essays

Hardcover. Levine Querido, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 224 pages. Color illustrations throughout. From the creator of The Arrival, a collection of essays illuminating his thoughts and advice for writers and artists, young and old. Shaun Tan is one of the world's most highly acclaimed narrative artists. His stories and images are loved by countless young and not-so-young readers around the world. Drawing upon 25 years as a picture book and comics creator, painter, and film-maker, Creature explores the central obsession of this visionary artist, from casual doodles to studied oil-paintings. Beyond sketches for acclaimed works such as The Arrival, The Lost Thing, and Tales From Outer Suburbia, this volume collects together for the first time unseen and stand-alone illustrations, each resonant with unwritten tales of their own. Detailed commentary by the artist offers an entertaining insight into the endless allure of imaginary, non-human beings and what they might tell us about our so-called "normal" human selves. Artists, writers, students, dreamers, and anyone interested in the deeper undercurrents of creativity, myth, and visual metaphor will find inspiration in these pages. Light edgewear to dust jacket, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 54 pages. Seamus Heaney's Nobel Lecture, captured here in Crediting Poetry, is a powerful defense of poetry as "the ship and the anchor" of our spirit within an ocean of violent, divisive politics and "world-sorrow." Beginning with the "creaturely existence" of his childhood in a thatched farmstead in rural County Derry, Heaney traces his path in "the wideness of language." It is a way forged by listening: to the "burbles and squeaks" of BBC and Radio Eireann from a wireless speaker, to the triple-rhyme in a line of Yeats', but also to the sound of gunfire in Ulster and the keening desolation of all the "wounded spots on the face of the earth." Out of all these sounds Heaney discovers the necessity of poetic order: "an order where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Minneapolis MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket that has a closed tear to the front panel. 523 pages with index. A collection of significant critical pieces about Kenneth Burke's work. 67 selections by 56 contributors arranged chronologically. Among the selections are reviews, essay-reviews, essays, excerpts from books, and some previously unpublished material. Collectively, they chart Burke's development and assess his achievements as a contemporary American man of letters. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Horn Book, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 359 pages. Using as a framework his two essays "Out on a Limb with the Critics" and "Coming to Terms with Criticism," Paul Heins has selected contributions which expand and elucidate "the invariable questions that beset the criticism of children's books: the classification, defense, and evaluation of children's literature." Included is the controversial exchange between Eleanor Cameron and Roald Dahl on the validity of the child as critic; Jane Langton's perceptive and original discussion of the fine distinction between fantasy and reality in literature; Alvin Schwartz's remarks on folklore and humor; Mary Orvig's consideration of Swedish books in translation; and treatments of individual titles such as Watership Down, Tom Sawyer, and A Wizard of Earthsea. Name and stamp on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 672 pages. Pointing to a glaring blind spot in the basic premises of the study of American culture, leading critics and theorists in cultural studies, history, anthropology, and literature reveal the "denial of empire" at the heart of American Studies. Challenging traditional definitions and periodizations of imperialism, this volume shows how international relations reciprocally shape a dominant imperial culture at home and how imperial relations are enacted and contested within the United States.Drawing on a broad range of interpretive practices, these essays range across American history, from European representations of the New World to the mass media spectacle of the Persian Gulf War. The volume breaks down the boundary between the study of foreign relations and American culture to examine imperialism as an internal process of cultural appropriation and as an external struggle over international power. Clean copy.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages. Cultures of United States Imperialism represents a major paradigm shift that will remap the field of American Studies. Pointing to a glaring blind spot in the basic premises of the study of American culture, leading critics and theorists in cultural studies, history, anthropology, and literature reveal the "denial of empire" at the heart of American Studies. Challenging traditional definitions and periodizations of imperialism, this volume shows how international relations reciprocally shape a dominant imperial culture at home and how imperial relations are enacted and contested within the United States. Light shelf wear.

Hardcover. Edinburgh, John Grant, Revised/Reprint, 1896, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 301 pages. Cloth boards. Previous owners bookplate on front inside cover. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 311 pages, illustrated throughout. Not until the fall of the communist regime in 1989 and the end of Czechoslovakia's cultural isolation did the world begin to appreciate the Czech avant-garde photographers of the first half of the twentieth century. This first survey of Czech avant-garde photography introduces the important work of Frantisek Drtikol, Jaromir Funke, Jaroslav Rossler, Jindoich Styrsky, Josef Sudek, and numerous others whose work made Czech photography synonymous with visions of modernity. The essays introduce the period and explore the background and connections among the photographers. Biographical profiles are also included. But the book's main attraction is its outstanding collection of duotone and color images, many published here for the first time.

Hardcover. Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with mild edgewear, 253 pages. Considered depraved by some and magnificent by others, Lady Chatterley's Lover was a genetic controversy the world over, inspiring landmark judicial opinions. After 50 years it's literary reputation is not yet secure -- the scent of pornography still clings. In DH Lawrence's" Lady " outstanding critics, assessing the work from a different perspective, reveal vast importance to her literature and our culture. Edited by Michael Squires and Dennis Jackson, these essays offer vigorous and perceptive readings that see the novel as it could not have been viewed at the time when it first appeared.

Hardcover. New York, D.A.P./The National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 432 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Covered here are works by some 40 artists made in the period from circa 1916, when the Cabaret Voltaire was founded in Zurich, to 1926, by which time most of the Dada groups had dispersed or significantly transformed. The city sections bring together painting, sculpture, photography, collage, photomontage, prints and graphic work.Relying on dynamic design and vivid documentary images, Dada takes us through these six cities via topical essays and extensive plate sections; an illustrated chronology of the movement; witty chronicles of events in each city center; a selected bibliography; and biographies of each artist--accompanied by Dada-era photographs.

Hardcover. Zurich, Verlag Scheidegger and Spiess, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 182 pages. Illustrated in b&w and some color. An account by art historian and controversial author Catherine Millet of a highly personal encounter with the artist s celebrated paintings and self-reflective writings. One of the first studies of the notoriously idiosyncratic artist s essays, this revolutionary book reveals all the narcissism, anxiety, and visual genius of the most famous and infamous of the surrealists. In a bright dust jacket.

Softcover. London, National Portrait Gallery, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 256 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light edgewear to wrappers, else a clean, tight copy. Essays by Marco Livingstone, Mark Glazebrook, Sarah Howgate, Edmund White and Barbara Stern Shapiro are followed by the section of 163 color plates, Notes on the sitters for the portraits, and an illustrated Chronology. A selected bibliography and index are also included.

Hardcover. US, Damiani, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 160 pages. Since its inception in the 1970s, hip hop music and the culture surrounding it has become a hugely influential and popular musical form in America and around the world. Its popularity extends beyond the urban centers where it was born, and pervades and influences youth culture around the globe. However, few artists have created serious and powerful photographs that explore the breadth of the phenomenon. With this volume, David Scheinbaum has done just that. His portraits of Erykah Badu, Chuck D., George Clinton, Common, Mos Def, Del-Tha Funkee Homosapien, Sage Francis, Professor Griff, KRS One, Mike Relm, Tajai, Wu-Tang Clan and Yelawolf (among others) approach hip hop as a positive cultural influence akin to the youth movement of the 1960s. Scheinbaum's photographs are accompanied by essays by Gaye Theresa Johnson and Michael Eric Dyson, an artist conversation with Frank H. Goodyear III and an introduction by Brian Hardgroove of Public Enemy.

Softcover. Burlington VT, BCA Center, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 80 page exhibition catalog illustrated in color. SIGNED BY ARTIST on the title page. Text includes the artist's remarks and essays by Courtney Lynch and Jasminr Parsia. Related postcard and brochure laid in. For more than five decades, Stromeyer has created sculptures whose graphic forms, saturated colors, and complex, balanced compositions seem to defy steel's material limits. Despite the weight of their materials and construction--including welded, cold-bent, half-ton steel plates--many of Stromeyer's sculptures play with space and perception; they seem to defy gravity, appearing to float and extend upwards effortlessly in the landscape. Very Good plus.

Hardcover. NY, Putnam, 1st , 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 259 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. With these interwoven autobiographical essays, Geoffrey Wolff, author of the acclaimed The Duke of Deception, recounts the moral (and immoral) education of a writer, friend, husband, and father, as he offers his spirited, elegant, and deeply felt observations on an extraordinary life: from wildly dysfunctional childhood Christmases to a concupiscent career teaching literature in Istanbul; from a victory over the chaos of drink to a life-affirming surrender to the majesty of the Matterhorn; and from a foundering friendship to the transcending love of family.

Hardcover. University of Notre Dame Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth stamped in gilt and silver, 271 pages. This volume is the result of an international conference held at the University of Notre Dame in 1991 in which leading scholars, classicists, medievalists, theologians, philologists, rhetoricians, literary critics, and philosophers-gathered to focus on one of the most remarkable and influential books of late antiquity, Augustine's De doctrina christiana.Contributors to this volume place the historical setting of De doctrina christiana within the context of contemporary scholarship and explore in detail its theological meaning and impact on western culture and Christian education. The essays cover the entire field of current Augustinian studies starting with the historic setting of late antiquity in which De doctrina christiana was written. They then examine the work itself, its literary structure and interpretive and theological significance, how it was received by later patristic writers, and how it has been used as an authoritative source in contemporary times. An extensive bibliography facilitates further study.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 256 pages illustrated in b&w. This volume of Craig's crime and horror work collects comics stories he wrote and drew for Vault of Horror, Shock SuspenStories, and Crime SuspenStories, as well as the complete collection of all his "Dateline" stories from Extra!. In our title story, a reporter stranded in a Louisiana bayou seeks shelter in a seemingly abandoned mansion, only to discover and fall in love with a beautiful woman living there. He wants to be with her, and she wants to be with him; there's only one way that can happen. Also: Craig's murder masterpiece, "Understudies," in which two lovers conspire to remove their respective spouses, in a twisted twist recalling The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity; and his signature horror story "...All Through the House" (twice adapted to film - for 1972's Tales From the Crypt movie and HBO's 1989 Tales From the Crypt pilot episode). Plus, the debut of EC's enigmatic horror hostess, Drusilla, and a look at the work of EC artists Harry Harrison, Howard Larsen, Sheldon Moldoff (Moon Girl) as well. Thirty-one stories in all, with essays and commentary by EC experts. Introduction by Grand Master crime novelist Max Allan Collins. Clean copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. 144 pages, color throughout. Delicious Metropolis brings together two of Wayne Thiebaud's most celebrated bodies of work: desserts and cityscapes. Between the two, fascinating juxtapositions develop. The layers of a Neapolitan cake echo the shadows cast across a street in the late afternoon. The pastel hues of iced sponge cakes match California's candy-colored houses. Curators, critics, and artists guide the reader through the book via insightful bite-size essays. This gorgeous hardcover offers fans and newcomers a refreshing and accessible way to enjoy the oeuvre of this iconic American painter.

Softcover. Minneapolis, MN, Zenith Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Softcover. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. The Marines of Operation Iraqi Freedom highlights the human side of war, the day-in-the-life of U.S. Marines stationed in that volatile region. Dramatic, harrowing, and simply unbelievable images of the marines of Operation Iraqi Freedom, personal letters, and stories of coping with the pain of separation from their families and the horrors of war. Russ Bryant's photography chronicles every aspect of the daily lives of these marines: lazy camels amble by a cargo drop; blinding sandstorms threaten to blow away tents, supplies, and marines alike; Scud missile attack sirens send marines scuttling to their bunkers; sniper fire crisscrosses marine convoys moving into Iraq; tanks and bombs topple the portraits of Saddam that seem to loom over every Iraqi village; shelled-out tanks, armored vehicles, and even busses litter the road on the way to Baghdad; medical personnel attend to fallen marines and prisoners alike; the occasional silent interlude allows time for prayer and remembrance.

Softcover. Univ of Washington Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 111 pages. America between 1885 and 1905 was in the heat of a poster craze. The country's finest artists and illustrators were commissioned to design advertising posters whose popularity soon overshadowed the products they were meant to promote. Designed to Sell presents vintage posters by 45 artists, including Maxfield Parrish, Blanche McManus, and Maurice Prendergast. Essays describe innovations in printing, compare American and European posters, and explain the emergence of a new profession -- graphic design. Biographical notes on the artists include eight women. Special technical notes outline historic printing methods and explain how an artist's drawing becomes a poster.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, Rare Bird Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 312 pages. The highlight of Desolation Peak is the journal Kerouac kept, starkly revealing the depth of his poverty, the extremity of his mood swings, and the ongoing arguments with himself over the future direction of his life, his writing, and faith. Along with the journal, he worked on a series of projects, including "Ozone Park," another installment of the Duluoz Legend beginning in 1943, after his discharge from the Navy; "The Martin Family," an intended sequel to The Town and the City, and "Desolation Adventure," a series of sketches that became part 1 of Desolation Angels. In writing it, Kerouac was re-committing himself to his more experimental, then-unpublishable style, declaring in the journal that "the form of the future is no-form." Also included in Collected Writings is "The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing," Kerouac's "transliteration" of the Diamond Sutra, his "Desolation Blues" and "Desolation Pops" poems, and assorted prose sketches and dreams. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 272 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in shrink wrap. Over 100 of Diane Arbus' early photographs in black and white. Tight copy. Diane Arbus (1923-1971) is one of the most distinctive and provocative artists of the twentieth century. Her photographs of children and eccentrics, couples and circus performers, female impersonators and nudists, are among the most recognizable images of our time. This book is the definitive study of the artist's first seven years of work, from 1956 to 1962. Drawn primarily from the rich holdings of the Metropolitan Museum's Diane Arbus Archive--a remarkable treasury of photographs, negatives, appointment books, notebooks, and correspondence--it is an essential contribution to our understanding of Arbus and her oeuvre.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a btight dust jacket. 352 pages. Monograph published in conjunction with a major exhibition. Essays by by Sandra S. Phillips and Neil Selkirk and an over 100 page chronolgy by Doon Arbus and Elisabeth Sussman. Also features an afterword by Doon Arbus and biographies by Jeff L. Rosenheim. Includes 200 full page duotones, many that have never been published before and numerous other smaller images. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Brooklyn, NY, PowerHouse Cultural Entertainment, Incorporated, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 200 pages. Hardcover with laminated boards. Clean tight copy with light edge wear to corners. Black and white pictures throughout. Large format, unpaginated, about 275 pages with three short essays by Mr. Galella, Michael Musto and Anthony Haden Guest. The remainder of the book are full page plates with occasional collages in sepia depicting the garish, loud and tawdry excesses of the time wrapped in celebrity overkill of the likes of Steve Rubell, Calvin Klein, Halston, Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger, Grace Jones, and that guy with the blonde hair and glasses who's always taking pictures. Venues include Studio 54, Gynmnasium, the Met, The Roxy, Limelight, Plato's Retreat, Xenon, Trax, Cat Club.