Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 194 pages. The Jordan Rift Valley, stretching from the Red Sea to Lebanon, was ripped open millions of years ago by vast forces within the earth. This geological object has also been a part of human history ever since early humans used it as a path in their journey out of Africa. And for a quarter of a century it has been part of the biography of Haim Watzman, an Israeli journalist. In the autumn of 2004, as his country was riven by a fierce debate over its borders, Watzman took a two-week journey up the valley. Along the way he met scientists who try to understand the rift through the evidence lying on its surface--an archaeologist who reconstructs the fallen altars of a long-forgotten people, a zoologist whose study of bird societies has produced a theory of why organisms cooperate, and a geologist who thinks that the valley will some day be an ocean. He encountered people whose life and work on the shores of the Dead Sea and Jordan River have led them to dream of paradise and to seek to build Gardens of Eden on earth--a booster for a chemical factory, the director of a tourist site, and an aging socialist farmer who curates a museum of idols. And he discovered that the geography's instability is mirrored in the volatility of the tales that people tell about the Sea of Galilee.
Hardcover. NY, J. Disturnell, 1st, 1857, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, A Trip Through the Lakes of North America: Embracing a full description of the St. Lawrence River, together with all the principal places on its banks, from its source to its mouth (1857). Hardcover, original blind-stamped tan cloth, 364 pages + ads. 2 maps, one large fold-out in rear of the Valley of the St. Lawrence River and Lake Country, b&w engravings. Binding worn, clean, overall Good+.
Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 553 pages, b&w illustrations. A spectacular reading of Western philosophy, religion, and mythology that draws on early maps and atlases, Plato, Kant, and Wittgenstein, Thomas Pynchon, Gilgamesh, and Marcel Duchamp, Abysmal is itself a minimalist guide to the terrain of Western culture. Olsson roams widely but always returns to the problems inherent in reason, to question the outdated assumptions and fixed ideas that thinking cartographically entails. A work of ambition, scope, and sharp wit, Abysmal will appeal to an eclectic audience--to geographers and cartographers, but also to anyone interested in the history of ideas, culture, and art. Name written on front fore-edge of book, otherwise clean.
Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover with pages and covers in pristine condition. Like new, in shrinkwrap. Rosenberg's critial essays on the theatre. Originally published in 1970. CONTENTS: The stages: geography of action; A psychological case; From play acting to self; Criticism-action; Actor in history; Guilt to the vanishing point; Missing persons. Clean copy.
Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 298 pages. The essays assembled in Agnotology show that ignorance is often more than just an absence of knowledge; it can also be the outcome of cultural and political struggles. Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don't want you to know ("Doubt is our product" is the tobacco industry slogan). Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology, racial ignorance, and more. The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York , Edmund and George W. Blunt, 18th Edition., 1857, Dust Jacket: None, 739 pages, contains 4 fold-out maps and charts. 2 maps with tears, one detached, all present. Original calf covers with spine label. Edges worn, hinges cracked, some tan staining to some page margins. Soiling to rear end papers and text block, top and bottom edges. Overall good plus.
Hardcover. White River Junction VT, Chelsea Green Publishing, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Named one of the Best Wine Books of 2014 by The New York Times, An Unlikely Vineyard tells the evolutionary story of Deirdre Heekin's farm from overgrown fields to a fertile, productive, and beautiful landscape that melds with its natural environment. Is it possible to capture landscape in a bottle? To express its terroir, its essence of place-geology, geography, climate, and soil-as well as the skill of the winegrower? That's what Heekin and her chef/husband, Caleb Barber, set out to accomplish on their tiny, eight-acre hillside farm and vineyard in Vermont. Challenged by cold winters, wet summers, and other factors, Deirdre and Caleb set about to grow not only a vineyard, but an orchard of heirloom apples, pears, and plums, as well as gardens filled with vegetables, herbs, roses, and wildflowers destined for their own table and for the kitchen of their small restaurant. They wanted to create, or rediscover, a sense of place, and to grow food naturally using the philosophy and techniques gleaned from organic gardening, permaculture, and biodynamic farming. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Like many who grew up during the spread of sprawl--with its predictable landscape of housing developments, shopping malls, interstate highways, and big-box construction--acclaimed photographer Jeff Brouws is drawn to places that still embody the vernacular past as well as to those that starkly portray the soulless, franchised American landscape. What began as cultural geography of Main Streets became a visual critique of the myth of upward mobility that created this car-centered, paved-over universe. Some images look outward to the edges of suburbia where sprawl is encroaching upon nature. Others turn inward, documenting the devastated inner cities. All the stunning color photographs reflect the complex beauty and desolation of visual life in our time. 100 color photographs.
Hardcover. New York , W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2006, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Like many who grew up during the spread of sprawl--with its predictable landscape of housing developments, shopping malls, interstate highways, and big-box construction--acclaimed photographer Jeff Brouws is drawn to places that still embody the vernacular past as well as to those that starkly portray the soulless, franchised American landscape. What began as cultural geography of Main Streets became a visual critique of the myth of upward mobility that created this car-centered, paved-over universe. Some images look outward to the edges of suburbia where sprawl is encroaching upon nature. Others turn inward, documenting the devastated inner cities. All the stunning color photographs reflect the complex beauty and desolation of visual life in our time. 100 color photographs.
Hardcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, An extraordinary work, unparalleled in its breadth and depth of detail, this three-volume set offers the first comprehensive history of architecture and town planning throughout colonial North America, from Russian Alaska to French Quebec, to Spanish Florida and California, to British, Dutch, and other settlements on the East Coast. Across this vast terrain, James Kornwolf conjures the outlines of the constructed environment as it emerged in settlements and communities, in structures and sites, and in the flourishes and idiosyncrasies of the families and individuals who erected and inhabited colonial buildings and towns. Here as never before readers can observe the impulses and principles of colonial design and planning as they are implemented in the buildings and streets, harbors and squares, gardens and landscapes of the New World. Incorporating more than 3,000 illustrations, Kornwolf's massive work conveys the full range of the colonial encounter with the continent's geography, from the high forms of architecture through formal landscape design and town planning. From these pages emerge the fine arts of environmental design, an understanding of the political and economic events that helped to determine settlement in North America, an appreciation of the various architectural and landscape forms that the settlers created, and an awareness of the diversity of the continent's geography and its peoples. Considering the humblest buildings along with the mansions of the wealthy and powerful, public buildings, forts, and churches, Kornwolf captures the true dynamism and diversity of colonial communities-their rivalries and frictions, their outlooks and attitudes-as they extended their hold on the land. His work conveys for the first time the full scale, from intimate to grand, of their enduring transformation of the natural landscape of North America. NOTE: DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, reprint, 1851, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon boards with brown calf spine, title label on front cover. 21 double-page maps detailing the geography of ancient nations, featuring color country borders, extensive index. Maps include: Orbis Veteribus Notus; Britannia; Hispania; Gallia; Germania; Vindelicia; Italia, Pars I; Italia, Pars II; Macedonia; Graecia extra Pelo; Peloponnesus; Insulae Maris Aegaei; Asia Minor; Oriens; Syria; Palaestina; Armenia; Africa; Mauritania, Numidia and Africa Propria; and Aegyptus. Spine neatly re-inforced with clear tape, clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 360 pages. Charles Clover, award-winning journalist and former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, here analyzes the idea of "Eurasianism," a theory of Russian national identity based on ethnicity and geography. Clover traces Eurasianism's origins in the writings of white Russian exiles in 1920s Europe, through Siberia's Gulag archipelago in the 1950s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and up to its steady infiltration of the governing elite around Vladimir Putin. This eye-opening analysis pieces together the evidence for Eurasianism's place at the heart of Kremlin thinking today and explores its impact on recent events, the annexation of Crimea, and the rise in Russia of anti-Western paranoia and imperialist rhetoric, as well as Putin's sometimes perplexing political actions and ambitions. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, W. W. Norton , 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Color photos throughout. What do the Bari Pork Store (King of the Sausage), the Los Doctores Tires Shop, the Great Eagle Photo Company, and the St. Jude Religious Articles shops have in common? If you were Paul Lacy, they would be among the hundreds of storefronts you photographed on bicycle trips throughout Brooklyn. Over the years Lacy has managed to capture every conceivable type of shop, decorated with spectacular and wildly varied signs and displays and representing countless ethnic groups. A more colorful array of graphics, both amateur and professional, is unimaginable. Brooklyn's storefronts are a vibrant canvas that reflects the changing trends and distinct character of this dynamic community. You don't have to be from Brooklyn to enjoy this book-playful while documenting a fast-changing scene, it transcends geography to speak to anyone with an interest in urban culture. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Chicago, U.S. Publishing House, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 250 pages, containing maps of all the states and territories of the United States, all the continents, empires, kingdoms and republics, together with maps of the leading cities of the United States, and useful and instructive colored diagrams, charts and engravings. With all populations according to 1890 census. Large format, brown pebbled cloth covers, minor wear.
Hardcover. New York , HarperChildrens, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 240 pages. Clean, tight copy. As children, C.S. Lewis and his brother W.H. Lewis created the fantasy world of Boxen. This book collects stories and illustrations, history, geography etc of Boxen. Reproduced original illustrations by the authors. Introduction by Douglas Gresham. The History of Boxen by Walter Hooper.
Hardcover. London, Harper Collins, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Green cloth-covered boards in excellent condition; slight top edge wear to pictorial dust jacket. 256 pp. This rare title includes extensive photographic documentation of the diversity of bird life in the former Soviet Union. This book also discusses the rich physical geography of the region, accompanied by more than 300 color and b/w photos.
Softcover. Norfolk VA, Jamestown Exposition Company, 1st, 1907, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, A softcover booklet with orange covers picturing indian at a campfire, printed in black. 17 pages of copy with b&w illustrations. The main attraction here are the two folding maps attached to front and back covers. Front: Population near Hampto roads Virginia in 3-colors, about 15 X 22". The Rear: Historical Tidewater Virginia, detailing railroads and steamship lines (foreign and domestic). Bott maps clean, no tears.
Hardcover. Pound Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Photographing the intersection between culture and nature for over 25 years, Virginia Beahan creates luminous and finely detailed images with an 8x10 view camera that describe the complexities of this relationship in diverse geographic settings. Her eight-year project in the waning years of Fidel Castro's revolutionary Cuba resulted in a major 2009 monograph entitled CUBA singing with bright tears. The images depict a country both tragic and beautiful, struggling beneath the weight of history. Larger-than-life images of revolutionary heroes Che Guevara and Jose Marti populate the island. The Bay of Pigs is sublime and treacherous; an atmospheric body of water rimmed with jagged black coral is the same unwelcoming shore that greeted invading CIA-trained Cuban exiles over forty-seven years ago. On a billboard, Fidel Castro reminds us that the US might invade again, and if so, he "will die fighting." Virginia Beahan's work falls within the tradition of great American photographers such as Walker Evans and Robert Adams. Her luminous and detailed large-format photographs reveal a landscape imbued with nuanced stories of culture shaped by geography and human action. Cuba's long and complicated relationship with the United States is part of this unfolding drama. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 416 pages. Open from 1942 until 1945, the Hollywood Canteen was the most famous of the patriotic home front nightclubs where civilian hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted men of the Allied Nations. Since the opening night, when the crowds were so thick that Bette Davis had to enter through the bathroom window to give her welcome speech, the storied dance floor where movie stars danced with soldiers has been the subject of much U.S. nostalgia about the 'Greatest Generation.' Drawing from oral histories with civilian volunteers and military guests who danced at the wartime nightclub, Sherrie Tucker explores how jitterbugging swing culture has come to represent the war in U.S. national memory. Yet her interviewees' varied experiences and recollections belie the possibility of any singular historical narrative. Some recall racism, sexism, and inequality on the nightclub's dance floor and in Los Angeles neighborhoods, dynamics at odds with the U.S. democratic, egalitarian ideals associated with the Hollywood Canteen and the 'Good War' in popular culture narratives. Clean copy in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 416 pages. Open from 1942 until 1945, the Hollywood Canteen was the most famous of the patriotic home front nightclubs where civilian hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted men of the Allied Nations. Since the opening night, when the crowds were so thick that Bette Davis had to enter through the bathroom window to give her welcome speech, the storied dance floor where movie stars danced with soldiers has been the subject of much U.S. nostalgia about the 'Greatest Generation.' Drawing from oral histories with civilian volunteers and military guests who danced at the wartime nightclub, Sherrie Tucker explores how jitterbugging swing culture has come to represent the war in U.S. national memory. Yet her interviewees' varied experiences and recollections belie the possibility of any singular historical narrative. Some recall racism, sexism, and inequality on the nightclub's dance floor and in Los Angeles neighborhoods, dynamics at odds with the U.S. democratic, egalitarian ideals associated with the Hollywood Canteen and the 'Good War' in popular culture narratives. Clean copy in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. Yokohama, unknown, 1st, 1909, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 842 pages, gray cloth covers worn, spine cloth loose from spine backing, hinges cracked. Inside very good,clean, lacks title page which may never have been printed. A detailed collection of names, places, events, throughout Japanese history. English text. From a library in Japan with card and envelope inside rear cover and sticker on spine. Uncommon.
Softcover. Manchester, England, Manchester University Press, 1st Paperback Edition, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 300 pages. Softcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. Wrapper very good, has a crease at the top right corner of front cover. Pages clean and unmarked, edges have some light foxing/tanning. Binding tight. In great shape. This superbly-illustrated new book explores English society and its relationship to the landscape, as seen through photography and tourism over the last hundred years.
Hardcover. New York, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 88 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Minor wear to covers. Delightfully illustrated work filled with color pictorial maps by Helene Carter, and written by Jannette Lucas, the assistant librarian of Vertebrate Paleontology of the New York Museum of Natural History.