france memoir

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 220 pages, a Jewish Chaplain's memoir of service in France during WWI. Foreword by Cyrus Adler. Frontis photo of Jewish welfare workers. Bookplate from private library on inside front cover, faded lettering on spine otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Atgen PA, Schiffer, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 144 pages illustrated in color and b&w. In 1942, Ed Vebell landed with the US Army in North Africa and was recruited by Stars & Stripes, the US armed forces newspaper, as their official staff artist. Daily, he drew illustrations and reported on the progress of World War II throughout Europe. This book offers a selection of his sketches, drawings, paintings, and photographs from that time, and presents one artist's view of the war from North Africa, through the campaigns in Italy, France, and Germany. After the war, the author spent two weeks with the Russians in Berlin, and was then assigned as the courtroom artist during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Along the way are Ed's reminiscences about such personalities as famed war correspondent and artist Bill Mauldin, singers Josephine Baker and Edith Piaf, Charles de Gaulle, Gen. Teddy Roosevelt Jr., and many others. Ed also reminisces about his two years photographing backstage at the Folies Bergere in Paris, as well as his time as an Olympic fencer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 231 pages. Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture explores a crucial moment in the history of European selfhood. During the seventeenth century, French nobles began to understand their lives in terms of personal histories and inner qualities, rather than as the products of tradition and inheritance. This preoccupation with the self accompanied a critical view of society, monarchy, and Christian teachings. It also shaped a new understanding of political realities and personal relations. Drawing from a combination of memoirs, literary works, and archival sources, Jonathan Dewald offers a new understanding of aristocratic sensibilities. In detailed fashion, he explores the nobles' experience of war, career, money, family, love, and friendship. In all of these areas, nobles felt a gap between social expectations and personal needs; in the seventeenth century this tension became increasingly oppressive. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 3rd pr., 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 354 pages, b&w photos. Autonauts of the Cosmoroute is a travelogue, a love story, an irreverent collection of visual and verbal snapshots. In May 1982, Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop climbed aboard Fafner, their VW camper van, and embarked on an exploration of the uncharted territory of the Paris-Marseilles freeway. It was a route they had covered before, usually in about ten hours, but his time they loaded up with supplies and prepared for an ardous voyage of thirty-three days without leaving the autoroute. Along the way they would uncover the hidden side of the freeway and record The trip's vital minutiae with light-hearted abandon. At roadside rest areas, armed with typewriters, cameras, and mutual affection, the authors composed this book. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 162 pages. Shortly after Albert Cohen left France for London to escape the Nazis, he received news of his mother's death in Marseille. Unable to mourn her, he expressed his grief in a series of moving pieces for La France libre, which later grew into Book of My Mother. Achingly honest, intimate, and moving, this love song is a tribute to all mothers. Cohen himself expressed, "I shall not have written in vain if one of you, after reading my hymn of death, is one evening gentler with his mother because of me and my mother." Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, This England Books, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 205 pages. The author - Josephine Butler - was recruited by Winston Churchill in 1942, and was the only woman member of his elite 'Secret Circle' - Churchill's closest ring of intelligence agents. Codenamed 'Jay Bee' she worked with the French Resistance in occupied France. Map. Clean coy.

Softcover. Createspace Independent Publishing, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Sodtcover, 254 pages. Actor, director, writer Evans connect his dots and long dashes through a life both creative and chaotic. Family, career, and cancer bump heads in a runaway boxcar full of colorful entanglements with the famous and the foolish. Tracing his family history through the years from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression to the tragedy of the Hindenburg, and his early childhood in Japan before WW2, Evans cleverly sets the stage for what follows. His career as an actor ultimately clashed with an early marriage and fatherhood, providing many temptations that carried Evans to Mexico, Arizona, Ohio, Delaware, Kauai, Hawaii, and points beyond. Working in films with stars Jack Nicholson, George C. Scott, David Hemmings, and Michael J. Pollard were high points in his 50-year career that led to a love affair with France and La Nouvelle Vague and the writing, production and direction of his own films and plays. After a season as series regular Paul Hanley opposite Mia Farrow in tv's Peyton Place, Evans moved from early shows like Mr. Novak, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza to an episode of Star Trek with Shatner and Nimoy. Countless other roles sent him on his way to features including major roles in Islands in the Stream, The Nickel Ride, Dirty Little Billy and Synanon, productions that brought him together with many of Hollywood's top directors including Richard Rush, Robert Mulligan, Stan Dragoti and Richard Quine. As his wife, Jo, frequently reminds us, "Dick has made many things, but never without the help of others." Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Crown, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 132 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Previous owner's bookplate on front end paper, light shelf-wear and rubbing to dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. As a serviceman in Paris after World War II, Peter Miller served as a US Army Signal Corps photographer. By day, he would snap one-star generals greeting four-star generals, and the innumerable grip and grins of Congressmen visiting soldiers. By night, Miller traversed the city of light, capturing the resilient spirit of Parisians in the wake of the devastating war. Miller's photographs reflect the vision of a sparkling city while his recollections document the wonder and enchantment felt by a young man from Vermont. From pictures of the Latin Quarter brimming with American jazz and blues to alluring models on the runways of Christian Dior; from romantic courtships in the streets to hobos along the River Seine, Miller captures these sights and impressions in dynamic compositions and sensitive recollections that are striking, compassionate, and a joy to all lovers of the city of light.

Hardcover. NY, Warner Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The saucy and often humorous memoir of New York magazine food critic Gael Greene. From the glamorous restaurants of Manhattan to the culinary shrines of France, Greene's fierce wit and sensuous prose reveal the humor, obsession, and insatiable desires behind fine dining. Greene's love for life and food shine through in the pages of this book. From her midwestern roots to her position as a powerful critic for one of New York's most respected magazines, Greene brings readers on a quest to satisfy an insatiable hunger. 368 pages, b&w photos. Clean copy.

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.

Softcover. Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 165 pages, French text.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 406 pages, Hardcover with dust jacket. B&w illustrations. Clean, tight copy. How Le Corbusier's first trip to the United States shaped his critique of the country and affected both his work and the diffusion of his ideas. Le Corbusier's first trip to the United States in 1935 is generally considered a failure because it produced no commissions. The experience nevertheless had a profound effect on him, both personally and professionally. Sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Le Corbusier promoted his ideas through a lecture tour, exhibition, and press conferences, as well as in meetings with industrialists, housing reformers, New Deal technocrats, and editors. His lectures were watershed events that advanced the cause of European modernism. Yet he returned to France empty-handed and published a bittersweet account, Quand les Cathedrales etaient blanches: Voyage au Pays des Timid Personnes (When the Cathedrals Were White: Journey to the Country of Timid People), which faulted America for lacking the courage to adopt his ideas.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martins Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 145 pages. From the front dust jacket flap "Louise Dahl-Wolfe, one of the most celebrated photographers of the thirties, forties and fifties, was a uniquely American artist whose work had enormous ramifications for Horst, Avedon, Penn, and other great photographers who followed her. Working in the heydey of Harper's Bazaar with editor-in-chief Carmel Snow and renowned fashion editor Diana Vreeland, she came to fashion photography at a time when formal, sometimes stilted, European elegance was the norm and infused it with her fresh new vision - informal, intimate, and undeniably American". Preface by Frances McFadden.

Softcover. Merrick NY, Cross-Cultural Communications, 1st pbk, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 48 pages. Edited and translated from the Italian by Stanislao G. Pugliese. Ignazio Silone, anti-fascist and founding member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) offers a politically conscious and soul searching memoir which details his own PSI activities and the various factors engendering the "necessity for action on behalf of liberty and democracy among the working classes." Over the course of his political career, Silone wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction works, and was imprisoned in Italy, France, Spain, and finally in Switzerland where he composed this memoir in 1942. Often compared with Andre Malraux and Albert Camus, Silone was awarded an honorary degree by Yale University, was a recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, and was twice considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. INSCRIBED BY PUGLIESE on the title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Paris, Huillery, reprint, 1868, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bound in half red calf over marbled boards. Frontispiece portrait, b&w engraved illustrations. Eugene Vidocq (1775-1857) was a French police officer and adventurer who rose in rank to become chief of a small, specialized detective force in Paris (the Police de Surete). He later organized a daring robbery which he was ironically put in charge of investigating. Eventually found out, he was dismissed from the police force and died in poverty and obscurity. First published 1n 1828. FRENCH TEXT.

Hardcover. NY, D. Appleton & Company, 1st US, 1894, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcovers, Three volumes complete, blue cloth hardcovers with gilt titles and oval decorations on the front covers. Gilt titles and decorations on the spines. Top edges gilt. Volume I: 421 pages, [4] pages advertisements, Volume II: 484 pages, [8] pages advertisements, Volume III: 541 pages, [2] pages advertisements. Illustrated with frontispieces in the three volumes. Illustrations and folding facsimile autographs and manuscripts. Previous owner's inscriptions written on inside front cover of Vol. 1, Otherwise a bright, clean set. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

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. Pittsburgh, Luke Loomis, 1st American, 1832, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, leather bound, 246 pages, marbled endpapers. The chronicles of a pastor in a small French village in the mid-to late 1700s. Leather with minor scarring, overall clean and tight copy. Red leather label with gilt title on spine.

Hardcover. Swan Isle Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 180 pages. Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel (1900-83), known for his surrealist themes and unflinching social criticism, was an artist defined by intellectual ambition and controversy. An exile who produced some of his most famous work in Mexico and France during Franco's dictatorship, he left a complicated imprint on the creative landscape of the twentieth century and on generations of younger filmmakers--including his Mexican friend Claudio Isaac. Drawn from Isaac's personal papers, Midday with Bunuel: Memories and Sketches, 1973-1983 is an intimate and unconventional portrait of this cinematic icon--and memoir of Isaac's own artistic development.The text includes sketches, vignettes, and anecdotes from Isaac's notebooks, revealing his perspective first as a precocious boy and then as a young man. Isaac reflects on Bunuel's presence among a community of exiles, artists, actors, writers, and intellectuals in Mexico City. These are at once touching, perceptive, and critical glimpses into Bunuel's roles as husband and father, friend and colleague, surrealist, philosopher, and iconoclast during his last years. Throughout, Isaac's words reveal his deep admiration and affection for an older friend full of contradictions. Intimate photographs from the Isaac family archive complement the writing, and Bryan Thomas Scoular's careful translation makes this text available for the first time in English.

Hardcover. London, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1st, 1857, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 286 pages. Hardcover with marbled covers and page block decoration, gilt lettering on spine. Previous owner's bookplate on front end paper. Previous owner's name on title page. Ex-Library with usual stamping and embossed seal on preliminary pages.

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. Philadelphia, The Winchell Co., 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 297 pages, b&w illustrations, in a bright dust jacket. Clean. Helene Iswolsky, daughter of a Russian diplomat, grew up in Japan, Denmark, Russia, and France. In 1911, her father became Russian ambassador to France. She returned to Russia for her debut in 1914, to be presented to the Tsarina Alexandra. While there she attended the wedding of Prince Felix Yusupov, who was to murder Rasputin three years later. After the Tsar was overthrown, her father retired to Biarritz and died there in 1919, leaving unpaid debts. The author took up translating and writing. She had a religious awakening and became a Catholic. A sojourn in a Benedictine monastery left her changed, but she decided not to make the cloister her life. The author knew many notable people in the Paris area, especially writers, poets, critics, philosophers of the "new wave," Christian humanists, and Russian emigres. She attended the Sunday afternoon gatherings of Jacques Maritain and Nicholas Berdiaev, and worked on Emmanuel Mounier's journal "Esprit." When the Nazis occupied France, she escaped to America with her mother. Here she founded an ecumenical movement called "The Third Hour" and taught Russian at Fordham University and other schools. She was a close friend of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. Scarce.

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.

Hardcover. NY, Thunder's Mouth Press; Nation Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 464 pages, b&w photos. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. As the McCarthyite witch hunt gathered momentum in the postwar years, screenwriter Norma Barzman and her husband were driven from Hollywood into an emotionally difficult thirty-year exile in France. The Red and the Blacklist is a unique record of the political tempests of the time, marked by the author's dazzling power of reflection and insight, and animated by a larger-than-life cast of supporting characters including Pablo Picasso, Harold Robbins, Sophia Loren, Charlton Heston, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Losey, John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Groucho Marx and--in a delightful cameo--a very young Marilyn Monroe.