Softcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 336 pages. Softcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. Covers in excellent condition. Touch of foxing to top edge. Pages clean and bright. The ever-rapacious Nazis looted staggering quantities of great art and antiques from the nations they occupied. Much of it found its way back to Germany, and following the Allied victory, many thousands of rare (and some priceless) pieces were identified, and returned to the countries from which they had been taken. But not all of the paintings, statues, and archaeological treasures were recovered: Some were taken by Soviet troops and disappeared into Russia. Still others slipped into the black market in western Europe, and were snapped up by wealthy (if unprincipled) collectors. A 1995 symposium at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts brought together European and American investigators and historians to discuss both the the Nazi thefts and the current state of knowledge of the whereabouts of the many still missing treasures. Those papers are reprinted here. While the pieces are detailed, dry, and likely to be of most interest to specialists, there are some extraordinary stories, most prominently the description of the recent rediscovery of ``Priam's treasure,'' excavated by Schliemann at Troy and hidden since WW II in a Russian museum. (123 illustrations, 25 in color).
Hardcover. London, England, Adam and Charls Black, 1st Edition, 1969, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 328 pages. Hardcover. Color and b/w illustrations by Victor Ambrus throughout. Decorated cover boards, cover boards slightly warped, but no moisture damage present. Back endpaper has an horizontal air-bubble. pages clean and unmarked with exception of half title page with has a small brown smudge. Dust jacket unclipped, slightly tanned from age. Light tanning to edges. Binding tight. Spine straight. Here is the story of the British people, written by an author renowned as 'the young reader's historian' and illustrated by an artist who is amongst the most talented book illustrators of our time.
Hardcover. NY, DC Comics, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in in a bright dust jacket., 764 pages. Superman continues to battle social injustice and political corruption, fighting for the common man. No wonder he remains America's favorite hero during World War II. While the Allies fought the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific, Superman was dealing with threats at home like his old foe Lex Luthor, conman J. Wilbur Wolfingham, and that pesky imp from the fifth dimension, Mister Mxyzptlk! But the Man of Steel isn't the only one capturing the hearts and minds of America, as Lois Lane finally stars in her fist solo adventure and her niece Susan Tompkins makes her debut! These groundbreaking classic stories--which cemented Superman's place as the medium's most enduring hero--are gathered for the first time in this singular, expansive collection! SUPERMAN: THE GOLDEN AGE OMNIBUS VOL. 4 collects all of the Metropolis Wonder's tales from ACTION COMICS #66-85, SUPERMAN #25-33 and WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #11-18 and includes a foreword by legendary comics writer Roy Thomas. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Softcover. Bloomington IN, iUniverse, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 155 pages including epilogue. This is the story of Checiny, the author's hometown in southern Poland, and of the people who lived there between the two world wars of the 20th Century. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, MacMillan Company, 1st US, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 312 pages. Includes footnotes, bibliography, and index. Foreword by Stephen Spender. A narrative study of the troubling phenomenon why many European intellectuals and artists were drawn to and embraced Fascism during the period between the world wars. This conundrum may find expression today. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Public Affairs, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 329 pages. When Katharine Greider was told to leave her house or risk it falling down on top of her and her family, it spurred an investigation that began with contractors' diagnoses and lawsuits, then veered into archaeology and urban history, before settling into the saltwater grasses of the marsh that fatefully once sat beneath the site of Number 239 East 7th Street.During the journey, Greider examines how people balance the need for permanence with the urge to migrate, and how the home is the resting place for ancestral ghosts. The land on which Number 239 was built has a history as long as America's own. It provisioned the earliest European settlers who needed fodder for their cattle; it became a spoil of war handed from the king's servant to the revolutionary victor; it was at the heart of nineteenth-century Kleinedeutschland and of the revolutionary Jewish Lower East Side. America's immigrant waves have all passed through 7th Street. In one small house is written the history of a young country and the much longer story of humankind and the places they came to call home.
Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 309 pages. The classic study, looking at Habsburg Spain's handling of the Dutch Revolt. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar & Rinehart, 1st US, 1939, Book: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth with dark blue lettering, 251 pages. Endpapers tanned and soiled at edges. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Basic Books, 4th pr., 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 710 pages. We think of the Cold War as a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. But in The Cold War, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad argues that the war must be understood as a global confrontation, with roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its deepest reverberations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Stunning in its breadth and revelatory in its perspective, The Cold War expands our understanding of the Cold War both geographically and chronologically, and offers a new history of how today's world was creased. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st US, 1945, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with front and spine printed in black and gilt, 417 pages. This volume publishes his speeches, broadcasts, messages, statements, and letters made, sent, and issued between 22 February and 31 December 1944. A full and momentous year, 1944 included the Normandy invasion, the largest amphibious operation in history, which re-established the Allied military presence in German-occupied Europe. Light spotting to covers, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st thus, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 450 pages. The Great Weaver from Kashmir is Laxness' first major novel, the book that propelled Icelandic literature into the modern world. Shortly after World War One, Steinn Ellidi, a young philosopher-poet dandy, leaves the physical and cultural confines of Iceland's shores for mainland Europe, seeking to become "the most perfect man on earth." His journey leads us through a wide range of moral, philosophical, religious, political, and social realms, from hedonism to socialism to aestheticism to Benedictine monasticism. Upon his return to Iceland, Steinn finds himself more conflicted than before, torn between love of the beauty and traditions of his homeland, longing and regret for his great adolescent love, Dilja, and his newfound monastic ideal, forcing him to make choices with fateful consequences. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 364 pages. The Second World War's Pacific conflict was one of the most complex in history. It embrioled peoples from opposite sides of the globe; it was fought in China, across the expanses of the Pacific, and in the jungles of Southeast Asia; and it was devastating in its consequences for civilians and servicemen alike. It saw the first use of atomic weapons, hastened the end of the Western empires in Asia, and marked America's rise to the position of the most powerful nation in the world.Christopher Thorne, whose previous studies of the war in the Pacific have become landmarks in the field, here weaves together both the entire network of international relations surrounding the war and the impact the war had on all the societies involved--Indian as well as American; Australian and New Zealand as well as Japanese; Korean, Chinese, and Southeast Asian as well as British, French, and Dutch. The Issue of War draws on material gathered over many years in the Far East, Western Europe, and the U.S.--material including wartime films, broadcasts, and newspapers,as well as countless private and offical papers. Representing a synthesis of military, diplomatic, economic, intellectual, and social history, it not only places the war in the context of developments before 1941, but illuminates various patterns that cut across the familiar distinctions between Asia and the West or between Japan and the Allies. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY/Oxford UK, Berghahn Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 232 pages, pictorial boards. Milena Jesenska, born in Prague in 1896, is most famous as one of Franz Kafka's great loves. Although their relationship lasted only a short time, it won the attention of the literary world with the 1952 publication of Kafka's letters to Milena. Her own letters did not survive. Later biographies showed her as a fascinating personality in her own right. In the Czech Republic, she is remembered as one of the most prominent journalists of the interwar period and as a brave one: in 1939 she was arrested for her work in the resistance after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and died in Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1944. It is estimated that Jesenska wrote well over 1,000 articles but only a handful have been translated into English. In this book her own writings provide a new perspective on her personality, as well as the changes in Central Europe between the two world wars as these were perceived by a woman of letters. The articles in this volume cover a wide range of topics, including her perceptions of Kafka, her understanding of social and cultural changes during this period, the threat of Nazism, and the plight of the Jews in the 1930s. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, WW Norton, 1wst, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A landmark collection, spanning ninety years of U.S. history, of the never-before-published diaries of George F. Kennan, America's most famous diplomat. Through it all, Kennan kept a diary. Spanning a staggering eighty-eight years and totaling over 8,000 pages, his journals brim with keen political and moral insights, philosophical ruminations, poetry, and vivid descriptions. In these pages, we see Kennan rambling through 1920s Europe as a college student, despairing for capitalism in the midst of the Depression, agonizing over the dilemmas of sex and marriage, becoming enchanted and then horrified by Soviet Russia, and developing into America's foremost Soviet analyst. But it is the second half of this near-century-long record--the blossoming of Kennan the gifted author, wise counselor, and biting critic of the Vietnam and Iraq wars--that showcases this remarkable man at the height of his singular analytic and expressive powers, before giving way, heartbreakingly, to some of his most human moments, as his energy, memory, and finally his ability to write fade away.
Hardcover. NY, Frederick Ungar, 1st thus, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 263 pages. 1st American Edition of this Abridged Translation. This is Kraus's masterpiece, with half of Europe as its stage. It is presented here in English for the first time, in an abridged version that preserves the essence of the 800-page original. Its influence on Brecht, Ionesco, and other playwrights is acknowledged. Mingling actual quotations, news reports, and government orders with Kraus's own satiric dialogue, this immense drama (never meaning to be performed) offers a vast fresco of events at the front and at home during, as it prophesied, the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed, Kraus anticipated the development of atomic warfare and its threat to all mankind. Some of Kraus is untranslatable, but, as Stanley Kauffmann wrote in his New Republic review, "Ungar has done us a benefit at least by bringing us a bit closer to this sharp-eyed, angry, prickly, lover-hater of mankind." INSCRIBED BY FREDERICK UNGAR, the editor and publisher on the half-title page. He also wrote the 14 page introduction. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 408 pages. A book that casts new light on the history of China and the West at the turn of the nineteenth century. George Macartney's disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily dismissed by the Qing court, Macartney failed in nearly all of his objectives, perhaps setting the stage for the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century and the mistrust that still marks the relationship today. But not all European encounters with China were disastrous. The Last Embassy tells the story of the Dutch mission of 1795, bringing to light a dramatic but little-known episode that transforms our understanding of the history of China and the West. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Tonio Andrade paints a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of an age marked by intrigues and war. China was on the brink of rebellion. In Europe, French armies were invading Holland. Enduring a harrowing voyage, the Dutch mission was to be the last European diplomatic delegation ever received in the traditional Chinese court. Andrade shows how, in contrast to the British emissaries, the Dutch were men with deep knowledge of Asia who respected regional diplomatic norms and were committed to understanding China on its own terms.
Softcover. Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press, 2nd Ed., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 418 pages. Like the other republics floating free after the demise of the Soviet empire, the independent republic of Georgia is reinventing its past, recovering what had been forgotten or distorted during the long years of Russian and Soviet rule. Whether Georgia can successfully be transformed from a society rent by conflict into a pluralistic democratic nation will depend on Georgians rethinking their history. This is the first comprehensive treatment of Georgian history, from the ethnogenesis of the Georgians in the first millennium B.C., through the period of Russian and Soviet rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the emergence of an independent republic in 1991, the ethnic and civil warfare that has ensued, and perspectives for Georgia's future.
Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 208 pages. In The Modern Balkans, historian Richard C. Hall gives a complete account of the historical events that have shaped the Balkan region of Southeastern Europe. Originally separated from the rest of Europe by culture, politics, and economics, the Balkans have slowly been integrating into Western Europe since the nineteenth century. But this process of economic and political development, following the Western European model, has been far from smooth in the Balkans. As Hall explains, it has often been marked by violence and destruction, the result of many wars and rebellions. Though Soviet power imposed a nearly fifty-year peace in the region, the collapse of the Soviet Union renewed conflict that continued through the end of the twentieth century. Hall concentrates here on the significant political and economic events that have had the greatest impact on the role of the Balkans in Europe; in particular, he examines the development of national states in the nineteenth century, the influence of the two world wars, and the collapse of Yugoslavia. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Verso, 1st, 2009, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 561 pages. The New Old World looks at the history of the European Union, the core continental countries within it, and the issue of its further expansion into Asia. It opens with a consideration of the origins and outcomes of European integration since the Second World War, and how today's EU has been theorized across a range of contemporary disciplines. It then moves to more detailed accounts of political and cultural developments in the three principal states of the original Common Market-France, Germany and Italy. A third section explores the interrelated histories of Cyprus and Turkey that pose a leading geopolitical challenge to the Community. The book ends by tracing ideas of European unity from the Enlightenment to the present, and their bearing on the future of the Union. The New Old World offers a critical portrait of a continent now increasingly hailed as a moral and political example to the world at large. Clean copy.
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.
Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown, 1st, 1960, Hardcover, 336 pages, b&w drawings by Lea. Dust jacket with light edgewear, chipping. Novel about Hank Spurling, a Marine hero of the war in the Pacific, who returned to the Cloudrock Mountains in Wyoming. In the early days of World War II, Lea became a war correspondent for Life magazine, executing paintings of action in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, China, North Africa, and Europe. Lea's career thereafter involved both painting and writing, on a variety of subjects but generally reflective of his roots in the Southwest. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st US, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in lightly worn dust jacket, 416 pages including index, bibliography and abbreviations. "The first adequately comprehensive history of the Resistance in Europe during Hitler's war to be published in any language." Name on frontfly leaf, otherwise clean.
Softcover. Other Press, reprint, 2021, Softcover, 550 pages, b&w illustrations. The little-known story of screenwriter Salka Viertel, whose salons in 1930s and 40s Hollywood created a refuge for a multitude of famous figures who had escaped the horrors of World War ll. Hollywood was created by its "others"; that is, by women, Jews, and immigrants. Salka Viertel was all three and so much more. She was the screenwriter for five of Greta Garbo's movies and also her most intimate friend. At one point during the Irving Thalberg years, Viertel was the highest-paid writer on the MGM lot. Meanwhile, at her house in Santa Monica she opened her door on Sunday afternoons to scores of European emigres who had fled from Hitler--such as Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Arnold Schoenberg--along with every kind of Hollywood star, from Charlie Chaplin to Shelley Winters. In Viertel's living room (the only one in town with comfortable armchairs, said one Hollywood insider), countless cinematic, theatrical, and musical partnerships were born. Clean copy.