europe

Softcover. London, The Hambledon Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 288 pages. The inner workings of early medieval societies cannot be understood without also studying their links - religious, cultural, economic and political - with their neighbours. In this collection Karl Leyser shows how Ottonian and Salian Germany both influenced and was influenced by the societies with which it came into contact. While the author's central interest is in Germany, his work is of value for the study of medieval European society as a whole. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 348 pages, b&w illustrations. This handsomely illustrated book offers a panoramic view of ancient Mexico, beginning more than thirty thousand years ago and ending with European occupation in the sixteenth century. Drawing on archaeological and ethnohistorical sources, the book is one of the first to offer a unified vision of Mexico's precolonial past. Typical histories of Mexico focus on the prosperity and accomplishments of Mesoamerica, located in the southern half of Mexico, due to the wealth of records about the glorious past of this region. Mesoamerica was only one of three cultural superareas of ancient Mexico, however, all interlinked by complex economic and social relationships. Tracing the large social transformations that took place from the earliest hunter-gatherer times to the Postclassic states, the authors describe the ties between the three superareas of ancient Mexico, which stretched from present-day Costa Rica to what is now the southwestern United States. According to the authors, these superareas-Mesoamerica, Aridamerica, and Oasisamerica - cannot be viewed as independent entities. Instead, they must be considered as a whole to understand the complex reality of Mexico's past.

Hardcover. Milan, Silvana Editoriale, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz's (b. 1973, USA) first major European survey presents a sequence of installations drawing on architecture, cultural artifacts and cuisine to tell stories of social ritual, conflict and loss. It encompasses work considering the citizen visionaries of post Soviet Hungary, Middle Eastern Beatles fans and the stonecarvers of Afghanistan, with Rakowitz's casts of players and objects revealing the legacy of colonization, modernism and globalism. The artist's life-size replica of the gigantic lamassu, one of two monumental winged bulls that once guarded the gates of Nineveh in Iraq, currently features on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth. This recreation of an ancient mythological creature is made from everyday date syrup cans and is part of an epic endeavour to recreate all 7,000 objects looted from the Iraq Museum in 2003, as well as those destroyed more recently at archaeological sites like Nimrud, also presented here. Text in English and Italian. Short closed tear to dj corner. otherwise like new. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In Migrations, Sebastiao Salgado turns his attention to the staggering phenomenon of mass migration. Photographs taken over seven years across more than 35 countries document the epic displacement of the world's people at the close of the twentieth century. Wars, natural disasters, environmental degradation, explosive population growth and the widening gap between rich and poor have resulted in over one hundred million international migrants, a number that has doubled in a decade. This demographic change, unparalleled in human history, presents profound challenges to the notions of nation, community, and citizenship. The first extensive pictorial survey of the current global flux of humanity, Migrations follows Latin Americans entering the United States, Jews leaving the former Soviet Union, Africans traveling into Europe, Kosovars fleeing into Albania and many others. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. In Migrations, Sebastiao Salgado turns his attention to the staggering phenomenon of mass migration. Photographs taken over seven years across more than 35 countries document the epic displacement of the world's people at the close of the twentieth century. Wars, natural disasters, environmental degradation, explosive population growth and the widening gap between rich and poor have resulted in over one hundred million international migrants, a number that has doubled in a decade. This demographic change, unparalleled in human history, presents profound challenges to the notions of nation, community, and citizenship. The first extensive pictorial survey of the current global flux of humanity, Migrations follows Latin Americans entering the United States, Jews leaving the former Soviet Union, Africans traveling into Europe, Kosovars fleeing into Albania and many others. The images address suffering while revealing the dignity and courage of the subjects. With his unique vision and empathy, Salgado gives us a picture of the enormous social and political transformations now occurring in a world divided between excess and need. This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing. 

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st English, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 131 pages. With an introduction by award-winning author Alberto Manguel, Milongas is Edgardo Cozarinsky's love letter to tango, and the diverse array of people who give it life. Argentine writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky traces [tango's] fascinating journey through time and the seedy brothels and rough Argentine and European bars where the dance could be quite mannered or could spark with theatrical violence . . . Cozarinsky takes us through the ebbs and flows of the popularity of the tango, and also through a number of its evolutionary adaptive speciations. Clean copy.

Softcover. Wiltshire UK, Gibb Memorial, reprint, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 109 pages with a modern double spread line map, a glossary and a biographical index. The description of his mission to the court of the Shah Tahmasp I of Persia by the Venetian Michele Membre is one of the most informative as well as one of the most individual of the few European accounts of 16th century Persia. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Jonathan Cape /Harrison Smith, 1st, 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 295 pages. Decorated cloth with black cloth spine, bright gilt lettering on spine. A French doctor's account of Chinese life & civilization, based on his twenty years of life, work & travel there; he was Director of the Imperial School of Medicine at Chengtufu. Typically patronizing and moralistic; the author credits China with having been great in the past, but now in the grip of a profound lassitude, only to be helped by Europeans. Translated from the French by Elsie Martin Jones. Previous owner's name, date on front fly leaf otherwise a clean, bright copy.

NY, Frederick Unger, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 383 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, Original black lettered cloth quarter laid on pictorial boards, 184 pages. A fascinating exploration of how photography, graphic design, and popular magazines converged to transform American visual culture at mid-century. This dynamic study examines the intersection of modernist photography and American commercial graphic design between 1930 and 1960. Avant-garde strategies in photography and design reached the United States via European emigres, including Bauhaus artists forced out of Nazi Germany. The unmistakable aesthetic made popular by such magazines as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue--whose art directors, Alexey Brodovitch and Alexander Liberman, were both immigrants and accomplished photographers--emerged from a distinctly American combination of innovation, inclusiveness, and pragmatism. Beautifully illustrated with more than 150 revolutionary photographs, layouts, and cover designs, Modern Look considers the connections and mutual influences of such designers and photographers as Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Herbert Bayer, Robert Frank, Lisette Model, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, Cipe Pineles, and Paul Rand. Essays draw a lineage from European experimental design to innovative work in American magazine design at mid-century and offer insights into the role of gender in fashion photography and political activism in the mass media.

Hardcover. Munch/London/NY, Prestel, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. 656 pages. Published on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Neue Galerie New York, this stunning volume celebrates the varied achievements of modern art history in the German-speaking world by examining historical developments in Austria and Germany from 1890 to 1940. Illustrated throughout with exquisite reproductions of the museum's holdings, this book considers the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche and his writings on the fine arts and examines the founding of the Secessionist artists' organizations in Germany and Austria. Insightful essays trace the emergence of Expressionism and abstraction, as well as the development of such movements as Dada and New Objectivity. Evolutions in architecture and design are appraised through the legacy of the Arts and Crafts movement, as well as the establishment of the Darmstadt Artists' Colony and the Wiener Werkstatte. The book also examines the role of the German Werkbund and the founding of the Bauhaus school. Finally, the book briefly addresses the horrific impact of the National Socialists' degenerate art campaign, which resulted in incalculable damage and led to the exile and death of artists and designers of the era. From well-known artists such as Otto Dix, Josef Hoffmann, Vasily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, and Egon Schiele, to lesser recognized but equally important figures, including Albert Birkle, Alfred Kubin, Felix Nussbaum, and Dagobert Peche, this book offers an authoritative and kaleidoscopic look at a crucial moment in history and a portrait of radical thought that changed forever the way we experience art in our lives. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. MI, Northwestern University Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial binding, 128 pages, 47 maps, 60 b&w illustrations. Mombasa is the largest and most important port on the East African coast. A brief history of it's European colonizers is followed by a study of the port city and how it empowered the economy in the 1960s. Clean copy.

Softcover. San Diego, Harcourt Brace,, reprint, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 839 pages, contains two glossy black and white plates sections. This major work, the result of years of careful study and analysis, places Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life and music in the context of the intellectual, political and artistic currents of eighteenth-century Europe. The result is a fresh interpretation of Mozart's genius, as Robert Gutman shows the great composer in a new light. With an informed and sensitive handling, Mozart emerges as an affectionate and generous man with family and friends, self-deprecating, witty, and winsome but also an austere moralist, incisive and purposeful. The major genres in which Mozart worked-chamber music, liturgical, theater and keyboard compositions, concertos, operas, symphonies, and oratorios-are unfolded to reveal a man of luminous intellect. Mozart is an extraordinary portrait of a man and his times and a brilliant distillation of musical thought.

Hardcover. Schirmer Reference, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 271 pages. The last decade of Mozart's short but amazingly prolific career counts as one of the most remarkable periods--truly golden years--in the history of Western music. Richly illustrated with contemporary paintings and engravings and authoritatively written, this book provides a vivid account of the composer's life in the European music capital, Vienna, from 1781 to 1791. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1st, 1916, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 158 pages. Hardcover. Features 46 tipped-in plates. Foxing throughout. Front hinged cracked. Covers worn with areas of staining, darkening to spine cloth.

Hardcover. Prague, SNDK, 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 140 pages. A collection of Czech/Yugoslavian fables illustrated in color by Vladimir Brehovzsky. Clean.

Softcover. Middlebury, VT, Middlebury College Museum of Art, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 111 pages. Softcover with paper wrappers. Color pictures throughout. In 1899 Gustav Klimt's painting Nuda Veritas shook up the Austrian public with what many deem to be the painter's most political exploration of the nude female body. Klimt's provocative allegory challenged viewers to consider their own beliefs about the relationship between the nude (female) body and contemporary morality; this "naked truth" was shocking. Transcending accusations of pornography, Klimt's work paved the way for artistic examinations of the nude body as the site through which questions of freedom, desire, beauty, nature, culture, power, and their antonyms could be represented and negotiated. Taking these ideas as one critical point of departure, this volume and the accompanying exhibition feature selected prints, drawings, and watercolors by Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann and Kathe Kollwitz, among others. It explores the conceptions of the human body and the manner of its visualization in the period leading up to and following the First World War, which changed the world's notions of flesh and blood forever.

Hardcover. London, Arthur L Humphreys, 2nd pr., 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt staping. 261 pages including index. 261 pages. Written almost 80 years after the Emperor's death, the author attempts to bring together all the contemporary biographies and memoirs relating to the sojourn on St Helena. Mild foxing, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 2nd pr., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 436 pages. A great historian crowns a lifetime of thought and research by answering a question that has haunted us for more than 50 years: How did one of the most industrially and culturally advanced nations in the world embark on and continue along the path leading to one of the most enormous criminal enterprises in history, the extermination of Europe's Jews? Giving considerable emphasis to a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander restores the voices of Jews who, after the 1933 Nazi accession to power, were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality. We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 259 pages. Written in a pared-down, direct language, and filled with allusions to everything from philosophy to TV talk shows, the poetry of Tadeusz Rozewicz encompasses the complexity of human experience in the early 21st century. Rozewicz's unique voice, formed during his experiences as a member of the Polish resistance in World War II, and honed by decades living under communist rule, holds a merciless mirror up to the crimes and excesses of the poet's lifetime. In his eighties now, Rozewicz continues to be a prolific writer and an acerbic commentator on his life and times. This collection combines his latest three volumes: professor's knife, gray zone, and exit. These are extraordinary poems from an acknowledged European master. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Acanthus Press , 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages, color plates. Volume I, Inventors of Tradition, highlights the careers and showcases the work of the designers who translated and then transformed European period styles into a new vocabulary for America. In addition to the work of celebrated taste-makers Billy Baldwin, Mario Buatta, and Albert Hadley Gura uncovers the interiors of once-influential, now-obscure designers whose work played an important role in the development of the New York look. Among these practitioners are William Pahlmann, the pioneer of contemporary eclecticism; the glamorous Melanie Kahane, with a fondness for shocking pink and tasteful pizzaz; and the epitome of the southern civility, Joseph Braswell, who believed that a beautiful environment could make its occupants into better people.

Hardcover. NY, Museum of the City of New York, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 327 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a vibrant theatrical culture took shape on New York City's Lower East Side. Original dramas, comedies, musicals, and vaudeville, along with sophisticated productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov, were innovatively staged for crowds that rivaled the audiences on Broadway. Though these productions were in Yiddish and catered to Eastern European, Jewish audiences (the largest immigrant group in the city at the time), their artistic innovations, energetic style, and engagement with politics and the world around them came to influence all facets of the American stage. Vividly illustrated and with essays from leading historians and critics, this book recounts the heyday of "Yiddish Broadway" and its vital contribution to American Jewish life and crossover to the broader American culture. Clean copy.

Softcover. Heidelberg, Kehrer Verlag, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Flexi-softcover. Illustrated with full color photographs by Sandra Mann. Clean, bright copy.