Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 310 pages, b&w illustrations. Few Americans, black or white, recognize the degree to which early African American history is a maritime history. W. Jeffrey Bolster shatters the myth that black seafaring in the age of sail was limited to the Middle Passage. Seafaring was one of the most significant occupations among both enslaved and free black men between 1740 and 1865. Tens of thousands of black seamen sailed on lofty clippers and modest coasters. They sailed in whalers, warships, and privateers. Some were slaves, forced to work at sea, but by 1800 most were free men, seeking liberty and economic opportunity aboard ship.Bolster brings an intimate understanding of the sea to this extraordinary chapter in the formation of black America. Because of their unusual mobility, sailors were the eyes and ears to worlds beyond the limited horizon of black communities ashore. Sometimes helping to smuggle slaves to freedom, they were more often a unique conduit for news and information of concern to blacks.But for all its opportunities, life at sea was difficult. Blacks actively contributed to the Atlantic maritime culture shared by all seamen, but were often outsiders within it. Capturing that tension, Black Jacks examines not only how common experiences drew black and white sailors together-even as deeply internalized prejudices drove them apart-but also how the meaning of race aboard ship changed with time. Bolster traces the story to the end of the Civil War, when emancipated blacks began to be systematically excluded from maritime work. Rescuing African American seamen from obscurity, this stirring account reveals the critical role sailors played in helping forge new identities for black people in America.
Hardcover. Washington DC, National Portrait Gallery/Princeton University Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, Accompanied exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Illustrated. First major publication to focus on the development of silhouettes, gathers leading experts to shed light on the surprisingly complex historical, political, and social underpinnings of this ostensibly simple art form. This richly illustrated volume explores likenesses of everyone from presidents and celebrities to everyday citizens and enslaved people. Ultimately, the book reveals how silhouettes registered the paradoxes of the unstable young nation, roiling with tensions over slavery and political independence. Primarily tracing the rise of the silhouette in the decades leading up to the Civil War, Black Out also considers the ubiquity of the genre today, particularly in contemporary art. Historical research and four contemporary artists: Kara Walker, Kristi Malakoff, Kumi Yamashita, and Camille Utterback. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 3rd pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In a clear, straightforward style, Katz describes the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys (covering Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri) by African Americans seeking freedom, including biographical sketches of men and women who formed churches, started schools, or were politically active in their region. Some of these settlers were fugitive slaves; several set up stations on the Underground Railroad with the aid of the Quakers; others were farmers, poets, and soldiers. In several states, they helped form black regiments in the Civil War. Chronologically arranged, the book introduces many lesser-known personages not found in most collective biographies and places them in a broader context of U.S. history as a whole.
Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 3rd pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In a clear, straightforward style, Katz describes the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys (covering Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri) by African Americans seeking freedom, including biographical sketches of men and women who formed churches, started schools, or were politically active in their region. Some of these settlers were fugitive slaves; several set up stations on the Underground Railroad with the aid of the Quakers; others were farmers, poets, and soldiers. In several states, they helped form black regiments in the Civil War. Chronologically arranged, the book introduces many lesser-known personages not found in most collective biographies and places them in a broader context of U.S. history as a whole.
Hardcover. Nashville TN, Thomas Nelson, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 192 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. For more than 75 years Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead have been one of America's favorite couples. Through war and peace, through boom and bust, through sexual revolution and social upheaval, Blondie has become the most widely read comic strip in syndication-in 35 languages and in 47 countries.It's all here in this definitive book for the Blondie fan: Blondie and Dagwood, their children Alexander and Cookie, their neighbors Herb and Tootsie Woodley, the family dog Daisy, Dagwood's boss Mr. Dithers, the mailman Mr. Beasley, and the neighborhood kid Elmo Tuttle. The book includes early history; Dagwood at work, Blondie's starting her catering business, favorite cartoon strips, and the story of Chic and Dean Young, the creators of Blondie.
Hardcover. NY, Public Affairs, 1st, 2010, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 376 pages, color & b/w illustrations. Blood, Iron and Gold reveals the huge impact of the railways as they spread rapidly across the world, linking cities that had hitherto been isolated, stimulating both economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, Christian Wolmar describes the vision and determination of the pioneers who developed railways that would one day span continents, as well as the labour of the navvies who built this global network. Wolmar shows how cultures were enriched - and destroyed - by the unrelenting construction and how they had a vital role in civil conflict, as well as in two world wars. Indeed, the global expansion of the railways was key to the spread of modernity and the making of the modern world.
Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 339 pages, b&w illustrations. The little-known story of an iconic photographer, whose work captured--and influenced--a critical moment in American history. Ernest Withers took some of the most legendary images of the 1950s and '60s: Martin Luther King, Jr., riding a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama; Emmett Till's uncle pointing an accusatory finger across the courtroom at his nephew's killer; scores of African-American protestors carrying a forest of signs reading "i am a man." But at the same time, Withers was working as an FBI informant. In this gripping narrative history, Preston Lauterbach examines the complicated political and economic forces that informed Withers's seeming betrayal of the people he photographed, and "does a masterful job of telling the story of civil rights in Memphis in the 1960s" (Ed Ward, Financial Times), including the events surrounding Dr. King's tumultuous final march in Memphis. Small remainder dot to top edge.
Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 141 pages. This volume contains the essential points of Jean Bodin's theory of sovereignty, a landmark in legal theory and royalist ideology. The four chapters presented form the core of Bodin's classic work, Six Livres de la Republique. Bodin was primarily responsible for introducing the seductive but erroneous notion that sovereignty is indivisible, that the entire power of the state had to be vested in a single individual or group. This thesis, combined with the prevailing crisis of authority during the French religious wars, led Bodin to a systematically absolutist interpretation of the French and other European monarchies. This is the first complete translation of this material into English since 1606, and is accompanied by a lucid introduction, chronology, and bibliography. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 371 pages plus index. B&w illustrations. A study of the Civil War's effects on the "development" of women 1861-65 and how this led to further advances in the women's movement in later years. Name on front fly leaf, page 133 wrinkled. No dust jacket.
Hardcover. NY, Amistad/HarperCollins, 3rd pr., 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 540 pages, b&w illustrations, index. An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously-inspired political movement for change-The Underground Railroad, a movement peopled by daring heroes and heroines, and everyday folk For most, the mention of the Underground Railroad evokes images of hidden tunnels, midnight rides, and hairsbreadth escapes. Yet the Underground Railroad's epic story is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion,which brought together Easterners who had engaged in slavery primarily in the abstract alongside slaveholding Southerners and their slaves, arose a clash of values that evolved into a fierce fight for nothing less than the country's soul. Beginning six decades before the Civil War, freedom-seeking blacks and pious whites worked together to save tens of thousands of lives, often at the risk of great physical danger to themselves. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only subverted federal law but also went against prevailing mores.
Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Taken from 1939 to 1943 under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, these 175 "lost" photos feature shots by Russell Lee, Andreas Feininger and Marion Post Wolcott, using the then-revolutionary technology of Kodachrome film. Color photographs taken before 1939 have largely deteriorated, so these surviving photos are later than the most familiar b&w Depression-era shots. This 11 3/4 "x8 1/2 " volume thus "colorizes" one's normally black-and-white impressions of a very vibrant time, as Hendrickson (Sons of Mississippi) notes in his introduction. The logic behind the arrangement of the photos, which at first seems largely random, as it follows neither photographer, location nor chronology, becomes clear by the end of the book: the U.S.'s industrial rise. Images of urban lethargy and farmhands picking cotton under hot blue skies (the unbearable conditions of cotton-picking somehow seem more apparent in color) gradually give way to images of mobility, mechanization and a changing economy. Arnold T. Palmer's gleaming portraits of Rosie the riveter-like aircraft workers follow Jack Delano's earthier photos of male railroad workers, their sweaty and intent faces caked with soot. Tellingly, the book ends with photos of bombers flying over California.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color illustrations by Egielski. Very nice, clean condition. Wittily sending up the "child prodigy'' (if not biography, history, and high seriousness itself), Yorinks and Egielski trace the course of Minski's genius. A child of the 18th Century, Minski prankishly ``discovers'' gravity and electricity, soon followed by his serene introduction of the telephone, airplane, automobile, aspirin, light bulb, etc. Leonardo da Vinci appears in 18th-Century Vienna to applaud Minski's ``noodle.'' But when Minski hears the (historical) Farinelli sing, he labors feverishly on a formula to transform himself from scientist to artist, and achieves a triumphant apotheosis as ``unequaled singer.'' Egielski's exuberantly detailed, warmly colored pictures make the most of the anachronisms, the caricatures, and the Old World setting.
Softcover. London/NY, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 234 pages with index, b&w illustrations. Brazil once enjoyed a near monopoly in rubber when that commodity was gathered in the wild. By 1913, however, cultivated rubber from Southeast Asia swept the Brazilian gathered product from the market. In this innovative study, Warren Dean demonstrates that environmental factors have played a key role in the many failed attempts to once again produce a significant rubber crop in Brazil. Dean traces the numerous attempts to plant rubber in Brazil, including the ill-fated Ford estates, and others established by the major multinational tire companies. He also analyzes the struggles of the Brazilian government to foster rubber development, in the hope of obtaining a domestic source of supply for national industries that are now dependent on imports from Southeast Asia. Bookseller label on rear cover otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, reprint, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Volume VI in The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. 463 pages, illustrated with maps (one fold-out) and b&w photos. Gilt on spine with fading, lacks dust jacket, otherwise clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. US, British Library, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 176 pages, illustrated in color. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition. Breaking the Rules draws upon the British Library's unrivalled collection of artists' books, manifestos, little magazines, literary manuscripts, sound recordings, and posters from across Europe in order to explore the rapid exchange of ideas through printed matter that marked the avant-garde movement--and led to its presence in cities as diverse as London, Brussels, Munich, Zurich, Florence, Rome, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Prague, Tbilisi, Budapest, and Belgrade, among others.
Hardcover. Norwalk, CT, Easton Press, Collector's Ed., 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 199 pages. Black leather bound, gilt lettering and design. Raised bands. All edges gilt. Patterned end papers. Collector's notes laid in. Introduction by Larry Niven. Illustrated with full-color, full-page, plates by A. C. Farley, printed on glossy stock. A 1953 novel of alternate history. The point of divergence occurs when the Confederate States of America wins the Battle of Gettysburg and subsequently declares victory in the "War of Southron Independence" on July 4, 1864 after the surrender of the United States of America.
Hardcover. London/Portand OR, Fank Cass, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This work examines in a comparative historical way the socialist, liberal and conservative strands of Anglo-American anticommunist thought before the Cold War. In so doing, this book provides us with an intellectual pre-history of Cold War attitudes and policy positions. Clean copy.
Softcover. Plattsburgh, NY/ Elizabethtown, NY, Clinton County Historical Association/ Essex County Historical Society, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 56 pages. Blue cwrappers with some faint smudges, small sticker on back, but otherwise very little wear. Inside is bright and clean, with b&w illustrations throughout.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 228 pages. This study is an attempt to add a new dimension to our understanding of the causes of the American Revolution. It is an analysis of the role of the subministers--the secretaries and undersecretaries--of the major departments of the British government responsible for colonial policy during the period from 1763 to the outbreak of the Revolution--the period of the Stamp and Sugar Acts, the Townshend Duties, and the Coercive Acts--and of their role in the war itself. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.
Hardcover. San Rafael CA, Presidio Press, Revised Ed., 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 226 pages, An updated edition of the 1961 printing. B&w illustrations. "The author relates the fascinating story of the propaganda and subversion activities of both factions during the American Revolutionary War."
Hardcover. NY, Times Books, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket that shows fading, 360 pages, b&w illustrations, endpaper maps. General John Burgoyne was a British army officer, politician and dramatist. He first saw action during the Seven Years' War when he participated in several battles, mostly notably during the Portugal Campaign of 1762. Burgoyne is best known for his role in the American War of Independence. During the Saratoga campaign he surrendered his army of 5,000 men to the American troops on October 17, 1777. Appointed to command a force designated to capture Albany and end the rebellion, Burgoyne advanced from Canada but soon found himself surrounded and outnumbered. He fought two battles at Saratoga, but was forced to open negotiations with Horatio Gates. Although he agreed to a convention, on 17 October 1777, which would allow his troops to return home, this was subsequently revoked and his men were made prisoners. Burgoyne faced criticism when he returned to Britain, and never held another active command. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st US, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, olive green boards, gilt lettering on spine. Illustrated with B&W plates and maps; Large 8vo 9' - 10' tall; 686 pages; 'Allen's work deals primarily with the human elements of the forgotten war waged between the doomed empires of Great Britain and Japan in Southeast Asia between 1941 and 1945. The author's familiarity with Japanese sources enables him to strike a balance unusual in Western accounts. Allen's Japanese are as much prisoners of their culture as the British are of theirs. They are victims of incompetent command and inadequate logistics. They do not want to die, but their ready acceptance of death lends a special horror to Allen's descriptions of some of the century's most vicious fighting.' Clean bright copy, no dust jacket.