history

Hardcover. Salem MA, Cushing and Carlton, 1st US, 1795, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages, 2 parts bound in one volume, bound in leather. Front cover hinge partially cracked, loose. Light pencil writing on last blank page, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a slipcase, 192 pages. Transforming words into icons and images into wide-screen epics, Ed Ruscha has wholly reconceived the terms of painting for our era. Tagged variously as a Conceptualist, Pop artist or latter-day Surrealist, Ruscha flouts category, or rather incorporates all categories, always surprising and experimenting with both subject and method. His paintings are steeped in our times: cinema, advertising, logos, late capitalism and the twists and turns of postwar art have all informed his iconography since the early 1960s, arriving on the cool surfaces of his canvases with magnetic detachment. Ruscha eschews process and focuses exclusively on the final product: "the means to the end has always been secondary in my art," he has said. Ruscha has also reinvented the use of words in art, finding disquieting ways to invest language with a weird, throbbing, ambient static, never aspiring to what he calls "word gestures," since "each word is an excursion unto itself." Fifty Years of Painting focuses on Ruscha's majestic oeuvre of paintings. A magnificent publication, it comes housed in a slipcase that sports the artist's classic painting "Standard Station" (1966), and, alongside fantastic reproductions, it contains a preface by novelist James Ellroy, essays by Ralph Rugoff, Alexandra Schwartz and Ulrich Wilmes, a text by novelist Bruce Wagner, an interview with the artist by Kristine McKenna, an illustrated chronology and an exhibition history.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. 314 pages, b&w illustrations. In 1930 the Olmsted Brothers and Harland Bartholomew & Associates submitted a report, "Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region," to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. After a day or two of coverage in the newspapers, the report dropped from sight. The plan set out a system of parks and parkways, children's playgrounds, and public beaches. It is a model of ambitious, intelligent, sensitive planning commissioned at a time when land was available, if only the city planners had had the fortitude and vision to act on its recommendations. "Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches" has become a highly valued but difficult-to-find document. In this book, Greg Hise and William Deverell examine the reasons it was called for, analyze why it failed, and open a discussion about the future of urban public space. In addition to their introduction and a facsimile reproduction of the report, Eden by Design includes a dialogue between Hise, Deverell, and widely admired landscape architect Laurie Olin that illuminates the significance of the Olmsted-Bartholomew report and situates it in the history of American landscape planning. Clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Arundel Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 202 pages, b&w illustrations. Geoffrey Pidgeon (1926-2021) worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War on wireless transmission and output. An account of the wartime activities of Edgar Harrison who was a senior colleague of Geoffrey Pidgeon in M16 (Section VIII) and had the most extraordinary adventures during the Second World War. Clean copy.

Hardcover. US, Dark Horse, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Elephant folio, hardcover, 104 pages in color. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. One of comics' greatest artistic achievements gets its due in this deluxe 15" x 20" hardcover collecting the first two years of Tarzan Sunday strips by Hal Foster! Beautifully restored and printed at giant size, this first volume in Dark Horse's comprehensive collection of Foster's Tarzan Sundays reprints over one-hundred strips on high-quality paper and in eye-popping color, replicating when they first appeared! Includes a historical essay on Tarzan and Foster by comics scholar, Mark Evanier.

Softcover. New York, Billboard Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 656 pages. Softcover with no dust jacket. Remainder mark on top edge, otherwise, clean, unmarked copy. Light edgewear to wrappers. Black and white pictures throughout. Mann, a novelist and author of books on film history, presents this biography of director John Schlesinger (1926-2003), based on interviews with the director and his family following his stroke in 2001, in addition to other primary source documents, articles, and reviews. He describes Schlesinger's childhood; his early days as a documentary director at the BBC; his films during the era of New Hollywood; and Midnight Cowboy, which won an Academy Award. His other films, such as Billy Liar, Darling, Cold Comfort Farm, and The Day of the Locust, are discussed, as well as his accurate depictions of homosexuality, and his personal and professional relationships.

Hardcover. Cleveland OH, Seaforth Publications, 3rd pr., 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, b&w illustrations throughout. What began as a scrapbook and a photo album now emerges as a coherent narrative, which one Edistonian has rightly said "will educate those who should know Edisto's history." The Sea Islands are unique, and some are yet unspoiled--Edisto least of all, perhaps. Opening this new door into the past may also open a more informed path into the future. Ninety two pages from eariest history to the 1970's, when the barrier island were mostly ignored. Lots of information about hurricanes, Colonial Times, Plantation days, and after the Civil War. Mrs. Puckette became a well known South Carolina writer. Inscroption on inside cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 232 pages. The question "What is American art?" might conjure the hyperrealism of Raphaelle Peale and William Harnett, the bold graphic style of Stuart Davis and Jacob Lawrence, or the Precisionist forms of Charles Sheeler. Little known, however, is that such notions of American art are significantly owed to a Russian Jewish immigrant named Edith Halpert. The founder of the Downtown Gallery in New York, Halpert shaped an identity for American art, declaring that its thrilling heterogeneity and democratic values were what most distinguished it from the European avant-garde. For forty-plus years, Halpert's gallery brought recognition and market success to now-legendary American artists--among them Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O'Keeffe, in addition to the artists mentioned above. She relentlessly championed nonwhite, female, and unknown artists and was a formative advisor in the shaping of many of the nation's most celebrated art museums and collections, from San Francisco to Boston. Not content with those achievements, she also pioneered the appreciation and collecting of American folk art. Richly illustrated with works that passed through her groundbreaking gallery, this book tells the extraordinary and largely overlooked story of her career and legacy. The artists Halpert launched into the American canon are household names--and this book compellingly argues that hers should be, as well. In publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. New York , Vanguard Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages. Light edgewear, tanning to dust jacket else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY/London, Macmillan / Collier Macmillan, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 517 pages, b&w illustrations. Life of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, first US Attorney General, and second Secretary of State. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Tokyo, Japan, Toho Gakkai, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 262 pages, minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 432 pages. Biography of Edward Gibbon, who wrote arguably the most famous work of history ever, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789). Clean copy.

Hardcover. Alabama, University of Alabama Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 365 pages. Hardcover. Southern Historical Publications No.18. Dust cover front flap price clipped. Just a bit of age wear to dust cover, but completely whole, no rips or tears (covered in plastic). Vary clean inside. "Edward Stanley was light of frame but fearless, and his aggressive electioneering and, in Congress, his temper and sarcasm brought him more than once to the verge of duels, won him the nickname "Little Conqueror," and led John Quincy Adams to call him "the terror of the Lucifer party"."

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages, 242 photographs reproduced in four-color process. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Edward Steichen was already a famous painter and photographer in America and abroad when, in early 1923, he was offered the most prestigious position in photography's commercial domain: that of chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Over the next fifteen years, he would produce a body of work of unequaled brilliance, dramatizing and glamorizing contemporary culture and its achievers. Here are icon images of Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, and Charles Chaplin, as well as numerous other celebrities drawn from an archive of more than 2,000 original prints.

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages, 242 photographs reproduced in four-color process. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Edward Steichen was already a famous painter and photographer in America and abroad when, in early 1923, he was offered the most prestigious position in photography's commercial domain: that of chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Over the next fifteen years, he would produce a body of work of unequaled brilliance, dramatizing and glamorizing contemporary culture and its achievers. Here are icon images of Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, and Charles Chaplin, as well as numerous other celebrities drawn from an archive of more than 2,000 original prints. 

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages. Edward Steichen was already a famous painter and photographer in America and abroad when, in early 1923, he was offered the most prestigious position in photography's commercial domain: that of chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Over the next fifteen years, Steichen would produce a body of work of unequaled brilliance, dramatizing and glamorizing contemporary culture and its achievers in politics, literature, film, sport, dance, theater, opera, and the world of high fashion. Here are iconic images of Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, and Charlie Chaplin as well as numerous other celebrities drawn from an archive of more than two thousand original prints. Until now, no more than a handful have been exhibited or published in book form. The photographs of the 1920s and 1930s represent the high point in Steichen's career and are among the most striking creations of twentieth-century photography. 242 illustrations.

Hardcover. East Sussex UK, Book Guild, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, b&w period photos from the turn of the last century. Like new in shrink-wrap. From a box brimming with fantastic photographs come this collection of the works of photojournalist Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles assembled by his grandson. 38 pages of text. 110 plates.

Hardcover. Cologne, Dumont Buchverlag, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 363 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. This volume provides an extensive survey of painting in Austria from 1900-1930, with Egon Schiele as the focal point, through a representative selection of over 100 works by Schiele and 23 of his contemporaries from the collection of Dr. Rudolf Leopold. Contributions by: Antonia Hoerschelmann, Rudolf Leopold, Klaus Albrecht Schroder, Harald Szeemann, and Patrick Werkner. 139 color plates and 59 b&w illustrations.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 264 pages, photographs throughout. Egypt After the Pharoahs treats the period which witnessed the arrival of the Greeks and Hellenistic culture in Egypt, the reign of the Ptolemies from Ptolemy I to Cleopatra, the conquest by Rome, the scientific and cultural achievements of Alexandria, and the rise of Christianity. The rich social, cultural, and intellectual ferment of this period comes alive in Alan Bowman's narrative. Clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk., 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 300 pages. This account of Egyptian society in the reign of Muhammad Ali traces the beginnings of the nation state in Egypt. It considers Muhammad Ali as part of a social group whose economic interests led them in the direction of trade with Europe as a means of raising money for further investments. They attempted to increase agricultural exports and to use the profits to create industry; then, following the logic of imperialists, their next step was to seek to conquer the surrounding areas to find markets for their industries and sources of raw materials. These policies brought them into conflict with their suzerain, the Ottoman sultan, and with England, since England needed markets in the Middle East. England sought to destroy the new regime in Egypt as a means of exerting influence on the region. In carrying out these economic changes, the country underwent a series of internal developments that were to revolutionize the structure and shape of Egyptian society. The rules of landownership were altered and large estates were formed, Egyptian fallahin were drafted into the army, and the administration was Egyptianized, establishing the groundwork for a nation state. Small embossed stamp on title page, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Grant Richards, 1st, 1909, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in white, 294 pages, illustrated with 32 b&w photos. Back hinge partially cracked, otherwise clean. Light fraying to spine cloth at top.

Hardcover. New York , privately printed, 1st, 1882, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. large folio, maroon cloth with gilt stamping. Covers worn, especially corners. Internally clean. 187 pages plus 51 full-page plates: 32 artotypes, 18 engravings, 1 chromo-lithograph. Some plates with light foxing, small water stains to some margins.In 1879, Gorringe won the contract to move the obelisk of Thutmosis III from Alexandria to Central Park for $75,000. This book is about the expedition to retrieve the obelisk and a study of the other standing obelisks in Paris and London. Frontispiece portrait of William Vanderbilt who financed the acquisition of the monument. Scarce in original printing.

Hardcover. Candlewick Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 32 pages. Discover the wonders of ancient Egypt through a fascinating journal from a lost expedition -- a treasure trove of fact and fantasy featuring a novelty element on every spread. Who can resist the allure of ancient Egypt -- and the thrill of uncovering mysteries that have lain hidden for thousands of years? Not the feisty Miss Emily Sands, who in 1926, four years after the discovery of King Tut's tomb, led an expedition up the Nile in search of the tomb of the god Osiris. Alas, Miss Sands and crew soon vanished into the desert, never to be seen again. But luckily, her keen observations live on in the form of a lovingly kept journal, full of drawings, photographs, booklets, fold-out maps, postcards, and many other intriguing samples.

Hardcover. Candlewick Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 32 pages. Discover the wonders of ancient Egypt through a fascinating journal from a lost expedition -- a treasure trove of fact and fantasy featuring a novelty element on every spread. Who can resist the allure of ancient Egypt -- and the thrill of uncovering mysteries that have lain hidden for thousands of years? Not the feisty Miss Emily Sands, who in 1926, four years after the discovery of King Tut's tomb, led an expedition up the Nile in search of the tomb of the god Osiris. Alas, Miss Sands and crew soon vanished into the desert, never to be seen again. But luckily, her keen observations live on in the form of a lovingly kept journal, full of drawings, photographs, booklets, fold-out maps, postcards, and many other intriguing samples.