france

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The discovery of gold by a team of Mormon mill workers in 1848 sparked a frenzy that shook the world. People swarmed to California from as far as China and Australia. They came from England and France, from Ireland and Chile, leaving behind their families and everything they owned in the hope of making their fortunes in the new world. They came by ship and overland, braving Tierra del Fuego and the pestilences of Panama, lured by the promise of gold. In a spellbinding narrative that spans several continents, Brands brings the fervour and excitement of the gold rush vividly to life. The Age of Gold is narrative history at its best -- the astonishing tale of one of the most extraordinary speculative frenzies in history, told by a master historian. 547 pages, clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Faber & Faber, reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 271 pages. In the twelfth century, Languedoc, in the far south, was among the most beautiful parts of France, far away from the world of the feudal north. However, it was in this rich region that a heresy of Eastern origin took hold, forcing the Catholic Church to confront a rival whose teachings questioned the foundations of Christian thought. These heretics, called Cathars, held a profoundly pessimistic view of the world that was based on the duality of all things, including good and evil: according to one heretic, "The one, the good God, made the invisible world, while the other, the evil God, made the visible one." Jonathan Sumption's acclaimed history examines the roots of this heresy as well as of the crusade the Church undertook in 1208 to stamp out the infidels, who ultimately were conquered by the Catholic armies. But this book does more than simply describe this terrible war; it reconstructs a lost world of great cultural richness, one that saw the creation in Languedoc of the troubadour tradition as well as the magnificent castles at Cabaret and Carcassonne. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Monacelli Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 267 pages in color. This lavishly illustrated and engaging book is the authoritative guide to the most exclusive Alpine destinations in Europe. Notable hotel expert and 84 Rooms Founder, Sebastian Schoellgen, presents a uniquely curated selection of 84 luxury and family-run boutique hotels in the five Alpine countries (France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany) in over 180 superb photographs with lively storytelling and practical information, too. Featured throughout are insider guides by the author and such tastemakers as hotelier Arnauld Zannier, who map out the most stylish and scenic places to shop, dine, stroll, and wind down after a long day on the slopes. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, Tate Gallery, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 296 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. Wonderfully written and illustrated account of the work of the Bloomsbury artists, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. Contains detailed chronologies of their lives. Catalogue entries on two hundred works, all illustrated in color, bring out the chief characteristics of Bloomsbury painting--domestic, contemplative, sensuous, and essentially pacific. These are seen in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes set in London, Sussex, and the South of France, as well as in the abstract painting and applied art that placed these artists at the forefront of the avant-garde before the First World War. Portraits of family and friends--from Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes to Aldous Huxley and Edith Sitwell--highlight the cultural and social setting of the group. Essays by leading scholars provide further insights into the works and the changing critical reaction to them, exploring friendships and relationships both within and outside of Bloomsbury, as well as the movement's wider social, economic, and political. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 400 pages. A landmark work by English historian Frances A. Yates (1899-1981); an examination of the mnemonic systems developed by the ancient Greeks, and their impact on the Renaissance thought of Giordano Bruno and others. Named one of the top 100 nonfiction books of the century by the Modern Library in 1999. One large fold-out plate, clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Clean, bright copy, 467 pages. Illustrated with 36 pages of historic Plates, b/w, on coated paper. One of the most famous works of history, Johan Huizinga presents a brilliant portrait of life, thought, and art in 14th and 15th century France and the Netherlands.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Clean, bright copy, 467 pages. Illustrated with 36 pages of historic Plates, b/w, on coated paper. One of the most famous works of history, Johan Huizinga presents a brilliant portrait of life, thought, and art in 14th and 15th century France and the Netherlands.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages. Noel Burch and Genevieve Sellier adopt a sociocultural approach to films made in France before, during, and after World War II, paying particular attention to the Occupation years (1940-44). The authors contend that the films produced from the 1930s until 1956--when the state began to subsidize the movie industry, facilitating the emergence of an "auteur cinema"--are important, both as historical texts and as sources of entertainment.Citing more than 300 films and providing many in-depth interpretations, Burch and Sellier argue that films made in France between 1930 and 1956 created a national imaginary that equated masculinity with French identity. They track the changing representations of masculinity, explaining how the strong patriarch who saved fallen or troubled women from themselves in prewar films gave way to the impotent, unworthy, or incapable father figure of the Occupation. After the Liberation, the patriarch reemerged as protector and provider alongside assertive women who figured as threats not only to themselves but to society as a whole. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY/London, Verso, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dustjacket. The violence that has ravaged Algeria has often defied explanation. Regularly invoked in debates about political Islam, transitions to democracy, globalization, and the right of humanitarian interference, Algeria's tragedy has been reduced to a clash of stereotypes: Islamists vs.a secular state, terrorists vs. innocent civilians, or generals vs. a defenseless society. The prevalence of such simplistic representations has disabled public opinion inside as well as outside the country and contributed to the intractability of the conflict. This collection of essays offers a radical corrective to Western misconceptions. Rejecting essentialist and determinist approaches, Hugh Roberts explores the outlook and evolution of the various internal forces as they emerged--the Islamists, the Berberists, the factions within the army, and the regime in general--and he looks at external interests and actors. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 200 pages, b&w illustrations. Kathleen Kete's wise and witty examination of petkeeping in nineteenth-century Paris provides a unique window through which to view the lives of ordinary French people. She demonstrates how that cliche of modern life, the family dog, reveals the tensions that modernity created for the Parisian bourgeoisie. Kete's study draws on a range of literary and archival sources, from dog-care books to veterinarians's records to Dumas's musings on his cat. The fad for aquariums, attitudes toward vivisection, the dread of rabies, the development of dog breeding-all are shown to reflect the ways middle-class people thought about their lives. Petkeeping, says Kete, was a way to imagine a better, more manageable version of the world-it relieved the pressures of contemporary life and improvised solutions to the intractable mesh that was post-Enlightenment France. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London , Rupert Hart=Davis, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with light edgewear, 365 pages. An informal military history of the North American continent. The two major campaigns covered being the war with France for the possession of Canada & the American War of Independence. Service discipline in the British Army meant a bloody back, hence the nickname for the soldiers of the time. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 1st, 1919, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers stamped with a bright gilt design, 66 pages. Top edges gilt. Two color illustrations by Schoonover tipped in. A novel of a World War I soldier and Joan of Arc.

Hardcover. Belgium, Brepols , 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 696 pages, 34 b/w illustrations.The rise of modern science and European colonial and imperial expansion are indisputably two defining elements of modern world history. James E. McClellan III and Francois Regourd explore these two world-historical forces and their interactions in this comprehensive and in-depth history of the French case in the Old Regime presented here for the first time. The case is key because no other state matched Old-Regime France as a center for organized science and because contemporary France closely rivaled Britain as a colonial power, as well as leading all other nations in commodity production and participating in the slave trade. Based on extensive archival research and vast primary and secondary literatures and sharply reframing the historiography of the field, this landmark volume traces the development and significance for early-modern history of the Colonial Machine of Old-Regime France, an unparalleled agglomeration of institutions geared to the success of the French colonial enterprise, including the Royal Navy, the Academie Royale des Sciences, the Jardin du Roi, and a host of related specialist institutions working together at home and overseas. Mainly supported by the French state, the Colonial Machine reveals itself through its actions from the time of Colbert and Louis XIV as it grappled with fundamental problems facing contemporary European colonialism. SIGNED LETTER from co-author McClelland laid in. Clean copy.

Softcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st pbk, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 180 pages. The spirit of an event consecrated in anarchist legend is captured in these documents. Eyewitness reports, accounts of participants, and archival documents are used by Dr Edwards to illustrate the many facets of the seventy-three-day Paris Commune of 1871, the largest urban insurrection in modern history. Each section of the book is preceded by an explanatory note, and footnotes clarify contemporary references The introduction to the documents provides a general survey of the origins and events of the Commune. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Narry H. Abrams, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in pictorial boards with acetate dust jacket. 112 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Presents all the existing work of Piero della Francesca. Includes 64 color plates and 111 black-and-white illustrations. Introduction by Peter Murray. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Pantheon Books, 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 301 pages. The classic study of the life of the nobility at the royal court of France, especially under Louis XIV. Paper tanning slightly, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Curt Valentin, 1st, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, textured beige boards with a green cloth spine. 94 pages of text and 58 black & white plates. Limited to 1,000 copies. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The daguerreotype, invented in France, came to America in 1839. By 1851, this early photographic method had been improved by American daguerreotypists to such a degree that it was often referred to as "the American process." The daguerreotype-now perhaps mostly associated with stiffly posed portraits of serious-visaged nineteenth-century personages-was an extremely detailed photographic image, produced though a complicated process involving a copper plate, light-sensitive chemicals, and mercury fumes. It was, as Sarah Kate Gillespie shows in this generously illustrated history, something wholly and remarkably new: a product of science and innovative technology that resulted in a visual object. It was a hybrid, with roots in both fine art and science, and it interacted in reciprocally formative ways with fine art, science, and technology. Gillespie maps the evolution of the daguerreotype, as medium and as profession, from its introduction to the ascendancy of the "American process," tracing its relationship to other fields and the professionalization of those fields. She does so by recounting the activities of a series of American daguerreotypists, including fine artists, scientists, and mechanical tinkerers. She describes, for example, experiments undertaken by Samuel F. B. Morse as he made the transition from artist to inventor; how artists made use of the daguerreotype, both borrowing conventions from fine art and establishing new ones for a new medium; the use of the daguerreotype in various sciences, particularly astronomy; and technological innovators who drew on their work in the mechanical arts.

Hardcover. Duke University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 440 pages. Black cloth, no dust jacket. The Edge of Surrealism is an essential introduction to the writing of French social theorist Roger Caillois. Caillois was part of the Surrealist avant-garde and in the 1930s founded the College of Sociology with Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris. He spent his life exploring issues raised by this famous group and by Surrealism itself. Though his subjects were diverse, Caillois focused on concerns crucial to modern intellectual life, and his essays offer a unique perspective on many of twentieth-century France's most significant intellectual movements and figures. Including a masterful introductory essay by Claudine Frank situating his work in the context of his life and intellectual milieu, this anthology is the first comprehensive introduction to Caillois's work to appear in any language. These thirty-two essays with commentaries strike a balance between Caillois's political and theoretical writings and between his better known works, such as the popular essays on the praying mantis, myth, and mimicry, and his lesser-known pieces. Presenting several new pieces and drawing on interviews and unpublished correspondence, this book reveals Caillois's consistent effort to reconcile intellectual rigor and imaginative adventure. Perhaps most importantly, The Edge of Surrealism provides an overdue look at how Caillois's intellectual project intersected with the work of Georges Bataille and others including Breton, Bachelard, Benjamin, Lacan, and Levi-Strauss.

Softcover. Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 225 pages. First published in 1930 and untranslated until now, this is one of the minor classics of French historical literature. The author relates the bizarre beginnings of the Third Republic during the presidency of Adolphe Thiers (1871-1873), when an assembly dominated by monarchists groped uncertainly toward the establishment of a republican government.

Hardcover. Somerville MA, Candlewick Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 184 pages. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the front fly leaf, in addition the there is a handwritten greeting card from Losure. The author presents this enthralling true story as a fanciful narrative featuring the original Cottingley fairy photos and previously unpublished drawings and images from the family archives. A delight for everyone with a fondness for fairies, and for anyone who has ever started something that spun out of control. Back matter includes source notes, a bibliography, and an index. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1st, 1925, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, purple cloth gilt lettering and decoration on spine, gilt medallion on front cover. 355 pages, color frontispiece. Illustrated with several B&W maps and reproductions. Mild fade to spine. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Dublin, Brett Smith, 1st thus, 1788, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, leather bound. 553 pages plus Index of Proper Names. Uncommon translation from Ireland. Hawkey was a Reverend and Master of the Free-School in Dundalk. "The Commentaries of his Wars in Gaul" is Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-person narrative. In it Caesar describes the battles and intrigues that took place in the nine years he spent fighting the Germanic peoples and Celtic peoples in Gaul that opposed Roman conquest. The Gallic Wars were a series of military campaigns waged by the Roman proconsul Julius Caesar against several Gallic tribes. Rome's war against the Gallic tribes lasted from 58 BC to 50 BC and culminated in the decisive Battle of Alesia in 52 BC, in which a complete Roman victory resulted in the expansion of the Roman Republic over the whole of Gaul (mainly present-day France and Belgium). "His Commentaries of the Civil War" is an account written by Julius Caesar of his war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate. It covers the events of 49-48 BC, from shortly before Caesar's invasion of Italy to Pompey's defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus and flight to Egypt with Caesar in pursuit. It closes with Pompey assassinated, Caesar attempting to mediate rival claims to the Egyptian throne, and the beginning of the Alexandrian War. Prelim pages gone so the book opens on the title page. Interior pages bright with no foxing, firm binding. Light wear to covers, front cover with partial split along spine, Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Parents Magazine Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price=clipped dust jacket. Color illustrations by Kilmeny & Deborah Niland. The dream of a lowly store clerk in Sydney comes true when a huge balloon arrives from France to promote an advertising campaign, but without a balloonist. Clean copy.