culture

Hardcover. NY, The Artist Book Foundation, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Adolf Dehn (1895-1968), an American lithographer and watercolorist, left his hometown in Minnesota after formal training at the Minneapolis Art Institute to study at the Art Students League in New York. In the early 1920s, he traveled to the cosmopolitan cities of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, where he focused on lithography and printmaking, and soon found success as a magazine illustrator. As he toured Europe, Dehn quickly acclimated to the continental lifestyle and was adept at depicting its nuances and idiosyncrasies through his prolific lithographs and sketches. His critical and satirical renderings of the political movements, social conventions, and governmental policies in pre-World War II Europe gave the Midwestern artist ample material for his growing body of work. Returning to the United States in 1930, Dehn exhibited his prints in several solo shows at the Weyhe Gallery in New York, starting in 1935. As an artist during the era of the Great Depression, Dehn did commercial artwork and contributed to popular magazines such as The New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. In fact, his clever drawings that reflected the culture and fashionable society during the Jazz Age, made Dehn a favourite of Frank Crowninshield, Vanity Fair's renowned editor. 182 pages, clean, still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, Free Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 322 pages, b&w illustrations, in a bright dust jacket. This book examines the issue of racial stereotyping and with the issue of skin color as seen by such radio show broadcasts as Amos 'N' Andy. Some Blacks did not like the show when released, while others saw it as a humane portrayal of African-American Life. Overall, the show became the most popular radio show of all time. Later, it was touted by the Civil Rights Movement as offensive and racist.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket that is taped to covers, 554 pages. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, inc., Reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 304 pages. Hardcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout (more than 400). Previous owner's bookplate on front endpaper. Brown cloth cover boards, bold gilt title on spine. In beautiful condition. Dust jacket unclipped, has small rip at bottom of front cover and wear at top of spine, otherwise very good. A look at the jewelry and body art of the African people.

Softcover. NY, Scala Arts Publishers/Cornell, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 112 pages illustrated in color. Featuring African textiles, clothing, headwear, and jewelery, this book celebrates African dress as a product of global interactions, generational conflict and continuity, and expressions of gender. Featuring African textiles, clothing, headwear, and jewelery, this book celebrates African dress as a product of global interactions, generational conflict and continuity, and expressions of gender. The book highlights the strength and resilience of long-standing practices that characterize African dress; the wide variety of cultural, religious, and political motivations for adorning oneself; and the varying identities reflected in analyzing African material culture of the last century and a half. Textile selections include hand-woven and dyed examples alongside factory-woven and machine-printed cloth. Items of adornment include amber and silver jewelery from North Africa, beadwork-embellished clothing from South Africa, and various headdresses from across the continent, to name a few examples. From formal European colonization, to independence for African countries, to the liberalization of African economies, this book will demonstrate how dress practices reveal personal and group identities, cultural traditions, religious associations, political affiliations, and aspirations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Thomas Yoseloff, 1st, 1960, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, 175 pages. Hardcover. 131 Illustrations, 16 color plates. Top corner bump, causing a light crease to pages at upper corner. Otherwise very good, clean. Dust jacket with light edge wear, chipping, mild soil.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 202 pages. A collection of four pieces on African history or culture. "The Woman Who Loved Gorillas" is a stark, unflattering look at Dian Fossey. Differing from the usual hagiography about Fossey, this essay focuses on her mistreatment of the Africans, her erratic and supposedly violent behavior, and her anti-social arrogance. It's not a slam piece, though, offering motives about her murder and admitting that Dian did much for the gorillas of Rwanda. "The Last of the Dog-Headed Men" is a look at the elusive indri, a "singing" lemur of Madagascar. "The Emperor Who Ate His People" is a look back at the career of Central African Republic dictator Bokassa. Finally, "In Search of the Source Of AIDS" is both a quest for possible sources of the virus and a look at how the disease is ravaging Africa (circa 1987). Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Whitney Museum of Art/Abrams, 1st, 1992, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 187 pages. Published to accompany a 1992-93 exhibition held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, this book deals with the full scope of Agnes Martin's art. It includes essays that place her work in the context of American and European 20th-century art and culture. Agnes Martin's paintings, constructions, and works on paper provide a link between the chromatic abstraction of artists such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, her generational and ideological peers, and the Minimalist vocabulary of the 1960s. This book reproduces works made between 1957 and 1967, and better-known paintings and constructions created since 1974. A selection of Martin's writings reveals the spiritual philosophy that sustains her painting. Clean copy.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 298 pages. The essays assembled in Agnotology show that ignorance is often more than just an absence of knowledge; it can also be the outcome of cultural and political struggles. Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don't want you to know ("Doubt is our product" is the tobacco industry slogan). Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology, racial ignorance, and more. The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Jump At The Sun/Hyperion, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Non-paginated. SIGNED BY ANN GRIFALCONI AND JERRY PINKNEY ON TITLE PAGE. 1st edition/1st printing. Full color illustrations by Jerry Pinkney. A bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. Konemann, 1st US, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, large format, 344 pages. Profusely illustrated with black & white photographs by Alexander Rodchenko. Dust jacket shows light rubbing to back cover. Large, heavy book. Clean, tight copy. This is the most complete volume published outside of Russia to capture the photographic work of Alexander Rodchenko, one of the former Soviet Union's greatest artists

Hardcover. Edison, Knickerbocker Press, 1st US, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, large format, 344 pages. Profusely illustrated with black & white photographs by Alexander Rodchenko. Dust jacket shows light rubbing to back cover. Large, heavy book. Clean, tight copy. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Dragonfly Books, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, hardcover, 32 pages. The inspiring story of an Iraqi librarian's courageous fight to save books from the Basra Central Library before it was destroyed in the war.It is 2003 and Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of the Central Library in Basra, Iraq, has grown worried given the increased likelihood of war in her country. Determined to preserve the irreplacable records of the culture and history of the land on which she lives from the destruction of the war, Alia undertakes a courageous and extremely dangerous task of spiriting away 30,000 books from the library to a safe place.Told in dramatic graphic-novel panels by acclaimed cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty, Alia's Mission celebrates the importance of books and the freedom to read, while examining the impact of war on a country and its people.

Hardcover. NY, Dragonfly Books, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 32 pages. The inspiring story of an Iraqi librarian's courageous fight to save books from the Basra Central Library before it was destroyed in the war.It is 2003 and Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of the Central Library in Basra, Iraq, has grown worried given the increased likelihood of war in her country. Determined to preserve the irreplacable records of the culture and history of the land on which she lives from the destruction of the war, Alia undertakes a courageous and extremely dangerous task of spiriting away 30,000 books from the library to a safe place.Told in dramatic graphic-novel panels by acclaimed cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty, Alia's Mission celebrates the importance of books and the freedom to read, while examining the impact of war on a country and its people.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with light edgewear, 400 pages.This adventurous book charts the origins of the local "market cooking" culture that we all savor today. When Francophile Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971, few Americans were familiar with goat cheese, cappuccino, or mesclun. But it wasn't long before Waters and her motley coterie of dreamers inspired a new culinary standard incorporating ethics, politics, and the conviction that the best-grown food is also the tastiest. Based on unprecedented access to Waters and her inner circle, this is a truly delicious rags-to-riches saga.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. B&w photos, 185 pages. Twenty years after his death, George Balanchine still dominates the world of ballet. Not only have his works been danced by the New York City Ballet continuously since 1948, but they also have been performed by more than two dozen other companies throughout the world. In clear and elegant writing, Terry Teachout brings to life the dramatic story of George Balanchine, a Russian emigre who fell in love with American culture, married four times and kept a mistress on the side, and transformed the art of ballet forever. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, reprint, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 115 pages, color illustrations. All One Horse is a marvel-filled journey through Breyten Breytenbach's kaleidoscopic imagination. The electrifying colors and penetrating images of his paintings converse with his lyrical and satirical dream-fables. These visions and parables emerge from a melange of cultures and traditions: African and Eastern thought, the spirit world, and the spheres of visual art, philosophy, history and politics. Breytenbach's watercolors communicate in hieroglyphs, where private conversation embraces myth and dream. These reflections and images - clear and complex at once - are cries for human dignity and justice, are truth disguised as play. An outspoken human rights activist, Breyten Breytenbach is a poet, painter, memoirist, essayist and novelist. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world. Born in South Africa, he emigrated to Paris in the late '60s and became deeply involved in the anti-Apartheid movement. Clean Copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Books, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 519 pages. At the heart of this history is the female body. The century-span between the crinoline and the bikini witnessed more mutations in the ideal western woman's body shape than at any other period. In this richly detailed account, Virginia Nicholson, described as 'one of the great social historians of our time.' (Amanda Foreman) and a truly brilliant researcher has produced a most remarkable social history revealing the power, the pain and the pleasure involved in adorning the female body. She asks how custom, colour, class and sex fit into the picture, and shrewdly charts how the advances made by feminism collided with the changing shape of desirability. Full of surprising facts - the feminist plastic surgeon, the radioactive corset - alongside stories of the 'New Women' who discovered freedom by bobbing their hair, those who were the early adopters of trousers, and early Black beauty entrepreneurs, this book chronicles the codes, the contradictions, the lies and the highs of beauty.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Books, 1st, 2024, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 519 pages. At the heart of this history is the female body. The century-span between the crinoline and the bikini witnessed more mutations in the ideal western woman's body shape than at any other period. In this richly detailed account, Virginia Nicholson, described as 'one of the great social historians of our time.' (Amanda Foreman) and a truly brilliant researcher has produced a most remarkable social history revealing the power, the pain and the pleasure involved in adorning the female body. She asks how custom, colour, class and sex fit into the picture, and shrewdly charts how the advances made by feminism collided with the changing shape of desirability. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, W. Heffer & Sons, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and soiled dust jacket. 395 pages, b&w illustrations, charts. Alur Society became a classic for a number of reasons. Being much more than a descriptive account of an African society, it was the first intensive ethnography to adopt the ideas of Max Weber. It pioneered the idea that religion and ritual could be the basis of political action. It also showed how state systems could evolve not just on the basis of conquest but as a result of societies without kings inviting those with kings to govern them. Southall's theory of the segmentary state was adopted by many political anthropologists and political scientists, being applied not just to Africa but also to India and other parts of the world. Previous owner's signature inside front cover otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Hyperion, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a very good, unclipped dust jacket. Non-paginated. SIGNED BY ANDREA DAVIS PINKNEY AND BRIAN PINKNEY ON TITLE PAGE. Full color illustrations. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York, N.Y., Gotham, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 318 pages, b&w illustrations. Light edgewear to dust jacket. Overall, a tight clean copy. A highly entertaining exploration of the complicated science of quantum mechanics made easy to understand by way of pop culture.As a young science fiction fan, physicist James Kakalios marveled at the future predicted in the pulp magazines, comics, and films of the '50s and '60s. By 2010, he was sure we'd have flying cars and jetpacks. But what we ended up with-laptop computers, MRI machines, Blu-ray players, and dozens of other real-life marvels-are even more fantastic. In The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, he explains why the development of quantum mechanics enabled our amazing present day.

Hardcover. New York, William Morrow, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 336 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black and white illustrations and photographs. Cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine. Pictorial dust jacket shows light edgewear. Containing nearly 600 black-and-white photographs and illustrations, and articles by numerous experts, Amelia Peabody's Egypt sparkles with unforgettable glimpses of the exotic and the bizarre, the unusual and the unfamiliar -- a treasure trove that overflows with Egyptological riches, along with wonderful insights into the culture and mores of the Victorian era, including the prevalent attitudes on empire, fashion, feminism, tourists, servants, and much more.

Softcover. NY, Dover, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 160 pages. Harrison Fisher's portraits of healthy, poised, active, and confident women set the standard for the concept of American beauty during the early years of the twentieth century. The artist enjoyed enormous popularity from 1905 to 1920, serving as a judge in nationwide beauty contests and maintaining a celebrity status that was unparalleled for an illustrator. This original publication recaptures the images that made Fisher famous, compiling his very best black-and-white and color illustrations for Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Ladies Home Journal as well as for books and other publications. The successors to the stylish Gibson Girls created by Charles Dana Gibson, Fisher's idealized women reflect an aspirational degree of wealth and social ease. They ride horses, play tennis, swim, go motoring in newfangled automobiles, and graciously bask in the admiration of attractive young men. These century-old images from a moment in our country's cultural history will appeal to enthusiasts of graphic art and illustration as well as to students of American art and popular culture.