culture

Hardcover. London, Smith, Elder and Co., Second Edition, 1858, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Three hardcover volumes with blue leather covers featuring marbled endpapers, raised bands along brown spines with red title plates, gilt decoration. Second Edition. Black & white, and some color illustrations in all 3 volumes by John Ruskin. Volume 1 - "The Foundations". 400 pages. Top edge gilt. Light, faint pencil marginalia to a few pages. Minor abrasion to covers. Clean, tight copy. Volume 2 - "The Sea Stories". 394 pages. Top edge gilt. Faint foxing to some pages. a few moderate abrasions to rear cover. Clean, tight copy. Volume 3 - "The Fall". 362 pages. Top edge gilt. Light pencil marginalia scattered throughout. Faint foxing to some pages. Minor abrasions to covers. Clean, tight copy. A nice set.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown and Company, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 296 pages, b&w photos. Light edgewear to upper edge of dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. St. Paul MN, Borealis Books, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages. The photographs in this collection are taken from the files of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the St. Paul Dispatch, and span a period from the nineteen-forties to the mid-sixties. Among the many records of long-forgotten civic functions are shocking crime-scene photographs, a reminder of an era when the country's newspaper photographers--an army of Weegees, equipped with oversized Speed Graphic flash cameras and radios tuned to the police scanners--regularly provided readers with lurid coverage of violent crimes and spectacular accidents. There is a harsh intimacy to these photographs, which bring us as close as possible to car-crash victims, suicides, and mass murderers confessing their crimes. But the welter of detail in the pictures--the seamed stockings of a murder victim, the huddle of bystanders after a bar shooting--provides a nuanced portrait of a Midwestern city and of American culture at mid-century.

Hardcover. Trans Pacific Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy boards, 170 pages. Stratification in Cultural Contexts is a collection drawn from research results of the East Asian Division of the Center for the Study of Social Stratification and Inequality at Tohoku University. In this book, scholars who specialize in areas of East and Southeast Asia examine how the problem of stratification manifests itself in different cultural and historical contexts, discussing when and in what circumstances the problem of stratification has become more serious, and suggesting how the tension could be eased. The topics dealt with are diversified, from religion to economic concerns. The local wisdom of traditional societies is used to analyze inequality and stratification in cases such as the phenomenon of 'religious revival' following democratization in Mongolian society, the lives of 'slaves' under the Choson dynasty in Korea, and the role of warrior-class women in early-modern Japan. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York , Abrams, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 304 pages. Illustrated in color throughout. A survey of the many murals in the (now rapidly gentrifying) Mission District, the barrio Latino of San Francisco, combining elements of Mexican mural painting, surrealism, pop art, urban punk, and graffiti.

Softcover. Mancheser, U.K., Manchester University, Reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Softcover, 221 pages. Foreword by George Melly. Highlighting on two pages. B&W photos and illustrations. Street Noises combines the diverse materials of mass culture with literary and archival sources, to produce an innovative and critical re-reading of twentieth-century Paris as the city of the people and of cultural modernity. It concentrates on popular song and opera, cultural theory and records of police surveillance (such as the unpublished archives concerning the sexual mores of sailors in Toulon), sensational weekly magazines (including the weekly Detective Magazine with its remarkable photomontage) and writers of the Academie Goncourt. The author picks out their common realisation of the experience of the city, also showing how the faits divers and the entertainment industries frame the writing of a Benjamin, a Colette or a Genet. Rifkin reworks modern critical theory through these sources, reflecting on its relation to the production of mass cultures.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 175 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. illustrated throughout. Very clean and tight copy. Striptease is the history of unapologetic fun aimed not at the head, not at the heart or even the stomach, but south of all three. Beginning with the birth of the striptease in the mid-19th century and culminating with its garish heyday in the 1950s, this book charts the evolution of the infamous bump and grind, which is, at its simplest, a pretty girl in a pretty dress ... and then not. The only fully illustrated book available on the subject, Striptease tells the history of this provocative form of stagecraft from its birth in vaudeville and burlesque through the "take it all off" attitude for which the term "striptease" was coined. Along the way, the book highlights such performers as Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Maud Allen, Gypsy Rose Lee, Tempest Storm, and Blaze Starr. The witty and well-informed text is illustrated with an array of titillating images, including never-before-published ephemera and illicitly photographed performances in progress. Whether revealing ankles or breasts, playing peek-a-boo or going the full monty, Striptease pays tribute to the women who made a vocation of their sex appeal and shimmied their way into American culture.

Hardcover. Washington, Prestel, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 288 pages. Softcover. Very clean, like new in publishers shrink-wrap. This book pays tribute to the mature work of Stuart Davis, a distinctly American artist who adapted European modernism to reflect the sights, sounds, and rhythms of popular culture. Beginning in 1921, a series of creative breakthroughs led Davis away from figurative painting and toward a more abstract expression of the world he inhabited. Drawing upon his admiration for Cezanne, Leger, Picasso, and Seurat, Davis developed a style that would evolve over the next four decades to become a dominant force in postwar art. His visionary responses to modern life and culture both high and low remain relevant more than 50 years after his death. Focusing on the images and motifs that became hallmarks of his career, this book features approximately 100 works-from his paintings of tobacco packages of the early 1920s, the abstract Egg Beater series, and the WPA murals of the 1930s, to the majestic works of his last two decades. The authors take a critical approach to the development of Davis's art and theory, paying special attention to the impact his earlier work had upon his later masterpieces. They also discuss Davis's unique ability to assimilate the lessons of Cubism as well as the imagery of popular culture, the aesthetics of advertising, and the sounds and rhythms of jazz-his great musical passion. Informed by previously unpublished primary documents, the detailed chronology is, in effect, the first Davis biography. Together, these elements create a vital portrait of an artist whose works hum with intelligence and energy.

Softcover. Zach Feuer Gallery, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 70 pages. Priya Bhatnagar in Flash Art has written "Threatening to unravel pop culture's abstractions, Hawkins's images call into question the socially coded nature of its identities, icons, meanings and values while contesting its homogenization of beauty and fashion. Joel Sternfeld's foreword calls this survey of recent work "an achievement of the first magnitude." Inviting friends and strangers in Nepal to pose for the camera, Blue Eyes includes three photographic series and three video projects that reveal the ubiquity of American media culture while underscoring certain behaviors as they pertain to global capitalism and race. Each image investigates the experience of cultural imperialism as seen through the eyes of those living in the developing world. Hawkins highlights the visual dialogue that comprises consumer and popular culture and asks the viewer to consider a world of differences increasingly veiled by surface similarities.

Softcover. Zach Feuer Gallery, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 70 pages. Priya Bhatnagar in Flash Art has written "Threatening to unravel pop culture's abstractions, Hawkins's images call into question the socially coded nature of its identities, icons, meanings and values while contesting its homogenization of beauty and fashion. Joel Sternfeld's foreword calls this survey of recent work "an achievement of the first magnitude." Inviting friends and strangers in Nepal to pose for the camera, Blue Eyes includes three photographic series and three video projects that reveal the ubiquity of American media culture while underscoring certain behaviors as they pertain to global capitalism and race. Each image investigates the experience of cultural imperialism as seen through the eyes of those living in the developing world. Hawkins highlights the visual dialogue that comprises consumer and popular culture and asks the viewer to consider a world of differences increasingly veiled by surface similarities.

Hardcover. NY, Academic Press, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 428 pages, endpaper maps. An examination of the ecology of man's environment, man's use and perception of biological resources, & the physiology and health of the human organism, from Papua New Guinea to the atolls of the South West Pacific. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Daylight Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. 144 pages. 55 black and white photographs. The world of Bruce Haley is not for the faint-hearted. Bruce has traveled the globe photographing some of the darkest moments that only the intrepid want to face and visiting his website is a nail biting experience.SUNDER is a stunning exploration of the former USSR and other Iron Curtain countries, but equally as interesting are the accompanying essays, in particular, the wonderful piece by Andrei Codrescu (you may be famliar with his essays read on NPR), and by Kirsten Rian. He is a master photographer showing us the pathos and beauty of a culture that has been ravaged by war and turmoil. His eight year photographic investigation is a stark perspective of the collapse of the communist empire, but Bruce shares it on a human scale.

Hardcover. Daylight Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. 144 pages. 55 black and white photographs. The world of Bruce Haley is not for the faint-hearted. Bruce has traveled the globe photographing some of the darkest moments that only the intrepid want to face and visiting his website is a nail biting experience.SUNDER is a stunning exploration of the former USSR and other Iron Curtain countries, but equally as interesting are the accompanying essays, in particular, the wonderful piece by Andrei Codrescu (you may be famliar with his essays read on NPR), and by Kirsten Rian. He is a master photographer showing us the pathos and beauty of a culture that has been ravaged by war and turmoil. His eight year photographic investigation is a stark perspective of the collapse of the communist empire, but Bruce shares it on a human scale.

Softcover. Sanbornton, Sant Bani Press, First Edition, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 333 pages. Softcover. Full page, full color illustrations and a few in bw. Interviews & reflections with Kirpal Singh, Baba Sawan & Sant Ajaib. Light wear to spine edges, light sunfading to lower spine. Discolored smudge to top edge. Previous owner's signature to preliminary pages. Otherwise, clean & unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Santa Barbara CA, T. Adler Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 128 pages, Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. 127 b&w and 100 duotone illustrations. Designed by Tom Adler. Ron Church"s images of surfing's first organized contests-at once mundane and heroic-caught the sport in a time of change.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 324 pages. Surreal, the long-awaited, definitive biography of Gala Dali, unmasks this famous yet little-known queen of the twentieth-century art world, who graced the canvases, inspired the poetry, and influenced the careers of her illustrious lovers and husbands with tenderness, courage, and agency. Using previously undiscovered material, Surreal tells the riveting story of Gala Dali, (1894-1982) who broke away from her cultured but penurious background in pre-Revolutionary Russia to live in Paris with both France's most famous poet Paul Eluard and Max Ernst. By the time she met the budding artist Salvador Dali in 1929, Gala was known as the Mother of Surrealism. She rapidly became his mentor, muse, and protector, marrying him in 1934 and subsequently engineering their vast fortune. At a time when artists were celebrities, Gala acted as the ambassador of the Surrealist movement, spreading its popularity across the globe. Remainder mark to top edge otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. London, M Q Publications, 1st, 2006, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Like new. An exclusive collection of drawings that reveal the tender side of R. Crumb. Evocative haunting images of people and places such as Aline, his daughter Sophie, scenes from the village and region he lives in the South of France, Jesse Crumb, his first wife Dana and their son Jesse and of course the Blues musicians he treasures from his 78rpm record collection. Unpaginated, but about 120 pages.

Hardcover. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1st US, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 190 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs. Clean, tight copy. The documentary style that dominates American photography had its origins in the social reform publicity campaigns of the turn of the century. This book traces the history of this genre and its main participants, including Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, and Russell Lee. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Transaction Publishers, 2nd Ed., 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The late twentieth century witnessed rapid changes not only in Taiwan's economy, but also in its identity. Both economic as well as ideological restructuring have been basic elements in the transformation of postwar Taiwan, as rapid democratization opened a Pandora's Box, and stirred a whirlwind of social discord. This volume considers such important questions as whether the old Taiwanese work ethic is a relic of the past, and whether Taiwan is likely to become a battleground of ideological wars.The book addresses Taiwanese nostalgia for Chinese culture; the rise and fall of postwar Taiwanese agrarian culture; the transformation of farmers' social consciousness in the period 1950-1970; the place of Confucianism in postwar Taiwan; and the awakening of the "self" and the development of a Taiwanese national identity in the post-World War II period. Finally, it considers whether "mutual historical understanding" may be the basis for Taiwan-Mainland relations in the twenty-first century. This second edition includes a new chapter on the history of Taiwan after World War II, incorporating additional developments in Taiwan in the past decade.

Hardcover. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 302 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Red endpapers. Decorated cover boards, black quarter cloth, gilt title on spine. An innovative exploration of the place of the erotic in Renaissance art and culture, focusing on a notorious set of images created by the young Italian master Giulio Romano. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, PA, Carey, Lea & Carey, Second series, 1829, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Vol 1: 296 pages. Vol 2: 286 pagesHardcovers. Brown boards, paste down title on spine in black. Original owner inscription on front flyleaf of both books, original owner's signature on back pages. Pages untrimmed, rough edged, tanning and foxing to pages. Binding very good, spine straight. Agewear throughout, in very good condition for its age. Good solid volumes of Sir Walter Scott's tales as told to his grandson.

Hardcover. New York, Bloomsbury , 1st US, 2004-07-02, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 296 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 260 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A riveting and superbly illustrated account of the enigmatic House Beautiful editor's profound influence on mid-century American taste From 1941 to 1964, House Beautiful magazine's crusading editor-in-chief Elizabeth Gordon introduced and promoted her vision of "good design" and "better living" to an extensive middle-class American readership. Her innovative magazine-sponsored initiatives, including House Beautiful's Pace Setter House Program and the Climate Control Project, popularized a "livable" and decidedly American version of postwar modern architecture. Gordon's devotion to what she called the American Style attracted the attention of Frank Lloyd Wright, who became her ally and collaborator. Gordon's editorial programs reshaped ideas about American living and, by extension, what consumers bought, what designers made, and what manufacturers brought to market. This incisive assessment of Gordon's influence as an editor, critic, and arbiter of domestic taste reflects more broadly on the cultures of consumption and identity in postwar America. Nearly 200 images are featured, including work by Ezra Stoller, Maynard Parker, and Julius Shulman. This important book champions an often-neglected source--the consumer magazine--as a key tool for deepening our understanding of mid-century architecture and design.