Hardcover. NY, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, tan cloth with gilt lettering on black title blocks, 650 pages. "This is the only complete history of the Latin American Republics that takes into account the important subject of inter-American relations in the present war {World War II}. It brings Latin American history down to the conferences in which Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles helped to cement North and South solidarity." The book presents, in separate chapters, the history of each of the twenty Latin American nations since independence. Bookplate and name on front endpapers, otherwise a clean, tight copy.
NY, Random House, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An advisor to presidents, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and tireless champion of progressive government, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., was also an inveterate letter writer. Indeed, the term "man of letters" could easily have been coined for Schlesinger, a faithful and prolific correspondent whose wide range of associates included powerful public officials, notable literary figures, prominent journalists, Hollywood celebrities, and distinguished fellow scholars. The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. reveals the late historian's unvarnished views on the great issues and personalities of his time, from the dawn of the Cold War to the aftermath of September 11. Here is Schlesinger's correspondence with such icons of American statecraft as Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, and, of course, John and Robert Kennedy (including a detailed critique of JFK's manuscript for Profiles in Courage). There are letters to friends and confidants such as Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Gore Vidal, William Styron, and Jacqueline Kennedy (to whom Schlesinger sends his handwritten condolences in the hours after her husband's assassination), and exchanges with such unlikely pen pals as Groucho Marx, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bianca Jagger. Finally, there are Schlesinger's many thoughtful replies to the inquiries of ordinary citizens, in which he offers his observations on influences, issues of the day, and the craft of writing history.
Hardcover. NY, Schwartz & Wade Books, 2nd pr, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 180 pages. Profusely illustrated in b&w. Here are the extraordinary lives of Abraham and Mary, from their disparate childhoods and tumultuous courtship, through the agony of the Civil War, to the loss of three of their children, and finally their own tragic deaths. Readers can find Mary's recipe for Abraham's 'favorite cake' and bake it themselves; hear what Abraham looked like as a toddler; see a photo of the Lincoln's dog; discover that the Lincoln children kept goats at the White House; see the Emancipation Proclamation written in Lincoln's own hand. Perfect for reluctant readers as well as history lovers, The Lincolns provides a living breathing portrait of a man, a woman, and a country. Clean copy.
Softcover. Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 485 pages, b&w illustrations. By analytically de-coupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Liveright, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In the summer of 1862, after a year of protracted fighting, Abraham Lincoln decided on a radical change of strategy-one that abandoned hope for a compromise peace and committed the nation to all-out war. The centerpiece of that new strategy was the Emancipation Proclamation: an unprecedented use of federal power that would revolutionize Southern society. In The Long Road to Antietam, Richard Slotkin, a renowned cultural historian, reexamines the challenges that Lincoln encountered during that anguished summer 150 years ago. In an original and incisive study of character, Slotkin re-creates the showdown between Lincoln and General George McClellan, the "Young Napoleon" whose opposition to Lincoln included obsessive fantasies of dictatorship and a military coup. He brings to three-dimensional life their ruinous conflict, demonstrating how their political struggle provided Confederate General Robert E. Lee with his best opportunity to win the war, in the grand offensive that ended in September of 1862 at the bloody Battle of Antietam. 10 illustrations; 8 maps.
Hardcover. NY/London, Booth-Clibborn, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 300 pages. Basil Hyman, a keen amateur photographer, took hundreds of photographs of everyday life in Britain during the 1950s. The Lost Album is a nostalgic look back at this long-gone era, filled with photographs made during a time of enormous social change--just after World War II and before the "Swinging Sixties"--and a wealth of ephemera: theater tickets and playbills, newspaper advertisements, ration books, and much more. Special inserts include actual facsimiles of some of these now-obscure items--talismans from a slower time, when formality, pride, and courtesy prevailed. There are special sections on two major events: the Festival of Britain in 1951, and the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. With brief, lively introductions and captions, this is a captivating snapshot of how people lived and played in Britain in those years.
Softcover. UK, Pearson Education, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 411 pages. Recounts the development of the nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland from the time of the Anglo-French dual monarchy under Henry VI through the Wars of the Roses, the Reformation crisis, the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the Anglo-Scottish dynastic union, the British multiple monarchy and the Cromwellian Republic, ending with the acts of British Union and the Restoration of the Monarchy. Clean copy.
Softcover. Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press, 2nd Ed., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 418 pages. Like the other republics floating free after the demise of the Soviet empire, the independent republic of Georgia is reinventing its past, recovering what had been forgotten or distorted during the long years of Russian and Soviet rule. Whether Georgia can successfully be transformed from a society rent by conflict into a pluralistic democratic nation will depend on Georgians rethinking their history. This is the first comprehensive treatment of Georgian history, from the ethnogenesis of the Georgians in the first millennium B.C., through the period of Russian and Soviet rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the emergence of an independent republic in 1991, the ethnic and civil warfare that has ensued, and perspectives for Georgia's future.
Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 208 pages. In The Modern Balkans, historian Richard C. Hall gives a complete account of the historical events that have shaped the Balkan region of Southeastern Europe. Originally separated from the rest of Europe by culture, politics, and economics, the Balkans have slowly been integrating into Western Europe since the nineteenth century. But this process of economic and political development, following the Western European model, has been far from smooth in the Balkans. As Hall explains, it has often been marked by violence and destruction, the result of many wars and rebellions. Though Soviet power imposed a nearly fifty-year peace in the region, the collapse of the Soviet Union renewed conflict that continued through the end of the twentieth century. Hall concentrates here on the significant political and economic events that have had the greatest impact on the role of the Balkans in Europe; in particular, he examines the development of national states in the nineteenth century, the influence of the two world wars, and the collapse of Yugoslavia. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 3rd pr., 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 527 pages, b&w illustrations. No one predicted success for Henry Ward Beecher at his birth in 1813. The blithe, boisterous son of the last great Puritan minister, he seemed destined to be overshadowed by his brilliant siblings--especially his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who penned the century's bestselling book Uncle Tom's Cabin. But when pushed into the ministry, the charismatic Beecher found international fame by shedding his father Lyman's Old Testament-style fire-and-brimstone theology and instead preaching a New Testament-based gospel of unconditional love and healing, becoming one of the founding fathers of modern American Christianity. By the 1850s, his spectacular sermons at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights had made him New York's number one tourist attraction, so wildly popular that the ferries from Manhattan to Brooklyn were dubbed "Beecher Boats." SIGNED BY APPLEGATE on the half-title page. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Chapel Hill , University of North Carolina, 1st, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth, gilt lettering, design on spine, 280 pages. "The story of a Confederate childhood, a Reconstruction boyhood, and the education of a medical pioneer in the new South." This book is first of all a personal narrative that is alternately dramatic, thoughtful, and hilariously funny. It is also a vivid picture of plantation life before and during the Civil War and the beginnings of the building of a New South. Clean copy, spine a bit darkened.
Hardcover. NY, Verso, 1st, 2009, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 561 pages. The New Old World looks at the history of the European Union, the core continental countries within it, and the issue of its further expansion into Asia. It opens with a consideration of the origins and outcomes of European integration since the Second World War, and how today's EU has been theorized across a range of contemporary disciplines. It then moves to more detailed accounts of political and cultural developments in the three principal states of the original Common Market-France, Germany and Italy. A third section explores the interrelated histories of Cyprus and Turkey that pose a leading geopolitical challenge to the Community. The book ends by tracing ideas of European unity from the Enlightenment to the present, and their bearing on the future of the Union. The New Old World offers a critical portrait of a continent now increasingly hailed as a moral and political example to the world at large. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, The Century Co., 1st, 1917, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt. 346 pages. Frontis. portrait, illustrated with b&w plates and folding facsimile documents. "Authoritative information as to how the soldiers of the Allies are transported, housed and trained, how a battle is prepared for in advance, etc. " Author observed British Postal Censorship and war, including trench-fighting, during WWI. Eric Fisher Wood, Sr. (1889 1962) was an American civil engineer, architect, author, and officer in the United States Army, retiring with the rank of Brigadier General. Book shows mild shelf wear, name and stamp to front endpapers, otherwise clean. Good plus.
Softcover. NY, Vintage Books, reprint, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 309 pages. The "old revolutionaries" were Samuel Adams, Isaac Sears, Thomas Young, Richard Henry Lee, and Charles Carroll. Of widely varying backgrounds and interests, all of them had their greatest influence in the years between 1769 and 1776, and all of them saw their power transferred after the war to the men we know as "the Founding Fathers." In telling the stories of these men, Maier shows how the American Revolution was less a collective movement than a commitment to an ideal of a republic, which different people interpreted differently. She describes not just why Americans made the Revolution, but what the Revolution did to them.
Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Books, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Chronicling two-hundred years of glamour, intrigue, and hedonism, this rich and vivid history of the French Riviera features a vast cast of characters, from Pablo Picasso and Coco Chanel to Andre Matisse and James Baldwin. In 1835, Lord Brougham founded Cannes, introducing bathing and the manicured lawn to the wilds of the Mediterranean coast. Today, much of that shore has become a concrete mass from which escape is an exclusive dream. In the 185 years between, the stretch of seaboard from the red mountains of the Esterel to the Italian border hosted a cultural phenomenon well in excess of its tiny size. A mere handful of towns and resorts created by foreign visitors - notably English, Russian and American - attracted the talented, rich and famous as well as those who wanted to be. For nearly two centuries of creativity, luxury, excess, scandal, war and corruption, the dark and sparkling world of the Riviera was a temptation for everybody who was anybody. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st US, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 192 pages. The photos are breathtaking not necessarily for their quality - many are washed out and most of the subject matter is routine day to day military stuff - but for their rarity. While the Germans seem to have been at least as far advanced in the use of color photography as the Americans, there is still a paucity of color photography in the public record. That is being addressed by the various nations who took large amounts of color film in an official capacity, including the US, UK, Germany and Canada.The book's captions are adequate to the task, and there are good historical sections, as well as an introduction by Max Hastings as well as commentary by an actual German war correspondent. The strength of the book is in its ability to bring the participants of the subject campaign - the German invasion of Russia up to and including Stalingrad - to life. The use of a large format allows one to note small details of the photos, and relate to the subject matter on a personal level. Despite the lack of "action" shots, there is much to see in facial expressions, uniform details, and especially geography as the Russian steppe is shown in summer and winter, as well as the famous Russian mud (Rasputitsa) about which so much has been written.
Softcover. NY, Quill/ William Morrow, reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 432 pages, b&w illustrations. Dotted with stunning disclosures of crimes and cover-ups, this is a startling narrative of the way Japan conducted World War II: from Nanking to Pearl Harbor to the attempted assassination of Stalin to their final surrender. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 393 pages. Part of the monumental series comprised of all of the papers and correspondence of America's first President, George Washington (1732-1799). This stand-alone volume is "an executive daybook, a day-by-day account of many of the matters that engaged the attention of the executive departments during Washington's administration. The entries cover Washington's decisions on government contracts, appointments of office, and individual departmental problems. They throw considerable light on presidential and cabinet participation in decision-making during Washington's administration. Entries relating to the War Department are of particular value because of the destruction of most of the War Department's records by fire in 1800. ... Kept primariy by Washington's secretaries Tobias Lear and Bartholomew Dandridge, the Journal is written in th first person as if Washington were penning the entries himself." Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Albany NY, J. B. Lyon Company, 1st, 1916, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 309 pages of text. 73 pages of b&w illustrations throughout. Oversized, brown embossed cloth cover with gilt lettering and design. Bumped corners, some wear to edges. Slight foxing to pages. Diverse content, commemorates Oliver H. Perry's naval victory in the War of 1812. Clean copy. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. A look at Britain in the period before the Battle of Britain - a world of gas masks, blackouts, rationing, evacuations and warnings about what to do if a German parachutist lands on your doorstep - a time when it was an offence to leave a car parked without disabling it and when signpost were torn down to confuse the enemy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, reprint, 1859, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Early reprint. Two volume set. Three quarter polished leather with marbled boards. All edges and endpapers marbled. Color frontispiece present in volume one with tissue guard. 523 in-text illustrations, lithographic and letterpress title pages in both volumes. Originally issued in 30 installments from June 1, 1850 to Dec 1, 1852, Lossing's work was a great success and was reprinted several times before the end of the decade, in different formats and with additional illustrations and notes. Little to no foxing, exceptionally bright set.
Hardcover. NY, Pantheon, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 450 pages. Map endpapers. Ever since the appearance of his groundbreaking The Question of Palestine, Edward Said has been America's most outspoken advocate for Palestinian self-determination. As these collected essays amply prove, he is also our most intelligent and bracingly heretical writer on affairs involving not only Palestinians but also the Arab and Muslim worlds and their tortuous relations with the West. In The Politics of Dispossession Said traces his people's struggle for statehood through twenty-five years of exile, from the PLO's bloody 1970 exile from Jordan through the debacle of the Gulf War and the ambiguous 1994 peace accord with Israel. As frank as he is about his personal involvement in that struggle, Said is equally unsparing in his demolition of Arab icons and American shibboleths. Stylish, impassioned, and informed by a magisterial knowledge of history and literature, The Politics of Dispossession is a masterly synthesis of scholarship and polemic that has the power to redefine the debate over the Middle East. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, BlueBridge, 1st US, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 246 pages. This narrative history masterfully weaves together the sweeping events surrounding what has become known as the "Babylonian captivity" of the popes into the broader story of 14th-Century Europe?one of the most turbulent times in the continent's history. It was a time of fear, ferocity, and religious agony, which saw the suppression of the Knights Templar and the Cathars, the first onslaught of the plague, and the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. The century also produced some of the greatest writers and artists in the western tradition, including Giotto, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer. Central to this period was the movement of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon in the south of France, where seven successive popes held power from 1309 to 1377. The drama, intrigue, and tumult associated with the papacy in exile forms the perfect lens through which to clearly see a Europe making the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Clean copy.