culture

Softcover. London/NY, Verso, 1st, 1990, Softcover, 397 pages. In this acclaimed historical study, Alexander Saxton establishes the centrality of white racism to American politics and culture. Examining images of race at a popular level - from blackface minstrels to the construction of the Western hero, from grassroots political culture to dime novels - as well as the philosophical constructions of the political elite, it is a powerful and comprehensive account of the ideological forces at work in the formation of modern America. Clean copy.

Softcover. Tema Ghana, Ghana Publishing Corp. , 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 83 pages, b&w illustrations. Part of a doctoral thesis accepted by the University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. A study of the wooden stools and their religious meaning in the culture of the Akan people of Ghana. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 286 pages, b&w illustrations. This book examines the sense of smell in humans, comparing it with the known functions of the same sense in other animals. Odorous cues play a role in sexual physiology and behavior in animals and there are claims that odor can play the same role in humans. The place of odors and scents in aesthetics and in psychoanalysis serves to illustrate the link between the emotional centers and the brain. The book presents arguments to explain the way in which our ancestral past has given rise to our modern day olfactory enigmas. Contains a glossary and chapter summaries. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a unclipped dust jacket with fading to spine, 260 pages. This fascinating and unusual book tells the story of an arguably catastrophic German habit - that of valuing cultural achievement above all else and envisioning it as a noble substitute for politics. Lepenies examines how this tendency has affected German history from the late eighteenth century to today. He argues that the German preference for art over politics is essential to understanding the peculiar nature of Nazism, including its aesthetic appeal to many Germans (and others) and the fact that Hitler and many in his circle were failed artists and intellectuals who seem to have practiced their politics as a substitute form of art. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, repriny, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 290 pages. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s original, groundbreaking study explores the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself.Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, and particularly the Yoruba trickster figure of Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey whose myths help articulate the black tradition's theory of its literature, Gates uncovers a unique system forinterpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. His critical approach relies heavily on the Signifying Monkey--perhaps the most popular figure in African-American folklore--and signification and Signifyin(g). Exploring signification in black American life and literature by analyzing the transmission and revision of various signifying figures, Gates provides an extended analysis of what he calls the "Talking Book," a central trope in early slave narratives that virtually defines the tradition of black American letters. Gates uses this critical framework to examine several major works of African-American literature--including Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo--revealing how these works signify on the black tradition and on each other. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Montreal, Drawn and Quarterly, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. British cartoonist Tom Gauld (Mooncop, You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, Goliath) has created countless iconic strips for The Guardian over the course of his illustrious career. A master of condensing grand, highbrow themes into one- to eight-panel comics, his weekly strips embody his trademark British humor while simultaneously opening comics to an audience unfamiliar with the artistry that cartooning has to offer. Funny but serious, these postcards allow Gauld to put his impressive knowledge of history, literature, and pop culture on full display-his impeccable timing and distinctive visual style setting him apart from the rest.

Softcover. Toronto CA, McClelland and Stewart, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 264 pages, 125 color, 135 black & white. Published in conjunction with an exhibition. "A major study of the artistic traditions of Canada's Native peoples and of their place in the cultures and belief systems in which they originated. Here, for the first time, is Native Canadian work from museums and private collections around the world. The works, and the essays that describe their contexts, bring to life the spiritual and aesthetic identity of the craftspeople and their societies. From richly ornamented costumes displaying the wealth of their owners to practical techologies that enabled the peoples to thrive in their environments, these treasures reflect Native life at the time of contact with Europeans." Clean copy.

Softcover. Boston, Back Bay Books, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 246 pages, b&w illustrations. Documents the history of swing music and dancing, covering the important artists, style and fashion, albums, and dance moves of swing. A bright, clean copy that has a light smoker's odor.

Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 385 pages, b&w illustrations. In this highly original history of the world's most famous bicycle race, Christopher S. Thompson, mining previously neglected sources and writing with infectious enthusiasm for his subject, tells the compelling story of the Tour de France from its creation in 1903 to the present. Weaving the words of racers, politicians, Tour organizers, and a host of other commentators together with a wide-ranging analysis of the culture surrounding the event including posters, songs, novels, films, and media coverage Thompson links the history of the Tour to key moments and themes in French history. He argues persuasively that this hugely popular sporting event has been instrumental in French attempts to grapple with the great challenges they have confronted during their tumultuous twentieth century from World Wars, political divisions, and class conflict to economic modernization, women's emancipation, and threats to public health. Name on half title page, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light blue cloth with red and dark blue lettering on the spine and cover, 302 pages. A moving novel of the beginning of the American trek to the west. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight. Here, in the first novel of Conrad Richter's Awakening Land trilogy, the Lucketts, a wild, woods-faring family, lived their roaming life, pushing ever westward as the frontier advanced and as new settlements threatened their isolation. This novel gives an excellent feel for America's lost woods culture, which was created when most of the eastern midwest was a vast hardwood forest---virtually a jungle. The Trees conveys settler life, including conflicts with Native Americans, illness, hunting, family dynamics, and marriage. INSCRIBED BY RICHTER on the front fly leaf. A bright, sharp copy missing the dust jacket. Related ephemera laid in.

Softcover. NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston , 1988, Softcover, 184 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY WEINER on the inside front cover. This re-examination of the Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea, the people described in Malinowski's classic ethnographic work of the early 20th century, provides a balanced view of the society from a male and female perspective, including coverage of new discoveries about the importance of woman's work and wealth in the society.

Hardcover. NY, The Dial Press, 2nd pr., 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardccover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 497 pages, b&w illustrations. An overview of what entertained America for 200 years, from opera to comics. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt and Co., 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A collection of twelve 'startingly original stories about erotic desire' with exotic settings ranging across centuries and cultures from Algeria to Egypt to Italy and France. 193 pages, clean copy.

Hardcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with sunning to spine, 325 pages, b&w illustrations. In The World of the Paris Café, W. Scott Haine investigates what the working-class café reveals about the formation of urban life in nineteenth-century France. Café society was not the product of a small elite of intellectuals and artists, he argues, but was instead the creation of a diverse and changing working population. Making unprecedented use of primary sources -- from marriage contracts to police and bankruptcy records -- Haine investigates the café in relation to work, family life, leisure, gender roles, and political activity. This rich and provocative study offers a bold reinterpretation of the social history of the working men and women of Paris. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 341 pages. This is the first collection of essays in seven years by the author of Omensetter's Luck, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and Fiction and the Figures of Life. In it, one of America's most brilliant and eclectic minds examines literature, culture, writers (their lives and works), and the nature and uses of language and the written word. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Atglen, PA, Schiffer Publishing, 2nd, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 489 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. Color photo throughout. While You Were Sleeping was a graffiti and pop culture magazine started by graffiti supply business owner Roger Gastman when he was 19. Here are some of the greatest stories the magazine ever published-and many that are not so good. From stories on admirable serial killers and interviews with child stars to photos of graffiti and people's naked sisters, this book takes you into the dirty minds of Gastman and his team of juvenile delinquents. You've been warned.

Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 305 pages. The Wrestler's Body tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic. Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes an ethnography of the wrestler's physique that elucidates the somatic structure of the wrestler's identity and ideology.Young men in North India may choose to join an akhara, or gymnasium, where they subject themselves to a complex program of physical and moral fitness. Alter's first-hand description of each detail of the wrestler's regimen offers a unique perspective on South Asian culture and society. Wrestlers feel that moral reform of Indian national character is essential and advocate their way of life as an ideology of national health. Everyone is called on to become a wrestler and build collective strength through self-discipline. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 264 pages, color and b&w illustrations. The book focuses on the Aboriginal system of land tenure in the northeast of Arnhem Land, Australia. Yolngu land tenure is a system based on rational economic principles while deriving its validity and moral force from a rich religious mythology. The book is a contribution to the ethnography of Australian Aborigines, to comparative hunter-gatherer studies, to the analysis of systems of land tenure, and to the history of ideas about property. Clean copy.

Softcover. Oxford UK, Blackwell, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 332 pages. The Zizek Reader - which includes a Foreword by Zizek and a new, previously unpublished essay on cyberspace - provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the flamboyant work of a figure who has been variously described as 'one of the most arresting, insightful and scandalous thinkers in recent memory' and 'the Giant of Ljubljana'. His work is an extraordinary mix of Hegel and Hitchcock, Schelling and science fiction, Kant and courtly love, Stalin and Stephen King, all of which is strongly seasoned with Lacanian psychoanalysis. Divided into three parts - Culture, Woman and Philosophy - the Reader not only provides careful explications of the individual extracts within each section but also connects these extracts in a general introduction, mapping the shiftings of Zizek's thought within the Lacanian framework. The essays on woman offer feminism ammunition from unexpected sources, within a reading of Lacan that goes counter to his ambiguous reception by feminists. In fact, at this collection dazzlingly demonstrates, Zizek provides us with one of the most limpid and persuasive readings so far produced of Lacan's difficult thought. Name on inside of front cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 191 pages, color photography by Greenfield. Critically acclaimed for Girl Culture and Fast Forward, Lauren Greenfield continues her exploration of contemporary female culture with Thin, a groundbreaking book about eating disorders. Greenfield's photographs are paired with extensive interviews and journal entries from twenty girls and women who are suffering from various afflictions. Very good in a similar dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Riverhead Books, 1st illust thus, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. This is a collaborative edition with Jaime Hernandez illustrations. John Hodgman calls Hernandez "one of the most talented artists our polyglot culture has produced." Bright teal slipcase. Book has no DJ as issued. Still in publisher's shrink wrap.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, CA, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 128 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. This Is the Day: The March on Washington is a stirring photo-essay by photographer Leonard Freed documenting the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of August 28, 1963, the historic day on which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the base of the Lincoln Memorial. This book commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the historic march that ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, CA, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 128 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. This Is the Day: The March on Washington is a stirring photo-essay by photographer Leonard Freed documenting the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of August 28, 1963, the historic day on which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the base of the Lincoln Memorial. This book commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the historic march that ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Hardcover. New York/London, Merrell, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages, 165 color and b$w images. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Equal parts glamour and cataclysm, sunshine and noir, few cities have provoked visual representation as insistently as LA. This Side of Paradise explores the synergistic relationship between the city and photography from the mid-nineteenth century to the present through the key themes of landscape and the body. Beautifully illustrated throughout, including images by Carleton Watkins, Edward Weston, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Garry Winogrand, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Herb Ritts, John Baldessari, Catherine Opie and many others.