essays

Softcover. Berkeley CA, Counterpoint, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 288 pages. In 1969 Gary Snyder returned from a long residence in Japan to northern California, to a homestead in the Sierra foothills where he intended to build a house and settle on the land with his wife and young sons. He had just published his first book of essays, Earth House Hold. A few years before, after a long absence, Wendell Berry left New York City to return to land near his grandfather's farm in Port Royal, Kentucky, where he built a small studio and lived there with his wife as they restored an old house on their newly acquired homestead. In 1969 Berry had just published Long-Legged House. These two founding members of the counterculture and of the new environmental movement had yet to meet, but they knew each other's work, and soon they began a correspondence. Neither man could have imagined the impact their work would have on American political and literary culture, nor could they have appreciated the impact they would have on one another. Clean copy.

Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 366 pages. Previous owner's signature on front end paper. Markings in pencil to a handful pages. Else a clean, tight copy. Twelve original essays advance the understanding of theistic metaphysics and it's capacity to illuminate a variety of fundamental issues.

Hardcover. Wakefield RI, Moyer Bell, 2nd pr., 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY O'CONNOR on the half-title page. O'Connor, who has had a career as an editor at Washington Square Press, Pinnacle and Popular Library, and as a cultural critic for Variety and on radio and TV (he's now a ski instructor in Vermont), originally broadcast these essays on WBAI Radio in New York City.

Softcover. Philadelphia, PA, Running Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 256 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Color illustrations throughout. Donuts are America's favorite treat and, in Donut Nation, Ellen Brown travels the United States in search of the best donut shops. From beloved mom-and-pop establishments and roadside cafes to innovative boutiques and artisanal restaurants, there are more than seventy hand-crafted donut shops to take you from Maine to Arizona.

Softcover. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, exhibition catalogue featuring the famed architect's travel sketches along with photographs of the buildings he encountered and essays on their influence on his work. 11'' x 8.5''. In original dark orange pictorial wrappers. Illustrated throughout in black and white, some color, 136 pages. Spine sun faded.

Hardcover. Traverse City MI, Countrysport Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 309 pages, b&w illustrations by Glenn Wolff. Decorated brown bonded leather. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on half title page. A collection of 23 essays, written by Sports Afield editor McIntyre, explore the spell the wild casts over all who go afield with rod or gun. Subjects range from woodcock in Ireland to Dall's sheep in Alaska to Cape buffalo in Africa, from chukars in Idaho to pronghorns in Wyoming to muskox in the Northern Territories. Includes one chapter on fishing for king salmon in British Columbia. Clean.

Hardcover. The New Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 207 pages. Historian Michael Lesy, author of Wisconsin Death Trip, has produced another haunting volume with Dreamland. The book chronicles a day in the life of America at the turn of the 20th century, an optimistic, peaceful time. Lesy chose 208 black-and-white pictures from the archive of the Detroit Publishing Company, the hugely successful postcard business. The images depict skyscrapers under construction, bustling urban streets, farmers and dusty country roads, and the glories of the newly charted American West, with its cowboys, miners, and distant prairie towns. The atmosphere of order and calm portrayed in the photographs is deceptive, as Lesy's thoughtful essays reveal.

Softcover. Paris FR, Paris-Musees, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Flexible cloth covers, profusely illustrated, 463 pages, FRENCH TEXT. "This well-illustrated catalogue provides a fine review of the early years of the German Expressionist movement through a presentation of some 400 paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures by members of the Brucke in Dresden (Heckel, Kirchner, Mueller, Pechstein, Schmidt-Rottluff and Nolde) , the Blaue Reiter artists in Munich (Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Klee, Macke, Marc, Munter and Werefkin) and Berlin painter Ludwig Meidner. Sixteen wide-ranging essays are supplemented by detailed entries for most of the exhibited works, a selection of texts and letters by the featured artists, and a chronology of important cultural and political events in Dresden, Munich and Berlin from 1905 to 1914." Clean copy.

Softcover. Zurich, Scalo, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 100 pages. Illustrated with full color and black & white photographs. Features essays by William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Dara Horn, and more. Text in German and English. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. London, Agnews Gallery, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, embossed blue cloth covers with silver gilt lettering on spine. 115 pages illustrated in color. "5 essays on the recently discovered drawing of the 'Virgin and Child with a flower on a grassy bench', discussing Durer in the context of the growing cult of Virgin Mary, his relationship to Jakob Fugger, the impact of Cornelisz's 1507 'Crucifiction' and Raphael's interest in Durer's works." Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Da Capo Press, Reprint, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. (Library of American Art Series) 1971 reprint of the original 1926 edition. 110 pages. b&w illustrations. Brown cloth, gilt lettering to spine and front cover. Light wear and unfortunate paper-clip impressions to upper edge of some pages. Still a nice, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions, 1st, 1969, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, lightly wrinkled dust jacket that's unclipped. This is Snyder's first essay/excerpt collection, "Earth House Hold" being a play on the roots of the word "ecology. 143 pages. Dust jacket with foxing, tanning. No markings.

Softcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 395 pages. The essays gathered here, in addition to those by editors Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloob, are written by leading scholars of Asian cultures--among them Donald Keene, Peter Awn, Barbara Stoler Miller, Ainslie Embree, Burton Watson, C.T. Hsia, Paul Anderer, and others. They introduce classics from the Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions, providing entree to texts which have emerged as monuments of Asian thought and literature. Among the works discussed are the Qu'ran, the philosophy of history of Ibn Khaldun, the Upanishads, the epic Mahabarata, the philosopher Mencius, the Lotus Sutra, T'and Poetry, the Tale of Genji, and the poet Basho.

Hardcover. NY, D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a slipcase, 192 pages. Transforming words into icons and images into wide-screen epics, Ed Ruscha has wholly reconceived the terms of painting for our era. Tagged variously as a Conceptualist, Pop artist or latter-day Surrealist, Ruscha flouts category, or rather incorporates all categories, always surprising and experimenting with both subject and method. His paintings are steeped in our times: cinema, advertising, logos, late capitalism and the twists and turns of postwar art have all informed his iconography since the early 1960s, arriving on the cool surfaces of his canvases with magnetic detachment. Ruscha eschews process and focuses exclusively on the final product: "the means to the end has always been secondary in my art," he has said. Ruscha has also reinvented the use of words in art, finding disquieting ways to invest language with a weird, throbbing, ambient static, never aspiring to what he calls "word gestures," since "each word is an excursion unto itself." Fifty Years of Painting focuses on Ruscha's majestic oeuvre of paintings. A magnificent publication, it comes housed in a slipcase that sports the artist's classic painting "Standard Station" (1966), and, alongside fantastic reproductions, it contains a preface by novelist James Ellroy, essays by Ralph Rugoff, Alexandra Schwartz and Ulrich Wilmes, a text by novelist Bruce Wagner, an interview with the artist by Kristine McKenna, an illustrated chronology and an exhibition history.

Hardcover. Munich/NY, Prestel, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 296 pages, color illustrations and portraits throughout. Issued in conjunction with a 2014-2015 exhibition of portraiture rendered by Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918). "Despite a career that lasted less than a decade, Schiele is considered one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. A protege of Gustav Klimt, Schiele is celebrated for his singular style of draftsmanship, unusual use of color, and physically raw, often sexually provocative depictions of his sitters. Schiele's expressive style and controversial subject matter played an important role in the advancement of modernism in Europe. ... Both the catalogue and the exhibition are divided into six groupings of the artist's work: Family and Academy; Fellow Artists; Sitters and Patrons; Eros; Lovers; and Self-Portraits and Allegorical Self-Portraits. In addition, there is a section highlighting a traumatic and pivotal period in Schiele's life: his arrest and imprisonment during the spring of 1912. The color plates document the evolution of the artist's style, both pre- and post-imprisonment. Schiele's untimely death at the age of 28 adds a mythic quality to his abbreviated career." (dj) With five thematic and illustrated essays, and many illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 194 pages. Based upon the 1961 Arensberg Lectures, given at Stanford University, this collection of essays offers a genuinely unified interpretation of Italian Renaissance thought by describing and evaluating the philosophies of eight pivotal figures: 1). Francesco Petrarch. 2). Lorenzo Valla. 3). Marsilio Ficino. 4). Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. 5). Pietro Pomponazzi. 6). Bernardino Telesio. 7). Francesco Patrizi. 8). Giordano Bruno. With appendix: The medieval antecedents of Renaisssance Humanism, notes, bibliographical survey and index. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Prestel, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher'd shrinkwrap. This volume, on a unique and wide-ranging collection of figural sculptures from sub-Saharan Africa, examines not only each distinctive piece, but also how these works of art express value systems and cultural relationships both inside and outside Africa. The Richard H. Scheller Collection, presented in this book and on display at the de Young in San Francisco, offers a diverse portrait of sub-Saharan African sculpture. More than 100 distinct ethnic groups from more than 20 present-day countries are represented by works of art spanning several centuries and encompassing a broad array of styles. These objects represent ancestors, express community values, and serve religious and ceremonial purposes. Beautifully photographed in natural light, the sculptures range in style from classic and iconic to rare and unusual. The geographical breadth of the collection and the variations in the depictions will allow readers to explore both the histories and formal qualities of the genre. Texts by leading scholars enhance the understanding of 122 objects, alongside essays on major sculptures and themes. Writings on the scientific testing of pieces and the process of photographing the works round out this volume that expands our understanding of African figurative art.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 75 pages illustrated in color. In his insightful and engrossing lecture, Leo Steinberg surveys and critiques the work of Robert Rauschenberg, one of the great American post-war artists. He also discusses his own experience as a critic in the exciting and turbulent art world of New York in the 1950s and 1960s. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth stamped in gilt, 3 colors. Beautiful gilt and sihouette vignette of the London skyline. 80 black and white drawings by Joseph Pennell. Top edge gilt. A collection of periodical pieces written over a span of thirty years by James, all about his travels in England. Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1938, 522 pages. Hardcover. Green tweed cloth covers with black & gilt printed design to cover & spine. Dust jacket with moderate toning, now protected with a plastic cover. Light toning & several illustrations in bw throughout. A clean copy.

Softcover. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Mendel Art Gallery, na, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 56 pages. Foreword by Linda Milrod. Essays by Jean-Christophe Ammann, Donald B. Kuspit, Bruce W. Ferguson. 21 full page plates in color and b&w. Cover in black with blue lettering. Creasing across front and back covers as well as rubbing, otherwise a very good clean copy.

Softcover. Saskatoon, Mendel Art Gallery , 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 56 pages. Exhibition catalog. Features essays by Jean-Christophe Ammann, Donald B. Kuspit, Bruce W. Ferguson. Includes 21 plates with 14 in color. A very good plus copy in wrappers.