume traces Evans' career through more than 300 images--from his first photographs of the late 1920s to his Polaroids of the 1970s. Organized thematically, the book examines topics such as Evans' relationship with the impresario Lincoln Kirstein, his work in postcards and magazines, and his lifelong exploration of the American vernacular. In addition, this volume features items from the photographer's own collection, including personal writings, signage, postcards, and other ephemera. Through these ancillary objects and a thorough overview of Evans' career, readers will come away with a better understanding of a photographer whose iconic photographs remain timeless.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st thus, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. On November 18, 1928, the world's most famous Mouse made his very first public debut. Today, we celebrate 90+ years of Mickey in one of the most expansive illustrated publications on the Disney universe. Starting with the first sketches of a character who was almost named Mortimer, we trace the career of Walt Disney's and Ub Iwerks's most famous creation, one met with an explosion of worldwide popularity preceded only by the earlier successes of Charlie Chaplin.With unlimited access to Disney's vast historical collections as well as public and private collections, the authors bring Mickey's success story to life: concept art, story sketches, background paintings, and animation drawings as well as historical photographs trace the origins and evolution of such timeless favorites as Steamboat Willie, The Band Concert, and Brave Little Tailor. They also follow Mickey as he builds on this legendary library of short cartoons by appearing in two historic feature-length films, Fantasia and Fun and Fancy Free.Extensive archival research sheds new light on little-known chapters of Mickey's career, the origins of the Mickey Mouse Club, and his use as a patriotic icon during World War II. Along the way, we encounter the work of all major Mickey artists in both film and comics, including such greats as Ub Iwerks, Win Smith, Ferdinand Horvath, Fred Moore, Floyd Gottfredson, Carl Barks, Manuel Gonzales, Paul Murry, Romano Scarpa, Giorgio Cavazzano, Byron Erickson, and Cesar Ferioli.Mickey Mouse has left an indelible mark on everyday culture as well as high art, becoming a favored subject for Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Roy Lichtenstein.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st pbk, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 755 pages. Walter Benjamin is one of the twentieth century's most important intellectuals, and also one of its most elusive. His writings-mosaics incorporating philosophy, literary criticism, Marxist analysis, and a syncretistic theology-defy simple categorization. And his mobile, often improvised existence has proven irresistible to mythologizers. His writing career moved from the brilliant esotericism of his early writings through his emergence as a central voice in Weimar culture and on to the exile years, with its pioneering studies of modern media and the rise of urban commodity capitalism in Paris. That career was played out amid some of the most catastrophic decades of modern European history: the horror of the First World War, the turbulence of the Weimar Republic, and the lengthening shadow of fascism. Now, a major new biography from two of the world's foremost Benjamin scholars reaches beyond the mosaic and the mythical to present this intriguing figure in full. Clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 316 pages. Few twentieth-century thinkers have proven as influential as Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher and cultural and literary critic. Richard Wolin's book remains among the clearest and most insightful introductions to Benjamin's writings, offering a philosophically rich exposition of his complex relationship to Adorno, Brecht, Jewish Messianism, and Western Marxism. Wolin provides nuanced interpretations of Benjamin's widely studied writings on Baudelaire, historiography, and art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In a new Introduction written especially for this edition, Wolin discusses the unfinished Arcades Project, as well as recent tendencies in the reception of Benjamin's work and the relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates about modernity and postmodernity. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. London/NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial cloth, 112 pages illustrated in color, b&w. Jenny Uglow narrates the story of Walter Crane, an intriguing and most prolific figure not only in illustration, but in political culture more broadly. Uglow expertly weaves a fascinating study of how Crane's art and politics developed from his childhood love of Pre-Raphaelite painting to the influences of Morris and William Blake on the journals, books, banners, pamphlets and postcards he went on to create as he forged a new style for the international socialist movement. Comprising a staggering range of visual material, Crane's images became a symbolic code that leapt over linguistic boundaries. This book is a brilliant record of an artist who blended styles and influences like no one before him. An exploration of the life and work of Walter Crane, the pioneering British socialist artist who transformed the illustration of children's books. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Dresden, Verlag der Kunst, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 211 pages. Illustrated with 140 black & white photographs by Walter Rosenblum. Red remainder stamp on bottom edge. Text in English and German. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Stars son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his fathers jailer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Prestel Publishing/ Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 286 pages, color illustrations. This catalogue reveals the myriad ways Warhol immersed himself in the music of his time. Tracing back to Warhol's introduction to music through the musical comedies. songs and soundtracks of his youth. this book opens with Warhol's portraits of the great films stars of his childhood. As the fascinating essays collected in this volume discuss. Warhol's renowned portraits of pop music icons such as Mick Jagger. Debbie Harry and Grace Jones are just one manifestation of his interest in music. Warhol collaborated with choreographer Merce Cunningham. served as producer for the Velvet Underground. incorporated music into his films. produced video-clips. designed dozens of record albums. filmed live concerts and created multimedia spectacles. Although never a musician himself. Warhol appropriated the imagery of a pop icon for some of his most arresting and haunting self portraits.

Softcover. Washington DC, National Gallery of Art, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 224 pages. Headline-making in every sense, the myriad works of art in which Andy Warhol used or referenced tabloids throughout his career are explored in this book as a coherent body for the first time. Obsessed with contemporary culture, Warhol celebrated the sensational as well as the mundane in every facet of society. His headline works, which were realized in a range of formats--from two-dimensional to time-based media such as film, video, and television--chart in real time the great shift in the technological means employed to deliver the news from the 1950s until the artist's death in 1987. This companion volume to a riveting exhibition brings together more than 80 works, from Warhol's earliest drawings and paintings of newspaper headlines, to his screen-printed canvases, photographs, and electronic media, and concluding with collaborative works he produced with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Featuring illuminating essays and abundant reproductions of the headline works, as well as source materials and examples of Warhol's private scrapbooks of clippings, this unique and powerful volume demonstrates the rich intersection of mainstream media and fine art.

Softcover. Seattle , Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 88 pages. The Friedman brothers go after Tor Johnson, Leave It to Beaver, Bela Lugosi, Joey Heatherton, comic shop clerks, and ugly white guys. A thrilling, appalling trip through the backwaters of American culture.

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.

Hardcover. Guilford CT, TwoDot, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 159 pages, b&w photos throughout. Classic Photographs from the Farm Security Administration 1936-1943. Featuring images by such renowned photographers as Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, and several others, this book documents ranching culture in western states during the Great Depression and leading up to World War II. This was a period of great change in the ranching West that included the introduction of the automobile, electricity, radio, the telephone, and other technologies that drastically transformed the lives and work of ranching people, and some of the best documentation exists in the powerful documentary photographs by this remarkable group of photographers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Glitterati, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 176 pages. illustrated in color and b&w. A visual survey of Black style from the 1940s through the 1970s. In publisher's shrinkwrap. This is the 2006 first printing with a different cover than the later reprint.

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, a pictorial history of the wedding ritual. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on front fly leaf. Very clean and tight copy.

Softcover. New York, Abbeville Press, 1st US, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. Previous owner's sticker on front end paper, light edgewear and soil to wrappers. Clean, tight copy. The pictures assembled here show how this artistic culture originated in the aftermath of the First World War and the unsettled early years of the Weimar Republic, uneasily balanced between revolutionary pretensions and the desire for order. The montage of images--photographs, paintings, drawings, collages, books, and film stills--evokes the period with shocking vividness.

Hardcover. NY, Abbeville Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 408 pages, b&w illustrations. This remarkable collection of stories, hand-picked from the archive of legendary New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons by his son, film critic Jeffrey Lyons, will transport readers back to the sparkling peak of New York City nightlife. This was the time when notables of every sort--film producers and stars, writers, politicians, comedians, athletes, and artists--gathered nightly at such famed restaurants and nightclubs as Sardi's, the Stork Club, and the Copacabana. From 1934 to 1974, Leonard Lyons was a fixture at these clubs, befriending celebrities of all stripes and gathering exclusive tidbits for his syndicated newspaper column, The Lyons Den. What a Time It Was! offers candid portraits of stars and statesmen at work and at play--especially at play--but still, effortlessly, larger than life. Illustrated with snapshots and glamour shots, it offers a unique window onto the lives of iconic figures from Ethel Barrymore and Muhammad Ali to Tennessee Williams and Jackie Kennedy, as well as their favorite haunts. Here are four decades of popular culture seen from the front row, by a man who said, "Give me lights and sound and people, and music into the night. Late into the night!"

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 672 pages. 16 pages of photos. What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary--an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story, beginning with Avedon's coming-of-age in New York between the world wars, when cultural prejudices forced him to make decisions that shaped the course of his life. Compounding his private battles, Avedon fought to be taken seriously in a medium that itself struggled to be respected within the art world. Gefter reveals how the 1950s and 1960s informed Avedon's life and work as much as he informed the period. He counted as close friends a profoundly influential group of artists--Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Harold Brodkey, Renata Adler, Sidney Lumet, and Mike Nichols--who shaped the cultural life of the American twentieth century. It wasn't until Avedon's fashion work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late 1970s that he became a household name. Balancing glamour with the gravitas of an artist's genuine reach for worldy achievement--and not a little gossip--plus sixteen pages of photographs, What Becomes a Legend Most is an intimate window into Avedon's fascinating world. Dramatic, visionary, and remarkable, it pays tribute to Avedon's role in the history of photography and fashion--and his legacy as one of the most consequential artists of his time.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 672 pages. 16 pages of photos. What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary--an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story, beginning with Avedon's coming-of-age in New York between the world wars, when cultural prejudices forced him to make decisions that shaped the course of his life. Compounding his private battles, Avedon fought to be taken seriously in a medium that itself struggled to be respected within the art world. Gefter reveals how the 1950s and 1960s informed Avedon's life and work as much as he informed the period. He counted as close friends a profoundly influential group of artists--Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Harold Brodkey, Renata Adler, Sidney Lumet, and Mike Nichols--who shaped the cultural life of the American twentieth century. It wasn't until Avedon's fashion work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late 1970s that he became a household name. Balancing glamour with the gravitas of an artist's genuine reach for worldy achievement--and not a little gossip--plus sixteen pages of photographs, What Becomes a Legend Most is an intimate window into Avedon's fascinating world. Dramatic, visionary, and remarkable, it pays tribute to Avedon's role in the history of photography and fashion--and his legacy as one of the most consequential artists of his time.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with black and gilt stamping, 291 pages. Gift exchange plays a crucial role in the social and political organization of Mendi in Papua New Guinea. This book reveals how considerable light can be shed on Mendi society, particularly on its political economy, by examining both the well-known ceremonial exchange festivals and the hitherto relatively little-studied everyday gift-giving practices. The author shows that the latter are crucial for understanding inter-group politics, the process of leadership, male-female relationships and the status of women, and the production, distribution and circulation of wealth. Currently the only book available on this society, the work offers an unusual combination of a social structural analysis with a study of local history and change. It is also of interest for its integration of the study of gift exchange and politics with the study of gender roles and relationships. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Schocken Books, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 263 pages. Friedrich Nietzsche's aggressive independence, sarcasm, and celebration of strength have struck responsive chords in contemporary culture. But his ideas are often overshadowed by the myths and rumors that surround his sex life, his politics, and his sanity. In this lively volume, Nietzsche scholars Solomon and Higgins get to the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy, from his ideas on "the will to power" to his attack on religion and morality, to his infamous Ubermensch (superman). Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Clarion Books, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 199 pages. A brother & sister face the increasingly oppressive occupation of Korea by Japan during WW II, which threatens to suppress their culture. WON JANE ADDAMS HONOR AWARD. Clean copy.