Hardcover. Germany, Steidl, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 224 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Nowhere is the breezy and urbane romance of Paris conjured as memorably as in the photography of Robert Doisneau (1912-1994). A gentle minstrel of visual anecdote, Doisneau interpreted the city's charms in an iconography that both natives and Francophiles instantly recognize: the young hip couple stealing a spontaneous kiss at a busy intersection, the gendarme chatting with a mother while her kid tiptoes along a riverbank bench, the sweetly melancholic abandoned merry-go-round in the rain and the entire pageant of Parisian life mingling at cafes, bus shelters and on the banks of the Seine. Doisneau was possessed of both lightness of touch and spontaneity, as a result of which he has been sometimes championed as a photographer of the "pure" moment. But his ocular touch is even lighter than that suggests-his images are not so much "seized" as "netted." Accompanying the Fondation Cartier-Bresson's exhibition of around 100 prints from the Doisneau estate, From Craft to Art presents these treasures alongside a new version of Jean-Francois Chevrier's classic 1983 essay on the photographer, which describes Doisneau's knack for capturing "the shining melancholy that separates an individual from the crowd.
Softcover. London, Tauris Parke Books, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 126 pages. 107 b&w plates. A retrospective for exhibition at Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Flammarion, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 360 pages. From high-society balls and fashion shoots to portraits of artists and scenes from urban life in France, this handsome volume--which features an open spine binding so that it lays flat to show off the photographs to their best advantage--showcases Doisneau's best photographs for Vogue Paris. Celebrated photographer Robert Doisneau worked for Vogue from 1949 until 1965, illustrating a postwar France filled with a renewed zest for life. His little-known images of haute couture featured models like Brigitte Bardot and Bettina, who he photographed in the studio and out on the streets. He chronicled the members of the cafe society in their stately homes and at glamorous costume galas, dancing the night away. Best known for his humanist approach, he masterfully captured scenes from everyday life--from the grace of a wedding procession over a footbridge to the petulance of a child impatient for cake. Doisneau's photographs captured the spirit of the era and featured celebrities like Karen Blixen, Picasso, Colette, and Jean Cocteau, as well as jazz musicians, movie stars, and humble craftsmen at work. Legendary Vogue editor in chief Edmonde Charles-Roux's personal homage to the photographer--who was her friend and colleague--offers intimate insight into the man behind the camera, as complex and beautiful as the people and places he immortalized.
Hardcover. Casemate, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dustjacket, 264 pages. Following the Allied breakout from the Normandy beachhead in July 1944, the vaunted German Army seemed on the verge of collapse. As British and US forces fanned out across northwestern France, enemy resistance unexpectedly dissolved into a headlong retreat to the German and Belgian borders. In early September an elated Allied High Command had every expectation of continuing their momentum to cripple the enemy's warmaking capability, by capturing the Ruhr industrial complex and plunging into the heart of Germany. After a brief pause to allow for resupply, Courtney Hodge's First Army prepared to punch through the ominous but largely outdated Westwall (Siegfried Line) surrounding Aachen. Drawing on primary Wehrmacht and US sources, including battle analysis and daily situation and after-action reports, The Roer River Battles provides insight into the desperate German efforts to keep a conquering enemy at the borders of their homeland. Tactical maps down to battalion level help clarify the very fluid nature of the combat. Combined, they serve to explain not just how, but why decisions were made and events unfolded, and how reality often differed from doctrine in one of the longest US campaigns of World War II.
Hardcover. New York, Harcourt Brace, 1st, 1934, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardbound, red cloth with faded gilt lettering on spine, 237 pages. Black & white and color illustrations by Frank E. Schoonover. Mild soil to edges, covers. Historical fiction for young adults based on the life of Roland, warrior of France, nephew of Emperor Charlemagne. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 156 pages. Between 1935 and 1938 the celebrated photographer Roman Vishniac explored the cities and villages of Eastern Europe, capturing life in the Jewish shtetlekh of Poland, Romania, Russia, and Hungary, communities that even then seemed threatened-not by destruction and extermination, which no one foresaw, but by change. Using a hidden camera and under difficult circumstances, Vishniac was able to take over sixteen thousand photographs; most were left with his father in a village in France for the duration of the war. With the publication of Children of a Vanished World, seventy of those photographs are available, thirty-six for the first time. The book is devoted to a subject Vishniac especially loved, and one whose mystery and spontaneity he captured with particular poignancy: children.
Hardcover. Paris, Zodiaque, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 334 pages plus index. Color, b&w gravure photographs, plans of churches, cathedrals, abbeys and monasteries in France. Text in French. Ribbon marker. Clean, tight copy in a bright dust jacket.
Hardcover. Paris, Zodiaque, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 407 pages plus index. Color and b&w gravure plates, plans of medieval churches of France. French text. A clean, tight copy in a bright dust jacket.
Hardcover. London, Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. 94 pages. Brown cloth covers, beveled edges, gilt titles to spine and front cover, lovely gilt pictorial to front, patterned endpapers, all edges gilt, 10 full-page color plates (1 plate torn in half) and numerous b&w illustrated figures, by Frances Brundage and M. Bowley. Previous owner's bookplate to front endpaper, light edgewear to covers, endpapers lightly discolored with age, chipping and tear to first plate, half of 9th color plate torn off, a few pages separate from page block.
Hardcover. Madison, WI, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1st, 1948, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Volume dedicated to the rural art originating in Wisconsin. Discusses 30 different artists and contains illustrations (color and black/white) of their pieces. Good condition; cloth bound book shows some wear on the edges of the covers. No dust jacket. Commemorates the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the University of Wisconsin by means of the work of rural Wisconsin artists such as Ambrose G. Ammel, Joan Arend, John M. Black, WIlliam H. Boose, Frances Burt, Frank H. Engebretson, Francis D. Grady, Louis Grebetz, Rachel Gertrude Grimm, Lois Ireland, Arthur Johnson, and many more.
Hardcover. Francestown NH, Marshall Jones Company, 3rd pr., 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt. Dust jacket edgeworn, chipped. 295 pages. Revised Edition. Third Printing. INSCRIBED by Rosamond Thaxter ("Rosie") on half title page.
Softcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Large softcover, 287 pages, b&w and color illustrations throughout. A very clean, tight copy. Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Centre, New York. Illustrated card covers with long inside flaps, minimal wear. An exhaustive compilation of the best graphic work of Steinberg covering his life in advertising, graphic design and fine arts.
Hardcover. Paris, Denoel, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 123 pages of b&w cartoons by Sempe, originally published in 1964. Green cloth covers with fading to spine. previous owner's signature on front fly leaf. Otherwise clean, very good. French language but most of his cartoons are wordless.
Hardcover. NY, Random House, 2nd pr., 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust. B&w photos by Scavullo of top models along with their beauty secrets. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Historical Committee Second Division Association/HIllman Press, 1st Edition, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 412 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations/maps throughout. Blue cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine (faded) and front cover board, some agewear. Some light tanning to pages. Binding good. Spine straight. The story of the "American Regulars" in WWI.
Hardcover. New York, Henry Holt, 3rd, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 232 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Color illustrations by Michael Hague. Clean, tight copy with minor wear to edges.
Paperback. Albany, NY, Education Department, Albany Institute of History and Art., revised, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 201 pages. Very little wear to cover. Inside is bright and clean with many b&w illustrations throughout.
Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Shadows of War presents an astonishing collection of previously unpublished, unknown photographs of life at the front lines in the German war machine during World War II, taken by a common foot soldier. The work of a gifted amateur, Willi Rose's images present a powerful vision of a largely suppressed aspect of the war. These fractured glimpses of the world at war, from quotidian tasks and moments of leisure to scenes of death and destruction, reveal one man's experience of the epic flow of history. A miller in the years before World War II, Rose was drafted into the German army in October 1939 and served as a motorbike messenger on the front, first in France and then in Russia. He was wounded twice and was later captured by the Polish army, eventually returning home in June 1946. Throughout his military service, Rose sent home photographs that he took of the action, mostly along the Eastern Front. Discovered by his widow after his death, these images form a unique photographic document of one soldier's war.
Hardcover. New Haven/New York, Yale University Press/Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 340 pages, 223 color, 92 b&w plates. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. NY, Prestel, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 176 pages. This book features the vintage archaeological photography of John Beasley Greene, one of the first photographers in Egypt and Algeria. Few figures in 19th-century photography remain as elusive and intriguing as John Beasley Greene (1832-1856). Over the course of an exceptionally brief career he created a body of photographs that were publicly admired by his peers and continue to capture the imagination of contemporary audiences. Born in France to an American banker, he made his first expedition to Egypt in 1853, where he photographed ancient Egyptian monuments and is thought to be the first archaeologist to use photography. In these photographs, he positioned his horizon lines with precision, at times placing them so low in the frame that the photograph is nearly all blank sky, or so high that the monuments are almost swallowed up by vast seas of sand. Some of his Egyptian landscapes are so visually spare they appear to be of nothing at all. Greene also traveled to Algeria where he photographed the ancient cliff-top city of Constantine and the seaport town, Cherchell. By contrast, Greene's photographs from Algeria frequently present a densely layered abundance of visual detail. Breathtakingly beautiful, Greene's photographs construct a visual record of archaeological monuments and landscapes. Featuring some 100 vintage prints, this comprehensive book aims to introduce Greene's work to a new audience and to reconsider his place in the history of photography. Clean copy in shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. NY, William Morrow , 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 215 pages. John Tunis vividly imagines the drama of Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkerque Sergeant Edward Williams of the Second Battalion was among the first British troops to land in France, just across the English Channel from his family in Dover, after the declaration of war in September of 1939. Battles have been few and far between since then, in what the Germans have been calling der Sitzkrieg--the sitting war. In May 1940, under the leadership of their new prime minister, Winston Churchill, the British are hoping to stem the tide of invasion along their southern border. But now, flanked to the east and west by German troops and cut off from the Allies further south, Sergeant Williams and his battalion must retreat to Dunkerque in the north, and escape by sea is their only hope. Clean copy.
Hardcover. US, 5 Continents, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 144 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. French photographer Olivier Mriel (b. 1955) has practiced photography for over 26 years. His work focuses on landscapes with a taste for the obscure. The son of a chemist, he lives and works in France in the small seaside town of Saint Aubin-sur-Mer, just as his ancestors did before him. His photographs perfectly capture the feeling of history this region is steeped in. Mriel's landscapes, while dark and moody, ultimately document his search for light. This light is reflected off the land and as surfaces act as mirrors, they exude a subtle glow that seeps into even the darkest corners. A human presence that is felt but not seen subtly leads us to explore and to contemplate the secrets of these magical places and the profound meaning of existence.
Hardcover. NY, Toon Books/ Raw Junior, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR. Lilly is a spunky little girl who delights in the unexpected pleasures of each season, peering inside shells in the summer and tasting different kinds of apples in the fall. In this charming and subtle book by one of France's premier children's book authors, Lilly learns more about the outdoors, and introduces the youngest readers to the colors, words, and shapes that arise in nature. Silly Lilly's intimate monologues deftly capture a child's sense of wonder, in five whimsical episodes that cycle through the calendar from Spring back to Spring again
Softcover. New York , Random House, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 279 pages, b&w photos. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. This book exposes Chanel's anti-Semitism and her long affair with 'Spatz' Baron von Dincklage, a Nazi spy who ran an intelligence ring and reported to Goebbels. It explains how she became a German intelligence operative, how she lived in exile, how Winston Churchill supported her and how she reinvented herself in the early 1950s.