Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket., 310 pages, color and b&w illustrations. In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dali's Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafes of that vibrant neighborhood. Sue Roe is both an incisive art critic of these pieces and a beguiling biographer with a fingertip feel for this compelling world. Beginning with Duchamp, Roe then takes us through the rise of the Dada movement, the birth of Surrealist photography with Man Ray, the creation of key works by Ernst, Cocteau, and others, through the arrival of Dali. On canvas and in their readymades and other works these artists juxtaposed objects never before seen together to make the viewer marvel at the ordinary--and at the workings of the subconscious. We see both how this art came to be and how the artists of Montparnasse lived. Roe puts us with Gertrude Stein in her box seat at the opening of The Rite of Spring; with Duchamp as he installs his famous urinal; at a Cocteau theatrical with Picasso and Coco Chanel; with Breton at a session with Freud; and with Man Ray as he romances Kiki de Montparnasse.
Hardcover. London, The Cresset Press, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 256 pages. Blue cloth cover, gilt lettering, some minor wear to edges of spine. Dust jacket has some wear, and a small tear on bottom of spine. Library sticker on front endpaper. Eight page section of b&w photographs. Inside is bright and clean. A nice copy.
Hardcover. NY, Walker Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Thomas Pakenham, no stranger to Africa with his award-winning books The Boer War and The Scramble for Africa, nor to remarkable trees with his bestselling Remarkable Trees of the World, combines his two interests on safari in Southern Africa. His particular quarry is the rare, the giant, the very old, the extraordinary, or the simply beautiful-from a giant baobab and a prickly quiver tree in Namibia to a glorious jacaranda in South Africa and sesame bushes attacked by elephants in Botswana. He uncovers trees written about by the great explorers of the past, or associated with magic, folklore, or ritual. The narrative accompanying each image interweaves the stories of Pakenham's own journey-at some moments scaling trees to escape from enraged wildlife, while at others standing in awe before a particular tree, connected by some primitive, atavistic bond-with those of the trees themselves, imbuing each with personality and presence. The result is a beautifully crafted blend of botany and social history, the product of a brilliant photographer, an original mind, and a superlative writer. 208 pages in color. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Softcover. Bangor ME, Bangor and Aroostook Railroad , 1st, 1941, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Published by the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, this wonderfully evocative magazine brings the unspoiled Maine woods of pre-World War II back to life. The magazine has articles on a variety of topics, including camping, canoeing, Indian relics, Maine guides, Moosehead Lake and climbing Mt. Katahdin. Illustrated throughout with black and white photos designed to make you drop everything and head North. With canoeing map, list of big game records for 1940, Sportsman's Directory of camps, hotels and fishing waters reached by the railroad and 39 pages of vintage advertisements. 128 pages. Light edgewear, small name on first page, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. London, John Lane the Bodley Head, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 291 pages. Photographs and illustrations throughout. Minor spine edge wear. Gilt title on front cover and spine. A clean and tight copy.
Softcover. US, University of California Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 304 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light sun-fade and edgewear to wrappers, else a clean, tight copy. Independent Spirits brings to vivid life the West as seen through the eyes of women painters from 1890 to the end of World War II. Expert scholars and curators identify long-lost talent and reveal how these women were formidable cultural innovators as well as agitators for the rights of artists and women during a period of extraordinary development.
Hardcover. Hartford CT, Hurlbut, Scranton & Co., 1st, 1864, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 763 pages, illustrated with many full-page plates, most hand-colored (including second title page). Leather bound with some splitting along spine edges. Black spine label with gilt lettering. Internally very good, minor foxing.
Hardcover. New York, Publishers Company, 2nd edition, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 5 volumes: 291, 291, 317, 304, and 306 pages. Light brown cloth covers, with silver and black titles, profusely illustrated with b&w plates. Slight rubbing to covers, small brown stain to spines of Theater and Civil War volumes, previous owner's embossed stamp to all title pages, ex-lib bookplates to all copyright pages, pages very crisp and unmarked, tight binding; overall, volumes are in clean, tight condition. NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT AND SIZE, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 550 pages. A fascinating historical study using newly-declassified documents from the time the British were in Indochina through the end of the war. A detailed, specific history of the debacle. Clean copy.
Softcover. Emeryville CA, Seal Press, 1st pbk, 2006, Softcover, 549 pages, b&w illustrations. Set amidst the political upheaval of the McCarthy trials, the Vietnam War, and the rise of the women's movement, Intimate Politics is a courageous and uncompromising account of one woman's personal and political transformation, and a fascinating portrayal of a key chapter in our nation's history.At eight years old, Bettina Aptheker watched her family's politics play out in countless living rooms across the country when her father, historian and U.S. Communist Party leader Herbert Aptheker, testified on television in front of the House on Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. Born into one of the most influential U.S. Communist families whose friends included W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Bettina lived her parents' politics witnessing first-hand one of the most dramatic upheavals in American history. She also lived with a terrible secret: incest at the hands of her famous father and a frightening and lonely life lived inside a home wrought with family tensions. Light marking to ten pages, otherwise a clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 268 pages. Focusing mainly on the nine months from November 1964 to July 1965 VanDeMark describes how the Johnson administration progressed along a seemingly inevitable path to double the number of ground troops in Vietnam, polarize the American people, and destroy Johnson's presidency in the short term. Mining a wealth of recently opened material at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and elsewhere, Brian VanDeMark vividly depicts the painful unfolding of a national tragedy. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1943, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket, 138 pages. B&w drawings by Major Donald L. Dickson, USMC. Edition not stated but 1943 on title page. "On the eighth day of October in the first year of our war, I went down into a valley with Captain Charles Rigaud of the United States Marines. A small skirmish took place down there. The Valley was on Guadalcanal Island, but it might have been anywhere. The skirmish was just an episode in an insignificant battle." Hersey's second book.
Hardcover. Chicago, Henry Regnery Company, 1st, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. Map endpapers, 176 pages, b&w photos. The first book by a German general published in America after the war, a German account of the D-Day & Normandy 'invasion' by Allied forces; the author was Rommel's Chief-of-Staff and therefore had an inside view of Rommel's efforts to get Hitler to negotiate a peace in the face of overwhelming Allied superiority. Speidel was a career military officer and trained historian; a German nationalist, he disagreed with racist Nazi policies, was involved in the 20 July plot to kill Hitler, and was important in rebuilding Germany's army after the war. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co , 1st, 1928, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Set of two hardcover volumes. 1113 pages total. Illustrated frontispiece. B&w illustrations throughout. Includes extensive appendix. With worn, decorative slipcase. Light edge wear to dust jacket otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.
Hardcover. London, Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 5th Ed., 1897, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two volumes, illustrated with b&w photographs and maps (some fold-out). Navy blue cloth with gilt titles on spine, gilt battleship on front covers, top edge gilt. Vol. 1 with frontispiece and title page loose (easily repairable), rear hinges cracked, Vol. 2 opened roughly at page 80-81, otherwise a clean, sharp set.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 199 pages. This book examines Syria's religious, intellectual, and political history during the period of transformation before World War I. Focusing on an attempt to reform Islamic belief and practice at the turn of the century, Commins shows how the reformers used debates over the religious law of Islam to advance their visions of a progressive Islamic state. Based on a wide variety of previously unpublished sources, the book will shed new light on a period that is of considerable importance for the modern history of the Middle East. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Syracuse University Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 350 pages. Describes Israel's use of spies in Lebanon during the seventies, the secret relations between Israel and Jordan, and U.S. secret channels to the PLO. Posner focuses on violence and terrorism employed by the Palestinians in their quest for nationhood, and on inter-communal violence in the Middle East in general and more specifically in Lebanon. He treats the little-known Circassion community in Jordan, that community's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Sadat peace initiative, and the role of the United States in seeking a peaceful resolution of the civil war in Lebanon. A good book to gain a perspective on contemporary diplomacy and Middle East politics. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 287 pages, 442 b&w illustrations. The famous photojournalist presents, among other events, the abdication of Edward VIII; the Anschluss; the Warsaw ghetto, before and after its destruction; Tito's guerrilla war against the Nazis; and Isr'l's battle for independence. He recorded the fall of Hungary to the Communists; he was with Churchill at Teheran; and with Khrushchev at Belgrade. There are also exotic parties given by Cecil Beaton and Lady Juliet Duff. Portraits of the last glories of the English aristocracy and the old French Bourgeoisie; the industrialists and artists who made Italy's miraculous postwar recovery possible. In 60,000 words of text he captures the extraordinary adventures and bizarre characters that together made up the author's life. The combination of words and pictures provides a rich, powerful portrait of a fascinating career. Missing dust jacket.
Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 202 pages. Natalia Ginzburg, arguably the most important woman writer of postwar Italy, always spoke of herself with irrepressible modesty. Yet the woman who claimed she "never managed to climb up mountains" in fact wrote the history of twentieth-century Italy with her sparse and captivating prose, chronicling Fascism, war, and the Nazi occupation as well as the intimacies of family life. Intensely reserved, Ginzburg said that she "crept toward autobiography stealthily like a wolf." But she did openly discuss her life and her work in an extraordinary series of interviews for Italian radio in 1990. Never before published in English, It's Hard to Talk about Yourself presents a vivid portrait of Ginzburg in her own words on the forces that shaped her remarkable life-politics, publishing, literature, and family. This fluid translation will join Ginzburg's autobiography, Family Sayings, as one of the most important records of her life and, as the editors write in their preface, "the last, unexpected, original book by Natalia Ginzburg."
Softcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 133 pages illustrated in color. This lavishly illustrated volume offers a unique survey of Italian commercial graphic design during a period of both creative artistic vitality and extreme political turmoil. The first English-language book to showcase the bold typography and streamlined imagery of modern Italian design motifs on commercial products of the day, this fascinating and important resource for designers, history buffs, and collectors includes a discussion of the Futurist influence on the Italian Art Deco style and the success of such individualized expression despite a ruthless Fascist regime. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 318 pages. Account of the US Navy from Independence through the War of 1812. 8 maps, numerous illustrations. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 228 pages. "The period from Andrew Jackson's presidency to the Civil War has traditionally been considered the age of democracy triumphant in the United States. This book sharply contradicts that assumption, contending that while democracy advanced substantially in the political sense, social and economic distinctions became, if anything, more marked. Powerful forces, especially in the economic field, were working toward the stratification of society." Name on the front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. GR, Steidl , 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. "James Karales (1930-2002) was big-time in the best time but is not as well-known as he should be," argues photographic historian Vicki Goldberg. This book will change that. Early in his career, Karales began a photo-essay documenting Rendville, Ohio, an important stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War and one of the few racially integrated communities in America in the late 1950s. These pictures demonstrate his striking ability to capture the essential qualities of a community, are reminiscent of images made for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s, and reflect Karales' state of mind as he grappled with the racial issues that were to preoccupy him and America for many years to come. Karales worked for Look from 1960 until it ceased publication in 1971. Among many important assignments for the magazine, Karales documented Martin Luther King and the fifty-mile, five-day Selma (Alabama) march in 1965. Fifteen minutes before the end of the march, the sky darkened and Karales' wide-angle shot of the protesters silhouetted against the horizon has since become an emblem of the march and has insured the photographer's place in this tumultuous period of American history. In this new publication we discover that Karales' stature as a photojournalist and social documentary photographer par excellence is based on much more than one iconic image.
Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 232 pages. James Rosenquist's paintings, with their billboard-sized images of commercial subjects, are utterly emblematic of 1960s Pop Art. Their provocative imagery also touches on some of the major political and historical events of that turbulent decade--from the Kennedy assassination to the war in Vietnam. In the first full-length scholarly examination of Rosenquist's art from that period, Michael Lobel weaves together close visual analysis, a wealth of archival research, and a consideration of the social and historical contexts in which these paintings were produced to offer bold new readings of a body of work that helped redefine art in the 1960s. Bringing together a range of approaches, James Rosenquist provides a compelling perspective on the artist and on the burgeoning consumer culture of postwar America.