france war

Softcover. Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, reprint, 2001, Softcover, clean, unmarked pages. 415 pages, followed by a short Index. Fanny Kemble offers a gripping, first-hand account of life on a Southern plantation before the Civil War. Combining a keen observational style with a candid narrative voice, Kemble lays bare the complexities of plantation life, including the stark realities of slavery and the socio-economic hierarchies of antebellum Georgia. The journal entries provide an intimate glimpse into the daily lives of both the enslaved and the plantation owners, reflecting her deep moral convictions and growing abolitionist sentiments against a backdrop of genteel Southern culture. Fanny Kemble, a British actress and writer, was thrust into the world of the Southern elite through her marriage to a plantation owner, which provided her with unprecedented access to the intricacies of plantation management and its social fabric.

Hardcover. OH, Kent State University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 96 pages. "In 1941 Frank Kessler, a young accountant in Canton, Ohio, was drafted, assigned to an Army Signal Corps unit, and went away to photograph the war in Europe. In 1945, home again with his wife and children, he stored hundreds of those images of blood and battle in his attic. There they stayed until after his death."Then Lee Kessler, Frank's estranged younger brother, sorted through boxes seeking to better know a brother he'd never known very well. A flier who had been shot down and held in a German POW camp, Lee saw Frank's photographs as images of a different side of war, one he never experienced. He was moved by what he saw and recognized their importance. He preserved them for all of us, carefully ordering them into albums and typing the information Frank had written on the backs of the photos. "When I saw Frank Kessler's photographs I was struck by how different they were from the movie-camera views I see on television. No public relations pictures here, intended to glorify battle and rally support. These were up-close snapshots of the dirty, damp, and disheveled men in the rifle companies and tank units. It was the war as they endured it, as they struggled through it from the beaches of France to the streets of Berlin until they finally won it."

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, reprint, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 144 pages. Originally published in French by La Guilde du Livre (Lausanne, Switzerland, 1952) and here reissued by the Aperture Foundation in a first English-language edition, this a profile of life in mid-century rural France by the great American photographer Strand (1890-1976). Following World War II, Strand moved to France and documented its rural areas in photographs. These close-up, seemingly candid images of the people, the countryside, and the architectural structures contain Strand's characteristic style of realism, depth of detail, and innate sensitivity to the environment. To supplement these exquisite pictures, French poet Roy, who knew Strand personally, provides a delightfully lyrical potpourri of poems, commentary, and collages assembled from bits of small-town newspapers. The timeless spirit of the Gallic legacy captured in the photos and words will be savored by Francophiles. Strand's importance in 20th-century photography makes this a highly recommended addition for public libraries and special photography collections.

Softcover. NY, John Wiley & Sons, 1st pbk, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover,452 pages, b&w illustrations. Harlow Unger's Lafayette is a remarkable and dramatic account of a life as fully lived as it is possible to imagine, that of Gilbert de Motier, marquis de Lafayette. To American readers Unger's biography will provide a stark reminder of just how near run a thing was our War of Independence and the degree to which our forefathers' victory hinged on the help of our French allies, marshaled for George Washington by his 'adopted' son, Lafayette. But even more absorbing and much less well known to the general reader will be Unger's account of Lafayette's idealistic but naive efforts to plant the fruits of the American democracy he so admired in the unreceptive soil of his homeland. Short inscription to half-title page, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1971, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 378 pages. From dust jacket notes: "For most Americans, the Second World War started on December 7, 1941, and much of the fighting took place in strange, faraway places. For the British, the war started on September 3, 1939, and much of the action took place in the skies over England. In the spring of 1940, after months of uneasy calm, Germany invaded the Lowlands and conquered France within a few days, leaving England without her only meaningful ally on the Continent. A year would pass before the Soviet Union was drawn into the war, and eighteen months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The United Kingdom, with a land area about the size of Wyoming, was alone, all alone, with only the Straits of Dover separating the island from Hitler's war machine. For six years Mollie Panter-Downes covered the war for The New Yorker magazine from her native England. Even at the height of the air war over London, when 'all that is best in the good life of civilized effort appears to be slowly and painfully keeling over,' she continued to file her fortnightly reports in an understated but dramatic fashion that reflected the fortitude of her fellow countrymen: 'The announcements of the first air-raid deaths are beginning to appear in the obituary columns of the morning papers. No mention is made of the cause of death, but the conventional phrase "very suddenly" is always used.' William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, has assembled Miss Panter-Downes' 'Letter from London' columns into a consecutive, on-the-spot chronicle of the war in England."

Hardcover. Paris, France, Vilo, 1st, 1967, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 72 pages. Hardcover. FRENCH TEXT. B/w illustrations throughout. Decorated glossy cover boards, some chipping of lamination at spine and corners, a couple scratch marks. Previous owner's bookplate on front endpaper. Back cover boards slightly warped so it curls just a touch at top and bottom. Pages clean. Binding tight. A beautifully photo-illustrated volume featuring performance photos and portraits of the world-famous prima ballerina.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Matthew Wheelock, Jerusha's great-great grandfather, creates an enduring legacy for his descendants as he clears his fields and uses the stones to create a marvelous stone wall. Gorgeous watercolor art by Ted Lewin.

Softcover. NY, Seven Stories Press, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 431 pages. A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. Brittany during the nineteenth century was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, backwards by most French standards; formal education among rural society was either unavailable or dismissed as unnecessary, while the church and local myth defined most people's reasoning and motivation. Jean-Marie Deguignet is unique not only as a literate Breton peasant, but in his skepticism for the church, his interest in science, astronomy and languages, and for his keen--often caustic--observations of the world and people around him. Born into rural poverty in 1834, Deguignet escapes Brittany by joining the French Army in 1854, and over the next fourteen years he fights in the Crimean war, attends Napoleon III's coronation ceremonies, supports Italy's liberation struggle, and defends the hapless French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico. He teaches himself Latin, French, Italian and Spanish and reads extensively on history, philosophy, politics, and literature. He returns home to live as a farmer and tobacco-seller, eventually falling back into dire poverty. Throughout the tale, Deguignet's freethinking, almost anarchic views put him ahead of his time and often (sadly, for him) out of step with his contemporaries. Deguignet's voluminous journals (nearly 4,000 pages in total) were discovered in a farmhouse in Brittany a century after they were written. This narrative was drawn from them and became a surprise bestseller when published in France in 1998. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Donna Karan, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. black & white portraits, fashion photos by Herb Ritts. Large,oversized, 11-1/4" x 14-1/4" coffee table book of photos of such stars as Diana Ross, Isabella Rossellini, Fred Ward, Francesco Clemente and his wife Alba, no doubt wearing Donna Karan clothing. All photograhs are black & white of selected pieces from fashion designer Donna Karan's Fall 1995 collection by fashion photographer Herb Ritts. Clean.

Hardcover. NY, Brewer & Warren, 1st US, 1930, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, marbled boards with green cloth spine, 494 pages. A scholarly biography of the great French dramatist, b&w illustrations. Light shelf wear. Top of spine has some fading/sunning, no markings.

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.

Softcover. Washington DC, National Geographic Society, 1st, 1917, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Original magazines January - June 1917, in a maroon pebbled hardcover binding. Magazines are dated and paged, with photographs and maps, but do not have covers, advertisements, etc. Several pages of color plates. Light chipping to spine labels otherwise a bright, clean volume. The half year dominated by America's entrance into World War I. Articles by Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, America's Duty; Stand by the Soldier, by General John J. Pershing; President Wilson's Proclamation; Bind the Wounds of France, by Herbert Hoover; articles by the ambassadors of Britain and France; Russian Situation and its Significance to America and Russia's Democrats; War, Patriotism, and the Food Supply.

Hardcover. Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1st, 1935, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 653 pages. Gilt top edge. Minor spine and cover edge wear. Minor soiling on cover and spine. Otherwise, a clean and tight copy. Foreword by President Roosevelt and a preface by Captain Dudley W. Knox. plus 10 plates including 2 folded maps and the frontispiece. Fp: U.S. Ship of War Delaware. Cloth cover, gilt title on spine.

Hardcover. Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1st, 1935, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 624 pages. Gilt top edge. Minor spine and cover edge wear. Minor soiling on cover and spine. Otherwise, a clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1st, 1930, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, yellow cloth covers stamped in black, 268 pages. True story of the Alaskan sled dog who went to France during the Great War and won the Croix de Guerre; presumably targeted for older children. B&w frontispiece and endpapers illustration by Charles Livingston Bull. Covers with mild soil, clean inside.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 404 pages. The Napoleonic wars did not end with Waterloo. That famous battle was just the beginning of a long, complex transition to peace. After a massive invasion of France by more than a million soldiers from across Europe, the Allied powers insisted on a long-term occupation of the country to guarantee that the defeated nation rebuild itself and pay substantial reparations to its conquerors. Our Friends the Enemies provides the first comprehensive history of the post-Napoleonic occupation of France and its innovative approach to peacemaking. From 1815 to 1818, a multinational force of 150,000 men under the command of the Duke of Wellington occupied northeastern France. From military, political, and cultural perspectives, Christine Haynes reconstructs the experience of the occupiers and the occupied in Paris and across the French countryside. The occupation involved some violence, but it also promoted considerable exchange and reconciliation between the French and their former enemies. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with minor edgewear, 294 pages. Depicts the German occupation of Paris during World War II from the perspectives of both the defeated Parisians and the victorius Germans, accompanied by 116 contemporary photographs in b&w, some color. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Vendome Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 208 pages. Best-selling French author Perrault provides moving personal reminiscences of his childhood in occupied Paris. The brief but eloquent narrative is accompanied by hundreds of previously unpublished photos from French and German archives, collected and cataloged by Parisian art historian Azema. Together, text and photos present a graphic portrait of everyday life, recording daily human struggles to find food and fuel, the psychological warfare waged by the occupiers, and the methods of German economic exploitation. As artists, the authors place special emphasis on the arts under the occupation and document the heroism of the writers' resistance. In sum, they show how Paris "kept alive a sense of the enemy."

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard/Belknap Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright price-clipped dust jacket, 493 pages, illustrated in b&w and color. In an original and evocative journey through modern Paris from the mid-eighteenth century to World War II, Patrice Higonnet offers a delightful cultural portrait of a multifaceted, continually changing city. In examining the myths and counter-myths of Paris that have been created and re-created over time, Higonnet reveals a magical urban alchemy in which each era absorbs the myths and perceptions of Paris past, adapts them to the cultural imperatives of its own time, and feeds them back into the city, creating a new environment. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 347 pages. In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could be his biographer despite her never having written--or even read--a biography before. The next seven years comprised of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games. Battling an elusive Beckett and a string of jealous, misogynistic male writers, Bair persevered. She wrote Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other--and lived essentially on the same street. Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile and influencing Bair's own feminist beliefs.Parisian Lives draws on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes. This gripping memoir is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.

Softcover. Monte Carlo, Andre Sauret, 1st wraps, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, illustrated card covers, French text, 13 color plates, b&w plates. Stamped #724 of 2,000 copies. Previous owner's stamp front end paper. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan Company, 1st US, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 461 pages. Laval began his career as a socialist, but over time drifted far to the right. Following France's defeat and armistice with Germany in 1940, he served in prominent roles in Philippe Petain's Vichy Regime, first as the vice-president of the Council of Ministers from 11 July 1940 to 13 December 1940, and later as the head of government from 18 April 1942 to 20 August 1944. After the liberation of France in 1944, Laval was arrested by the French government under General Charles de Gaulle. In what was widely regarded as a flawed trial, Laval was found guilty of plotting against the security of the State and collaboration with the enemy, and after a thwarted suicide attempt, he was executed by firing squad. His manifold political activities left a complicated and controversial legacy, resulting in more than a dozen conflicting biographies of him. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise a bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson, 1st UK, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 199 pages, illustrated in b&w by Michael Foreman. "Set in medieval France, the hero is - yes - a pig, a small but highly intelligent pig with a little boar blood lurking in his veins . . . When the feudal lords of Pitou decide with the farmers to rid the nearby forest of wild animals, it is Plantagenet (beloved of the farmer's daughter, Adele) who warns his cousin, the wild boar Grondin, of what is afoot . . . "

Softcover. London, Imperial War Museums, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 96 pages. Softcover. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Posters of the First World War collects more than one hundred posters from America, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy that showcase renewed concern among the warring nations with national character and conduct.