essays

New Heven, Dumont/Yale Univ. Press, 1st , 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color, black & white illustrations. 365 pages. Scholarly essays on the four artists.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 390 pages, b&w illustrations. Growing up in Greenwich Village, Sean Wilentz discov-ered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager; almost half a century later, he revisits Dylan's work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan. Drawn in part from Wilentz's essays as "historian in residence" of Dylan's official website, Bob Dylan in America is a unique blend of fact, interpretation, and affinity--a book that, much like its subject, shifts gears and changes shape as the occasion warrants. Beginning with his explosion onto the scene in 1961, this book follows Dylan as he continues to develop a body of musical and literary work unique in our cultural history. Wilentz's approach places Dylan's music in the context of its time, including the early influences of Popular Front ideology and Beat aesthetics, and offers a larger critical appreciation of Dylan as both a song-writer and performer down to the present. Remainder dot on bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Clarkson Potter, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 319 pages, color illustrations. This stunning cookbook collects 100 of the most timeless and seminal recipes from the first leg of Bobby Flays monumental career in one place, for the first time ever. At the age of sixteen, Bobby Flay left high school and the idea of traditional education behind to pursue a life in professional restaurant kitchens. Through his groundbreaking restaurants, cookbooks, and numerous television shows, Flay has built a body of work that is one of the most influential in American culinary history. His stamp can be felt in restaurants across the country, as well as at the dinner table in many families' homes. Read the essays, absorb the photography, and most important, cook tantalizing dishes from this book. Bobby Flay has put decades of his daily work into these pages. Clean, bright copy.

hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 105 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black & white photos by Klich. Review-slip laid-in. Essays by Cornell Capa and Bengt Borjeson. By combining his intimate and disturbing photographs with police and hospital records, handwritten notes left behind by Beth, and other texts, author Ken Klich searches for a rationale -what could cause this intelligent child to end up as a prostitute and drug addict?

Hardcover. Brooklyn, NY, PowerHouse Books, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 200 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark on bottom edge, otherwise, clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Color and Black and white pictures throughout. Explores the genre of self-portraits through nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first-century photographic techniques, including also block prints, watercolor drawings, and accompanying essays.

Hardcover. New York, Scalo Verlag , 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 144 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. This book contains a never-before published series of work from the early 1980s: Mikhailov photographed ''The Dancers'' in his hometown in the Ukraine during a period when the former Soviet Union was a reality, before the appearance of Gorbachov and "perestroika". We observe the open-air dancing scene with great astonishment; seeing older and younger people enjoy themselves in a way that might be contradictory to the images we might have about everyday life in the old Soviet Union. These cheerful images remind us how little women and men need to have a good time. An essay by Russian art critic Boris Groys and an exhaustive interview make this volume a must have for readers and libraries interested in contemporary art and photography. 65 duotone illustrations.

Hardcover. New York, Scalo Verlag , 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 144 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Thisbook contains a never-before published series of work from the early 1980s: Mikhailov photographed ''The Dancers'' in his hometown in the Ukraine during a period when the former Soviet Union was a reality, before the appearance of Gorbachov and "perestroika". We observe the open-air dancing scene with great astonishment; seeing older and younger people enjoy themselves in a way that might be contradictory to the images we might have about everyday life in the old Soviet Union. These cheerful images remind us how little women and men need to have a good time. An essay by Russian art critic Boris Groys and an exhaustive interview make this volume a must have for readers and libraries interested in contemporary art and photography. 65 duotone illustrations.

Hardcover. NY, Prestel, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 208 pages, color plates. Celebrating an experimental decade in the career of Alex Katz, this book introduces audiences to a relatively unknown body of his work. Coming of age as an artist in the 1950s, Alex Katz set out to reinvent representational painting in the wake of Abstract Expressionism. At first, Katz struggled to find an audience, destroying hundreds of canvases. This book surveys the artwork that survived from this momentous decade, one in which he first painted outdoors, innovated with collages, and met Ada del Moro, his wife and muse. The essays in this book contextualize Katz's painting, consider how he and his peers looked at one another, mined 19th-century portraiture, and borrowed from television, advertising, and cinema. The result is a fascinating study of a young artist laying the groundwork for an astonishingly successful career. Fans of Katz will be inspired by the radicality of his early work, and those being introduced to the artist will be struck by its freshness and relevance.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 319 pages, mostly b&w photographs (some color), essays by 7 contributors including Henry Miller. Preface by Jean-Jacques Aillagon. Text essays excerpted from the work of Brassai himself as well as contributions from his wife Mme. Gilberte Brassi and close friends Roger Grenier, Henry Miller, Jacques Prevert and Werner Spies. End-matter includes Biography, Bibliography, Exhibitions and List of Illustrations. Illustrated with 308 photographs, 14 of which are in color. Stated first American edition. A presentation of Brassi's art from his nude drawings and sculpture to his fascination with graffiti but principally featuring on his photographs of nocturnal Paris and the demimonde creatures which inhabited its streets. Remainder mark to top edge, otherwise clean. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 319 pages, mostly b&w photographs (some color), essays by 7 contributors including Henry Miller. Beautiful copy in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, powerHouse Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glazed boards, 160 pages. For over three years, writer Anthony LaSala and photographer Seth Kushner trekked tirelessly across the borough, documenting these charismatic characters in 'The Brooklynites,' a collection of images, interviews, and essays. Clean, bright copy. No dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. NY, Russell Sage Foundation, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 400 pages, b&w illustrations. Little over a century ago, New York and Budapest were both flourishing cities engaging in spectacular modernization. By 1930, New York had emerged as an innovating cosmopolitan metropolis, while Budapest languished under the conditions that would foster fascism. Budapest and New York explores the increasingly divergent trajectories of these once-similar cities through the perspectives of both Hungarian and American experts in the fields of political, cultural, social and art history. Their original essays illuminate key aspects of urban life that most reveal the turn-of-the-century evolution of New York and Budapest: democratic participation, use of public space, neighborhood ethnicity, and culture high and low. What comes across most strikingly in these essays is New York's cultivation of social and political pluralism, a trend not found in Budapest. Nationalist ideology exerted tremendous pressure on Budapest's ethnic groups to assimilate to a single Hungarian language and culture. In contrast, New York's ethnic diversity was transmitted through a mass culture that celebrated ethnicity while muting distinct ethnic traditions, making them accessible to a national audience. Mild fade to spine of dust jacket, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Saint Paul, Minn., Graywolf Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 245 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Spotless and tight copy.

Softcover. Asheville NC, Bright Mountain Books, 2nd Ed., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, oblong format, 224 pages, b&w photos. Cabins & Castles was first completed in 1981, a joint effort of the Historic Resources Commission and the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. The book became enormously popular with natives, tourists, historians, and preservationists as a primary source of knowledge about the richly historic Buncombe County. Cabins & Castles contains a historical overview, as well as the specific record of individual properties built in the area, primarily those constructed prior to 1930. Historical sketches of Buncombe County and Asheville written by John Ager and Talmage Powell are followed by editor Douglas Swaim's essay on local architectural history. Rapid development in the urban and rural areas of Buncombe County makes this record timely and valuable. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Guggenheim Museum, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 315 pages illustrated in color. This volume accompanies the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the innovative body of work by Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang--best known for his spectacular artworks using gunpowder and fireworks. It presents a chronological and thematic survey that charts the artist's creation of a distinctive visual and conceptual language across four mediums: drawings made from gunpowder fuses and explosive powders laid on paper and ignited; explosion events, documented by videos, photographs and preparatory drawings; large-scale installations; and social projects, wherein the artist works with local communities to create an art event or exhibition site, documented by photographs. Featuring works from the 1980s to the present, this volume illuminates Cai's significant formal and conceptual contributions to contemporary international art practices and social activism. Generously illustrated more than 368 pages, this volume includes essays by Alexandra Munroe, David Joselit, Miwon Kwon and Wang Hui--along with some 60 documented plate entries. Clean copy. Extra postage will be required if shipped overseas.

Softcover. Evanston IL, Northwestern University , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 325 pages. Devoted to the most important American Continental philosopher of his generation and one of the discipline's founding fathers, and featuring some of the field's most distinguished luminaries, this anthology constitutes a critical document in Continental philosophy, reflecting its recent history, its present state, and its debt to Calvin Schrag. Taking up themes central to Schrag's own philosophical concerns, these essays refer throughout to his salient "interventions" in the dialogue of late twentieth-century thought characterized as "postmodernity." In doing so, all contributors address, implicitly or directly, the question of philosophy's role and responsibility, or "task." The volume begins with an overview of this task and of Schrag's contributions to it, written from the perspective of a resolute defender of the phenomenological tradition that Schrag's work has extended and reconfigured. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY/Berlin, Mouton Publishers, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 165 pages, three academic essays examine the codes and messages of the Brazilian Carnival. Numerous color photos. Foreword by Sebeok; Umberto Eco essay titled "The Frames of Comic 'Freedom'"; V.V. Ivanov essay titled "The Semiotic theory of Carnival as the Inversion of Bipolar Opposites"; and Monica Rector's essay "The code and Message of Carnival: 'Escolas-de-Samba''. Previous owner's name inside front cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Distributed Art Publishers (DAP), 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with silver lettering. One of the most influential American artists working today, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated narratives around family, race, gender, sexism, class and the consequences of power for more than 40 years. Her complex oeuvre-always ahead of its time, and profoundly formative for younger generations of artists-has employed photography (for which she is best known), fabric, text, audio, digital images, installation and video. Writing in the New York Times, Holland Cotter succinctly described Weems as "a superb image maker and a moral force, focused and irrepressible." This volume, spanning four decades of work, is the most thorough survey yet published. It includes Weems' earliest series, such as Family Pictures and Stories, for which she photographed her relatives and close friends; the legendary Kitchen Table Series, in which she posed in a domestic setting; and other critically acclaimed works and series such as Ain't Jokin', Colored People, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, Not Manet's Type, The Jefferson Suite, Monuments, Roaming, Museums, Constructing History (A Class Ponders the Future), Slow Fade to Black and the Obama Project, among many others. Contextualizing these pieces are essays by LaCharles Ward and Fred Moten and a chronology by Raul Munoz. The book also includes a visual essay by Weems that presents a personal selection of her own works from the artist's perspective. In publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 304 pages. Nineteen essays, by a diverse group of historians and others who experience and study Gilbert's buildings in their professional lives, detail the intricate relationship between Gilbert's work and the long-standing tradition of public architecture in America.This volume examines Gilbert's work in five unique categories: the building of a national practice, an evaluation of his Minnesota State Capitol as "a defining moment" in American civic architecture, his New York career, his response to civic ideals in his plans for towns and universities, and his work in the public domain. Illustrations, some in color.

Softcover. Chicago, Haymarket Books, 1st US, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 471 pages. Brings together leftist scholars from a variety of fields to explore the many different aspects of the origins, trajectories and consequences of the First World War. The collection seeks to visualise the conflict and all its immediate consequences (such as the Bolshevik Revolution and ascendency of US hegemony) as a defining moment in 20th century world politics, rupturing and reconstituting the 'modern' epoch in its many instantiations. Appeals to general readers and those focused on Marxian theory and strategy and leftist histories of the war.

Softcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 373 pages. Presents conflicting interpretations of caudillismo in twenty-seven essays written by an international group of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, journalists, and caudillos themselves. The selections represent revisionists, apologists, enemies, and even a victim of caudillos. The personalities discussed include the Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo, the Argentinian gaucho Facundo Quiroga, the Guatemalan Rafael Carrera, the Colombian Rafael Nunez, Mexico's Porfirio Diaz, the Somoza family of Nicaragua, the Dominican 'Benefactor' Rafael Trujillo, the Argentinians Juan Peron and his wife Evita, Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner - called 'The Tyrannosaur,' Chile's Augusto Pinochet, and Cuba's Fidel Castro. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard , 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 244 pages. Notable collection of writings about children's books by such contributors as Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, Paula Fox, Arnold Lobel, etc. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 176 pages. In the 1980s, London-based Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans, born in 1958, worked as an assistant to filmmaker Derek Jarman, soon gaining a reputation for his own experimental shorts and his collaborations with the dancer Michael Clark. Since the 1990s, Wyn Evans has also been creating installations, often inspired by cinema history or literature, that incorporate elements like philosophical texts, mirrors, neon lights, fireworks, plants and Morse code to form a constellation of meanings that unravel into myriad poetic associations. Evans' desire to animate knowledge and reconceive the materials of the past make him analogous to Marcel Broodthaers, his erstwhile mentor Derek Jarman or even William Blake. This publication includes essays that delve into the artist's use of language and his experiments with time and perception. On the subject of Evans' purposeful inscrutability, critic Jens Asthoff has written, "Evans wants to go beyond that which we describe as understanding, to reach the untranslatable elements hidden in all experience. 'I hate the idea of being accessible,' he says." This volume includes nearly 200 images of the artist's installations, films, wall texts and sound works.

Brattleboro VT, Stephen Greene Press, 2nd pr., 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. Essays on Boston's favorite athletes: Ted Williams, Bob Cousy, Carl Yastrzemski, Bobby Hull and others. 248 pages, b&w illustrations. Short inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.