essays

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 416 pages. The essays, speeches, and opinion pieces assembled in Step Across This Line, written over ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects. The collection chronicles Rushdie's intellectual odyssey and is also an especially personal look into the writer's psyche. With the same fierce intelligence, uncanny social commentary, and very strong opinions that distinguish his fiction, Rushdie writes about his fascination with The Wizard of Oz, his obsession with soccer, and the state of the novel, among many other topics. Most notably, delving into his unique personal experience fighting the Iranian fatwa, he addresses the subject of militant Islam in a series of challenging and deeply felt responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The book ends with the eponymous "Step Across This Line," a lecture Rushdie delivered at Yale in the spring of 2002, which has never been published before and is sure to prompt discussion.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Large oblong hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. Features essays by Ian Frazier and Douglas R. Nickel. A powerful book of 60 color portraits from the photographer whose book "American Prospects" is widely considered a classic. Dust jacket with wear at corners, top and bottom of spine. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 199 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, like new in publishers shrink-wrap. This catalogue presents 59 masterful Italian drawings from the late 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries: working drawings, preparatory sketches, and finished compositions that have been added in recent years to the private collection of Jean and Steven Goldman. In her essays, Jean Goldman assesses the collection within the context of Mannerism and the role of drawing in the business of art. She and Nicolas Schwed coauthor detailed entries on the works' attributions, subjects, and functions, complete with documentation including provenance, bibliography, exhibition history, and comparative illustrations. The catalogue presents the work of more than forty artists, some of whom, such as Giorgio Vasari and Pietro da Cortona, were major figures, and others who were virtually unknown. Together, these magnificent works trace the rise and evolution of Mannerism in Italy.

Hardcover. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1st Edition, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 220 pages. Hardcover. Black & white illustrations throughout.Light foxing to edges, pen markings on a couple pages. Dust jacket with shelf wear, small tears to edges. Previous owner's signature to front flyleaf. Otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Netherlands, Springer, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket, 289 pages. This collection of new essays on John Locke by a constellation of leading Locke scholars focuses on his philosophy, biography, sources and influence. The topics discussed here include his theory of ideas, his debt to Stoicism, his relations the Dry Club and with his translator, Pierre Coste, and the hitherto overlooked critique by Thomas Beconsall. A major emphasis of the collection is the relationship between Locke and seventeenth-century philosophers, Descartes, Hobbes, Cudworth, Bayle, Malebranche and Leibniz. The coverage of Locke's legacy extends to into the eighteenth-century legacy as far as Rousseau and Kant. Ink name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, WW Norton, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A collection of articles, poems, essays, speeches, literary criticisms, and interviews about the 1960s musician and lyricist examines his legacy and role in the traditions of folk, rock, and blues, in a volume that includes contributions by such figures as Sam Shepard, Bruce Springsteen, and Johnny Cash.

Hardcover. Albany, State University of New York Press, 2nd pr., 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glazed boards, 184 pages with index. The renowned Islamic scholar combines his research into Sufi doctrine and history with a rich account of the spiritual and metaphysical significance of sufism as a living tradition. 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.

Hardcover. New York, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 240 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. This intellectual tour de force draws on interviews with such key artists as Jean-Jacques Lebel, Mimi Parent, and Jean Benoit, and uses primary sources to advance our knowledge of the work of the better-known Surrealists, from Hans Bellmer to Meret Oppenheim. The Second World War, the Algerian War, and May 1968 are related in new ways to surrealism as a major countercultural force throughout this critical period in French history. By documenting the ways in which the Surrealists used sound, lighting, special effects, and performance art to create a living, theatrical environment, Dr. Mahon sheds new light on topics central to understanding art in our time.

Hardcover. London, NLB, 1st transl. thus, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light blue cloth stamped in gilt, 257 pages. The articles and essays collected in this book were written during the decade of Lukacs's life when he was most active in politics. The first texts mark his transition from an anti-bourgeois aestheticism to Marxism and the newly founded Hungarian Communist Party. They are followed by material which displays the full range of his activity and thought during the subsequent ten years. Some of these essays were written when Lukacs was deputy commissar of education in the embattled, short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. Others include the famous article on parliamentarianism which earned its author the respectful yet severe criticism of Lenin.The volume includes short studies on German revisionism, Bukharin's Marxism, and Karl Wittfogel, and longer pieces on Lassalle and Moses Hess. The collection ends with the theses Luckas wrote, under his cover name "Blum", in opposition to the policies of the Third Period of the Comintern. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press;, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 272 pages. One of Chicago's great cultural achievements, the Institute of Design was among the most important schools of photography in twentieth-century America. It began as an outpost of experimental Bauhaus education and was home to an astonishing group of influential teachers and students, including Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan, and Aaron Siskind. To date, however, the ID's enormous contributions to the art and practice of photography have gone largely unexplored. Taken by Design is the first publication to examine thoroughly this remarkable institution and its lasting impact. With nearly 300 illustrations, including many never-before published photographs, Taken by Design examines the changing nature of photography over this critical period in America's midcentury. It starts by documenting the experimental nature of Moholy's Bauhaus approach and photography's new and enhanced role in training the "complete designer." Next it traces the formal and abstract camera experiments under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, which aimed at achieving a new kind of photographic subjectivity. Finally, it highlights the ID's focus on conscious references to the processes of the photographic medium itself. In addition to photographs by Moholy, Callahan, and Siskind, the book showcases works by Barbara Crane, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Joseph Jachna, Kenneth Josephson, Gyorgy Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Ray K. Metzker, Richard Nickel, Arthur Siegel, Art Sinsabaugh, and many others. Major essays from experts in the field, biographies, a chronology, and reprints of critical essays are also included, making Taken by Design an essential work for anyone interested in the history of American photography.

Hardcover. London, Faber and Faber, 1st thus, 1945, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Material previously published in The Village Book, and The Labouring Life, reworked in the light of the author's later experience. Chapters include: The badger dig; The darkening of the doorway; The well; The mystery of a damp cottage; An old-world courting; A village David and Goliath; The old cob cottage; The Ackymals; Billy Goldsworthy's barn; P.C. Bullcornworthy; Cemetery or burial ground?; Billy Goldsworthy's cow; The Zeale brothers; The linhay on the downs; The fox in the moonlight.

Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 301 pages. Stated First printing on copyright page, $5.95 price on front flap. A collection of articles written for The New Yorker 1958-1965. Some tanning to dj. small price stamp on front flap, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Fifteen essays on British (born or living in) contemporary book illustrators, including: Charles Keeping, Faith Jaques, Victor Ambrus, Nigel Lambourne, Brian Wildsmith, Shirley Hughes, John Lawrence, Jan Pienkowski, Helen Oxenbury, John Burningham, Raymond Briggs, Quentin Blake, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Anthony Browne, and Michael Foreman. Illustrated in b&w and color.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 344 pages. Includes the following essays: Painted and Block-Printed Cloths, Cloths Decorated with Gold & Silver Leaf / Roller-Printed Cloths, Tie-Dyed Cloths / Woven Cloths & Embroideries / History of Indian Textiles, by Zahid Sardar / etc. Color illustrations throughout. Foreword and afterword by Kokyo Hatanaka; Clean, bright copy. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. Washington DC, National Gallery of Art, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wrappers, 430 pages. This volume of essays reexamines the establishment and early history of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, one of the most important centers of governance, education, and theory in the arts for the early modern period and the model for all subsequent academies of art worldwide. It is the most comprehensive history of the Accademia to be published in more than forty years, and the first in nearly two hundred years to be based almost entirely on new primary and documentary material. In reconstructing the early history of the institution, the volume also provides a new basis for tracking the careers of painters, sculptors, and architects working in Rome in the early 16th century, and for understanding the artistic and professional issues that engaged them.

Softcover. London, Tate Gallery, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 296 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. Wonderfully written and illustrated account of the work of the Bloomsbury artists, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. Contains detailed chronologies of their lives. Catalogue entries on two hundred works, all illustrated in color, bring out the chief characteristics of Bloomsbury painting--domestic, contemplative, sensuous, and essentially pacific. These are seen in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes set in London, Sussex, and the South of France, as well as in the abstract painting and applied art that placed these artists at the forefront of the avant-garde before the First World War. Portraits of family and friends--from Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes to Aldous Huxley and Edith Sitwell--highlight the cultural and social setting of the group. Essays by leading scholars provide further insights into the works and the changing critical reaction to them, exploring friendships and relationships both within and outside of Bloomsbury, as well as the movement's wider social, economic, and political. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Milwaukee WI, Dark Horse Books, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 200 pages. This oversized, 10" x 14" hardcover edition is a stunning collection of iconic covers and original art from Jack Kirby's groundbreaking comics run on The Fantastic Four. It features full stories from five issues, reproduced from Marvel's archival scans, alongside essays and commentary by editor-designers Ian Chalgren and John Lind. Since its debut in 1961, The Fantastic Four has been a cornerstone of the Marvel Age of Comics. The series, co-created by legendary artist Jack "King" Kirby and writer Stan Lee, revolutionized the comic book industry and set the standard for a new brand of super-hero storytelling. Kirby, one of the most influential creators in comic book history, infused the series with his dynamic artwork and unparalleled imagination, cementing its place in comics history. Like new in publisher's shrinkwrap. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Pictorial boards with die-cut window and front mechanism very good. Still in publisher shrinkwrap. introduction by Adam Gopnik. Goldberg (1883 - 1970) was the most famous cartoonist of his time, best known for his comical inventions, which were syndicated in daily newspapers throughout the world. Author Jennifer George celebrates all aspects of her grandfather's career, from his very first published drawings in his high school newspaper and college yearbook to his iconic inventions, his comic strips and advertising work, and his later sculpture and Pulitzer Prize - winning political cartoons. Also included are essays by noted comics historians, rare photographs, letters, memorabilia, and patents, many reproduced here for the first time.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy boards, 160 pages. SIGNED BY PARINI on the title page. A writer and critic looks back over his own decades of trials, errors, and triumphs, in an intimate memoir that brims with humor, encouragement, and hard-won wisdom about the teacher's craft. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Ticknor & Fields, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 285 pages. A collection of essays exploring the world takes readers from Bensonhurst, to Budapest, to Morocco, to the Roman flat of Gore Vidal, and introduces them to such figures as Oprah Winfrey and Mario Cuomo. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 397 pages illustrated in color. This new volume in Fantagraphics' and Marvel's collaborative Atlas Library presents Girl Comics #1-12, a long unseen subversion of romance comics beautifully designed for a new generation of readers!In 1950, Timely/Atlas/Marvel took a typical romance title called Girl Comics and turned it into a sister companion to its successful men's-adventure comics: an empowering girls'-adventure comic! Mystery, adventure and suspense was promised and delivered! At the hands of a stellar artistic line-up, including John Buscema, Mike Sekowsky, Bill Everett, Joe Maneely, Russ Heath, and Bernard Krigstein, Girl Comics evolved from heart-stricken love stories to hair-raising girl-power thrill rides like "The Death Plunge!," "The House of Shadows!," "I was a Murderer's Daughter!," "They Called me a Spy!," "The Dead Hands at the Controls," and "The Dark Hallway."This volume also features the story behind the stories, with editor Dr. Michael J. Vassallo's essays on Marvel publisher Martin Goodman's enthusiastic relationship with romance comics and magazines at a time when the art form was cementing itself into American youth culture! Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.