Hardcover. New York, M. T. Richardson, 1st, 1887, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Boards covered in brown cloth with black design on front cover. Tear near the gutter on the first few pages including the frontispiece but it does not effect the image depicted. Still has previous owner's inscription from 1888. Some staining on pages but otherwise, a tight, clean copy. This book covers detailed illustrations of various methods of shoeing with special directions "for shaping shoes to cure different diseases of the foot".
Softcover. Chapel Nill NC, University of North Carolina Press , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 419 pages. This sweeping, richly evocative study examines the origins and legacies of a flourishing captive exchange economy within and among native American and Euramerican communities throughout the Southwest Borderlands from the Spanish colonial era to the end of the nineteenth century. Indigenous and colonial traditions of capture, servitude, and kinship met and meshed in the borderlands, forming a "slave system" in which victims symbolized social wealth, performed services for their masters, and produced material goods under the threat of violence. Slave and livestock raiding and trading among Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, Navajos, Utes, and Spaniards provided labor resources, redistributed wealth, and fostered kin connections that integrated disparate and antagonistic groups even as these practices renewed cycles of violence and warfare. Always attentive to the corrosive effects of the "slave trade" on Indian and colonial societies, the book also explores slavery's centrality in intercultural trade, alliances, and "communities of interest" among groups often antagonistic to Spanish, Mexican, and American modernizing strategies. The extension of the moral and military campaigns of the American Civil War to the Southwest in a regional "war against slavery" brought differing forms of social stability but cost local communities much of their economic vitality. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 236 pages. A butler school in Houston, a livestock auction in Little Rock, a home for "frozen guys" in California, JFK's humidor in Manhattan--all are jumping off points for Friedman's baleful and sharply satirical scrutiny of American life and behavior in the second half of the twentieth century. Travel with Friedman from Harlem to Hollywood, from Port-au-Prince to Etta's Eat Shop in Chicago. In these pieces, which were published in literary and mass-circulation magazines from the 1960s to the 1990s, you'll meet such luminaries as Castro and Clinton, Natalie Wood and Clint Eastwood, and even Friedman's friends Irwin Shaw, Nelson Algren, and Mario Puzo. Friedman is a master of the essay, whether the subject is crime reporting ("Lessons of the Street"), Hollywood shenanigans ("My Life among the Stars"), or his outrageous adventures as the editor of pulp magazines (the classic "Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos"). We could sing his praises as a journalist, humorist, and social critic. But, as Buckley tells us, being Bruce Jay Friedman is enough. Clean copy.
Softcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 120 pages. Hypnotic flowering vines, black-and-white Op Art odysseys, and seas of patriotic warships are just some of the beautiful, strange, and fantastic patterns that have adorned the walls of homes the world over. In the tradition of best-seller Fabulous Fabrics of the 50s, this home decor reference book entertains while it inspires with flawless reproductions of 150 classic and unique wallpapers; many of which are drawn from the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Covering every decade of the century, Off the Wall celebrates robust pattern and detail in all their manifestations. Lively text and captions help to capture the designers, trends, and world events relevant to each piece, and the broader evolution of the genre, from a 1948 mural of rural America, replete with plump livestock and ripening fields, to the boldly colored abstractions produced in the 1950s by Herman Miller for MOMA. A useful resource for collectors, designers, decorators, and artists, Off the Wall is a colorful and captivating tribute to a widely appreciated medium. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Montclair NJ, Allanheld, Osmun, 1st US, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 266 pages. Illustrated with maps and tables, this study describes and analyse the social and ecological destruction of the 1968-78 Sahel drought and famine, during which more than 100,000 W. Africans died of starvation and hunger related diseases, and livestock herds and agricultural production were critically reduced. It traces the history of this disaster to the impact of French colonial government policy on the fragile ecology of the region and the effects of food and export regulations on agriculture and on the social structure and interrelationships of the tribes. Clean copy.