Hardcover. NY, BlueBridge, 1st US, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 246 pages. This narrative history masterfully weaves together the sweeping events surrounding what has become known as the "Babylonian captivity" of the popes into the broader story of 14th-Century Europe?one of the most turbulent times in the continent's history. It was a time of fear, ferocity, and religious agony, which saw the suppression of the Knights Templar and the Cathars, the first onslaught of the plague, and the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. The century also produced some of the greatest writers and artists in the western tradition, including Giotto, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer. Central to this period was the movement of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon in the south of France, where seven successive popes held power from 1309 to 1377. The drama, intrigue, and tumult associated with the papacy in exile forms the perfect lens through which to clearly see a Europe making the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Clean copy.
Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 165 pages. Examining 20 poets and their poetry of the 1940s with relation to the prose of that period. Clean copy. University of California Publication Vol. 19 No. 3.
Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st, 1892, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two matching hardcover volumes, light gray cloth covers, gilt titles on spine, top edge gilt. 509, 588 pages. These books explore the lives of Puritans in Holland, England, and America during the 17th century. It provides a detailed account of the Puritan migration to America and their impact on American history. The book also discusses the religious and political factors that led to the Puritan migration, their beliefs, and their way of life. The author provides a comprehensive overview of the Puritan community in each of the three countries, highlighting their struggles, successes, and contributions to the development of America. The book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in American history, Puritanism, and the early settlement of America. Name and date on front fly leafs, otherwise clean. This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.
Hardcover. Amherst NY, Prometheus Books, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 554 pages. More than one hundred years ago Western scholars began to investigate the origins of Islam, using the highest standards of objective historical scholarship of the time. Their aim was to determine what could be known about Muhammad and the rise of early Islam quite apart from the pious and totally unobjective traditions preserved by the Muslim religious community. In some ways this research was inspired by a similar investigation of Christianity made famous by Albert Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus. Today although much has been learned about early Christianity, little comparable progress has been made in the field of Islamic Studies. Here objective historical research has long been severely handicapped both by the resistance of Muslim societies to Western analysis of their sacred traditions and by the apologetic approaches of many Western scholars, who have compromised their investigations for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities. It is in this context that Ibn Warraq presents this important anthology of the best studies of Muhammad and early Islam ranging from the very beginnings of Islamic Studies in the nineteenth century to contemporary research. Clean copy.
Hardcover. UK, Carcanet Press, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 41 pages. SIGNED BY LEARY on the title page. Also inscribed by author on the front fly leaf.
Hardcover. NY, Ecco, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 461 pages, b&w illustrations. In this remarkable memoir, the award-winning author shares the ways in which his relationship with his father, combined with his unique childhood, molded him into the scientist, and man, he is today. From Gerd's days as a soldier in Europe to the family's daring escape from the Red Army in 1945 to the rustic Maine farm they came to call home, Heinrich relates it all in his trademark style, making science accessible and awe-inspiring. Remainder line to bottom edge otherwise clean.
Softcover. State University of New York Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 285 pages. This book charts new directions in Egyptian social history, providing the first systematic account of adaptation and protest among crafts and service workers in Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using a wealth of new sources, John T. Chalcraft challenges conventional notions of craft stagnation and decline by recovering the largely unknown histories of crafts workers' restructuring in the face of world economic integration, and their petitions, demonstrations, and strike-action at a time of state-building and colonial rule. Chalcraft demonstrates the economic importance of petty producers and service providers, and tells the story of widespread collective assertion couched in new discourses of citizenship and nationalism. He also gives a new interpretation of the end of the guilds in Egypt and addresses larger debates about unevenness under capitalism. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 244 pages. B&w drawings by Edward Ardizzone. Nobody believed Hugsy Goode when he prophesied that a tunnel lay beneath the alley until--generations later--Nicholas (alias Copin) and Timothy (alias Tornid) decide to explore. And lo and behold, right under the vine-covered hole outside the house where Hugsy Goode used to live, they find an entrance to adventures beyond their wildest dreams. A sequel to The Alley. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Philadelphia/NY, J.P. Lippincott, 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in blue cloth covers stamped in black and gilt. Stated First Edition, SIGNED BY PULLEN on a prelim page. Pullen's classic and highly acclaimed book tells how Chamberlain and his men fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville on their way to the pivotal battle of Gettysburg. Small ownership sticker on the front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 376 pages. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the "Big Easy" of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power. A first printing of the winner of the 2019 National Book Award in nonfiction. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 238 pages. Theodosius I was the last Roman emperor to rule over both East and West. After the military disaster of Adrianople he had to rebuild the state by adopting a new policy of cooperation with the barbarians. He also suppressed paganism and established a unified Catholic Church by law. His reign was a turning point in the history of the late Roman Empire. The authors describe the military, political, and religious struggles of this turbulent period and analyze the far-reaching effects of his policies in the fourth and fifth centuries. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 728 pages. The long-awaited biography of the genius who masterminded Henry VIII's bloody revolution in the English government, which reveals at last Cromwell's role in the downfall of Anne Boleyn. Since the sixteenth century we have been fascinated by Henry VIII and the man who stood beside him, guiding him, enriching him, and enduring the king's insatiable appetites and violent outbursts until Henry ordered his beheading in July 1540. After a decade of sleuthing in the royal archives, Diarmaid MacCulloch has emerged with a tantalizing new understanding of Henry's mercurial chief minister, the inscrutable and utterly compelling Thomas Cromwell. History has not been kind to the son of a Putney brewer who became the architect of England's split with Rome. Where past biographies portrayed him as a scheming operator with blood on his hands, Hilary Mantel reimagined him as a far more sympathetic figure buffered by the whims of his master. So which was he--the villain of history or the victim of her creation? MacCulloch sifted through letters and court records for answers and found Cromwell's fingerprints on some of the most transformative decisions of Henry's turbulent reign. But he also found Cromwell the man, an administrative genius, rescuing him from myth and slander. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st US, 1895, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in black and white and gilt, 339 pages. An historical novel written in the late 19th century. This work vividly recounts the harrowing retreat of Napoleon's army from Moscow, depicted through the eyes of a central character, Sergeant Julian Wyatt, who embodies the spirit and challenges faced during this tumultuous time. With eight full page illustrations by W. H. Overend and three maps.
Hardcover. London, Angus and Robertson, 1st UK, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. General, minister of war, prime minister, and unrepentant ultranationalist, Hideki Tojo was the most powerful leader in the Japanese government during World War II. This clear and compelling portrait of Tojo illuminates the spartan, single-minded, incorruptible personality of the man who chose war rather than succumb to U.S.-induced economic strangulation. 20 photos. 288 pages. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. In Sawgamet, a north woods boomtown gone bust, the cold of winter breaks the glass of the schoolhouse thermometer, and the dangers of working in the cuts are overshadowed by the mysteries and magic lurking in the woods. Stephen, a pastor, is at home on the eve of his mother's funeral, thirty years after the mythic summer his grandfather returned to the town in search of his beloved but long-dead wife. And like his grandfather, Stephen is forced to confront the losses of his past. Touch introduces you to a world where monsters and witches oppose singing dogs and golden caribou, where the living and the dead part and meet again in the crippling beauty of winter and the surreal haze of summer.
Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in white and gilt, 349 pages, b&w illustrations, top edge gilt. Chronicles the daring explorers who crossed oceans from the West to the far shores of the North Pacific. From the dawn of Russian and European ambitions to the first American and British voyages, the book weaves together the lives, motives, and trials of men who chased a sea of unknowns. It presents a vivid look at discovery, rivalry, and the costs of pushing beyond the maps. Drawing on primary sources, Laut illustrates the fierce competition for discovery and dominance in the fur trade among these intrepid adventurers. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf, mild wear to top of spine, otherwise a clean, tight copy.
Softcover. Annapolis MD, Naval Institute Press, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 509 pages, b&w illustrations. Based on twenty years of research in formerly secret archives, this book reveals for the first time the full significance of War Plan Orange -- the U.S. Navy's strategy to defeat Japan, formulated over the forty years prior to World War II. The author does a good job of describing how the plan changed over time regarding possible objectives (rescuing Philippines, capturing Truk, making Guam into the "Gibraltar of the Pacific) as well as the different groups who pushed for their vision on how to best execute the plan from the gung-ho thrusters to the cautionaries to name the major approaches. The book also details the interplay between the navy and the army as they worked together to create a global plan of war as the world became more dangerous in the 1930's (the Rainbow Plans). The work concludes with an analysis of just how successful all the effort that went into creating Plan Orange was to the waging of the Pacific War in 1941-45. Clean copy.
Softcover. Forest VA, TLC Publishing, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages, profusely illustrated in b&w. This book outlines the history of railroading in West Virginia from the earliest entry of Baltimore & Ohio into what was then western Virginia up to the 1860s. In addition to B&O, Chesapeake & Ohio, Western Maryland, Norfolk & Western, and Virginian have major chapters. Smaller sections cover the New York Central, short lines, logging railroads, and others that had only a smaller presence in the state. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Mariner Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 253 pages, b&w illustrations. From a longtime New Yorker staff cartoonist, an evocative family memoir, a love letter to New York City, and a delightful exploration of the origins of creativity--richly interleaved with the author's witty, beloved cartoons. David Sipress, a dreamer and obsessive drawer living with his Upper West Side family in the age of JFK and Sputnik, goes hazy when it comes to the ceaselessly imparted lessons-on-life from his meticulous father and the angsty expectations of his migraine-prone mother. With wry and brilliantly observed prose, Sipress paints his hapless place in the family, from the time he is tricked by his unreliable older sister into rocketing his pet turtle out his twelfth-floor bedroom window to the moment he walks away from a Harvard PhD program in Russian history to begin his life as a professional cartoonist. Sipress's cartoons appear in the story with spot-on precision, inducing delightful Aha! moments in answer to the perennial question aimed at cartoonists: Where do you get your ideas?
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 179 pages. Whatever Gets You through the Night is an irreverent and deeply funny retelling of the Arabian Nights and a wildly inspired exploration of the timeless art of storytelling. Award-winning writer Andrei Codrescu re-imagines how Sheherezade saved Baghdad's virgins and her own life through a heroic feat of storytelling-one that kept the Persian king Sharyar hanging in agonizing narrative and erotic suspense for 1001 nights. For Sheherezade, the end of either suspense or curiosity means death, but Codrescu keeps both alive in this entertaining tale of how she learned to hold a king in thrall, setting with her endless invention an unsurpassable example for all storytellers across the ages. Liberated and mischievous, Codrescu's Sheherezade is as charming as she is shrewd-and so is the story Codrescu tells.
Hardcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 292 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED BY BOTH AUTHORS on the title page. Additionally INSCRIBED BY COHN on the dedication page. Kevin J. Crisman and Arthur B. Cohn show how a confluence of geographic, technological, economic, and social conditions in the United States and Canada turned an ancient idea into a practical alternative to more expensive and dangerous steamboats. Reviewing evidence from travelers' memoirs, regional histories, pictorial records, and the only horseboat ever studied by archaeologists - a wreck on the floor of Lake Champlain's Burlington Bay, in Vermont - the authors trace the evolution of horseboats from early mechanisms that forced the animals to walk in tight circles to "endless floor" treadmills that resembled modern exercise machines. In a lively narrative interspersed with quotes from passenger accounts, the book charts the rise and demise of horseboat businesses on the Hudson River, as well as in New York City, St. Louis, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The authors also describe and record the underwater excavation of the Lake Champlain wreck, revealing a wealth of detail about the construction and operation of a typical treadwheel horseboat of the 1830s and 1840s. Clean copy.
Softcover. Santa Barbara CA, Capra Press, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, Capra Chapbook Series No. 27, 50 pages. Small trade paper original simultaneous with scarcer hardcover issue. A collection of early poems by Ursula K. Le Guin, edited by Robert Durand and Noel Young, with a frontispiece portrait of the author by illustrator James Brunsman. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Holiday House, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 132 pages. Illustrated throughout with Jackson's black and white photographs. In this fascinating book, Laurie Lawlor tells parallel stories of the settling of the western United States and the wanderings of a man who captured much of that history in singular and beautiful photographs. Lawlor includes forty of Jackson's photographs as illustrations for her narrative. Bibliography, timeline, glossary, and index. Clean copy.