humor

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 336 pages, b&w illustrations. Author Larry Hamberlin guides us through this large but oft-forgotten repertoire of operatic novelties, and brings to life the rich humor and keen social criticism of the era. In the early twentieth-century, when new social forces were undermining the view that our European heritage was intrinsically superior to our native vernacular culture, opera-that great inheritance from our European forebearers-functioned in popular discourse as a signifier for elite culture. Tin Pan Opera shows that these operatic novelty songs availed this connection to a humorous and critical end. Combining traditional, European operatic melodies with the new and American rhythmic verve of ragtime, these songs painted vivid images of immigrant Americans, liberated women, and upwardly striving African Americans, striking emblems of the profound transformations that shook the United States at the beginning of the American century. Clean copy.

Softcover. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 315 pages. Color illustrations. For nearly four decades in the sixteenth century, the careers of Venice's three greatest painters-, Titan, Tintoretto and Veronese, overlapped, producing mutual influences and bitter rivalries that changed art history. Venice was then among Europe's richest cities, and its plentiful commissions fostered an exceptionally fertile and innovative climate. In it, the three artists, brilliant, ambitious and fiercely competitive, vied with one another for primacy, employing such new media as oil on canvas, with its unique expressive possibilities, and such new approaches as a personal and identifiable signature style. They also pioneered the use of easel painting, a newly portable format that led to unprecedented fame in their lifetimes. With more than 150 stunning examples by the three masters and their contemporaries, this volume elucidates the technical and aesthetic innovations that helped define the uniquely rich "Venetian style," as well as the social, political and economic context in which it flourished. Essays range from examinations of seminal new techniques to such crucial institutions as state commissions and the patronage system. Most of all, by concentrating on the lives and careers of Venice's three greatest painters, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese paints a vibrant human portrait--one brimming with savage rivalry, one-upmanship, humor and passion. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 380 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear to dust jacket. To Laugh That We May Not Weep is a sweeping career retrospective, reprinting -often for the first time in 60 or 70 years- over 800 of Young's timeless, charming, and devastating cartoons and illustrations, many reproduced from original artwork, to create a fresh new portrait of this towering figure in the worlds of cartooning and politics.

Hardcover. New York, Harper & Row, 1sr, 1967, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 64 pages. Hardcover. Color illustrations by Janet Chenery. Dust jacket with $1.95 price at top right corner of inside flap. Light foxing to front and rear endpapers, and some pages. Clean, unmarked text.

Hardcover. New York, Century Co., 1st, 1915, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 290 pages. Hardcover. Features 48 black & white illustrations by Harrison Cady. Mustard colored cloth covers with green and orange illustrations, Light wear along edges. Spine cocked. Clean, unmarked text.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jscket. SIGNED BY CHAST on dedication page. t's time for bed again, and Marco, a small red bird who lives with his (human) mother and father, simply has too much to do! He's got masterpieces to paint, underwater inventions to create, halfpipes to skate -- or better yet, inventions to create so that he can paint underwater while skateboarding at a world-class level! How can it possibly all get done? When one idea builds on top of another, and every object he encounters just screams inspiration, why would Marco ever want to put on his pajamas and brush his beak? With humor and a great deal of energy, this delightful new character from acclaimed illustrator Roz Chast will rev kids up and wear them out--just in time for bed.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Doran & Company, 2nd pr., 1932, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brick-red cloth with embossed decoration on front cover, gilt faded on darkened spine, 325 pages. Drawings by Roese. Title page dated 1932, publisher's design on copyright page but no First Edition stated, so assumed 2nd printing. Topper, now a retired bank executive, is galavanting in the south of France with the very same mischievous, sexy, prohibition-despising ghosts as accomplices. Basis for the 1938 feature film starring Constance Bennett, Roland Young, Billie Burke and Alan Mowbray. Mild edgewear, clean and tight.

Hardcover. Madison WI, Borderland Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The title comes from the cover image, a building named as such. "Created as a poetic and visual journey, spans twenty-five years and four continents. These striking photographs capture 'found text': The sometimes mysterious, occasionally humorous, often cryptic presence of words in the everyday landscape. In Koch's lyrical sequencing, the images reveal obscure and eccentric voices in their various and distinctive roles on the daily stage of the world around us.

Hardcover. Madison WI, Borderland Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The title comes from the cover image, a building named as such. "Created as a poetic and visual journey, spans twenty-five years and four continents. These striking photographs capture 'found text': The sometimes mysterious, occasionally humorous, often cryptic presence of words in the everyday landscape. In Koch's lyrical sequencing, the images reveal obscure and eccentric voices in their various and distinctive roles on the daily stage of the world around us.

Softcover. Miami Beach FL, Dennis McMillan, 1st pbk., 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, the second book in the authors' series of YA mysteries set at the Mohonk Mountain House in upstate New York. In 125 pages with photos throughout & a quiz, Introduction by Stephen King (who also mysteriously appears in a photo). Cover illustration by famed cartoonist Gahan Wilson, back cover by Joe Servello. Clean, like new.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 223 pages. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), one of Germany's most revered poets, is equally well-known for his idiosyncratic prose, the vibrant voice of which feels astonishingly modern in its familiar tone and thematic acrobatics. Travel Pictures comprises the accounts of four journeys taken at different times in his life. The opening "Harz Journey," a quirky chronicle of his walking tour in the Harz Mountains, is the text that first made him famous. But in all four accounts, Heine, seasoned by the skepticism of a born outsider, does more than climb mountains, ford streams and cross borders. In this remarkable book, Heine propels German letters into the Modern mindset. Freud cites a few of Travel Pictures' most humorous passages in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Heine's incomparable lyric vision lifts the book into the transcendent realm of great journey literature. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Conway NH, TMC Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 131 pages, illustrated throughout in color. SIGNED BY AUTHORS on title page. This is the story of what happens when big people decide to be kids again and they have tools and lumber. A beautifully written tale about building an elaborate two story treehouse in the Maine woods, Treehouse Chronicles is reflective and insightful, and carries the reader along as a dream is made real. We meet the author's family, and friends, and a squirrel with an attitude, and you will be captivated by this poignant and humorous story of process, a house is hung in the sky. Packed with over 180 spectacular photographs, evocative watercolors, and line drawings. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dial Books, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. With Mama Cactus-Eared Rabbit down with the flu, her mischievous twins, Munchit and Crunchit, and their friends--Rufus Coyote and his grumpy sister, Greyer, and cousin Arnold the Armadillo--set out to cook Mama a perfect get-well meal. Color illustrations by the author. Clean.

Hardcover. New York, Clarion Books, 2nd pr., 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Non-paginated. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY WIESNER on half-title. Caldecott Winner. Bright, crisp copy. Second printing, without Caldecott sticker on front. Wiesner won the first of three Caldecott Medals for this charming and humorous pictorial story about clever frogs and their adventures as they migrate from a swamp through a small town.

Hardcover. NY, Disney Editions, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. One Joe was in his ninety-seventh year when he died in 2005; the other Joe died the same year at age forty-five. Both died before their time. This book explores the interplay between personal creativity and the craft of animation storytelling, as seen through the lives and art of two of its greatest practitioners: Joe Grant and Joe Ranft.Grant and Ranft were unique influences on storytelling at two major studios during important periods in the history of animation. Joe Grant, in fact, straddled two eras. A gifted newspaper caricaturist, he contributed ideas for Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony shorts as well as classic masterworks like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Pinocchio; Fantasia; and Dumbo. As Walt Disney's confidant, Grant played a leading role in defining Disney's pioneering animation legacy. He returned to the studio at eighty-one after a fortyyear hiatus, his creative spirit and abilities undiminished, and made significant contributions to Beauty and the Beast; Aladdin; Mulan; and The Lion King, among others.Joe Ranft built on the traditions of the past forged by Grant and others to become the top animation storyboard artist of his generation, working on Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas; The Brave Little Toaster; Who Framed Roger Rabbit; James and the Giant Peach; The Little Mermaid; and Beauty and the Beast, among other films. As one of Pixar's creative founders and a close friend of John Lasseter's, Ranft had a major influence on the studio's signature originality, warmth, and irreverent humor, through his contributions to Toy Story; Toy Story 2; A Bug's Life; Monsters, Inc.; and Cars.

New York, E. P. Dutton, 1st , 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 57 pages. Black & white illustrations by Glen Rounds. Dust jacket with light rubbing. Relates how Uncle Lemon got his spring in the middle of the driest summer on record and the troublesome consequences it brought him. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dial Books, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 686 pages. The Uncle Remus tales, originally written down by Joel Chandler Harris, were first published over a hundred years ago, and serve as the largest collection of African-American folklore. In this four-book series, Julius Lester masterfully retains the flavor of the tales, while dropping the heavy dialect of the Harris originals and adding contemporary language and references-- ensuring that the stories will be understood and enjoyed by new generations of readers. The stories are beautifully illuminated by the slyly humorous full-color and black-and-white art of Jerry Pinkney.

Hardcover. NY, Margaret K. McElderry, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color illustrations by John O'Brien. A collection of limericks about Uncle Switch, an eccentric who does everything topsy-turvy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Birmingham AL, The Legal Classics Library, reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, full red leather covers with gilt decorations, spine has raised bands; marbled endpapers; satin ribbon marker; all edges gilt; binding tight; cover, edges, and interior intact and clean. First published in England in 1935. Introduction by Lord Atkin. Albert Haddock, the hero of countless lawsuits in A.P. Herbert's misleading cases, made his first public appearance in Punch about 1924. This collection of Misleading Cases contains many more sly jests at the absurdities of English law and will teach the reader more about the legal processes than lawyers know themselves.

Softcover. Seattle, University of Washington Press, reprint, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 255 pages, b&w photos. A Peace Corps worker sent to the Sakel to establish a fish-farming project, the author lived with a family in a tiny Sengalese village near the Mauretania border. We share her initial feelings of dislocation as she contends not only with a primitive lifestyle, lack of creature comforts, and the overt sexism of the Moslem men she supervises, but also with her burgeoning relationships with the women in the little compound who become as much her family as her relatives in America. In a guileless narrative filled with affection and anger, Lowerre tells of the ill health and bureaucratic failings that beset her; she acknowledges the Pulaar people's love and good humor, and offers an unprettified closeup of daily life in an African village. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1st thus Edition, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 211 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket price clipped, in very good condition with some tanning from age. Dj wrapped in protective clear plastic brodart. Cover boards bound in tan cloth, black title on spine, boards very good, clean. Edges and pages clean, with a touch of tanning from age. Young Union officer and great American writer, De Forest wrote about what he saw with quiet precision and humor, without favor or prejudice or any concessions to the cherished beliefs of the orthodox in the North or the South.

Softcover. New York, Doubleday, 3rd pr., 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages. Softcover with Light edgewear to wrappers. Cartoons by Roz Chast. Cartoons use puns and the author's offbeat sense of humor to poke fun at human nature and modern life in the United States. Originally appeared 1978-1981 mostly in The New Yorker magazine.

NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Uphill with Archie is a beautifully written and deeply involving look at the life and the world of the great literary icon, poet Archibald MacLeish, by his youngest son. Partly an homage, partly an attempt to come to terms with the man (and the legend), Uphill with Archie speaks to all sons and daughters who have never completely resolved their feelings about powerful parents. Young William MacLeish grew up both captivated and cowed by the fame of a father who won Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry and comparable honors for his work as a lawyer, playwright, teacher, and government official. William's mother, Ada, began her marriage as a successful concert singer in Paris but later felt compelled to give up her art for her family. When Archie was working for Henry Luce and Fortune magazine, his younger children, watched over by a governess, stayed with their grandfather in Connecticut. But it is of the time spent with his family at Uphill Farm, a beautiful old house above a Massachusetts hilltown, that MacLeish has his fondest and most telling memories: "Archie and Ada gave me great gifts: music, the sound of the language beautifully spoken, the draw of knowledge, the arts of humor," William writes. "I learned to perform for them, and in time found myself addicted to getting a nice tan from Archie's sun. And the more I bathed in his light, the harder I found it to go looking for my own."

Hardcover. London, Perpetua Books, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, Illustrated in black & white by the wonderful Ronald Searle. 111 pages. A humorous Grand Tour of America with some startling sidelights on the American character. Book is very good, the dust jacket with chipping, edgewear, fair only.