maryland

Hardcover. NY, William Edwin Rudge, 1st, 1930, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth, 46 pages + 51 b&w plates (color frontispiece). Russian artist and diplomatic secretary Paul or Pavel Svinin (1787-1839) toured the northeastern United States in the early 1800s. Here are excerpts of his notes, details about the time and his trip, and 51 BW reproductions of landscapes he rendered along the way. Most of the paintings show scenes from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland. Of interest to both cultural and art historians. With an introduction by R.T.H. Halsey. One of 1000 copies. Ex-lib with stamping, residue to endpapers, gilt lettering on spine faded, otherwise clean.

Softcover. University Press of Maryland, 2000, Softcover, 306 pages. Memoir (translated from the German by Henny Wenkart) of a Jewish woman in 19th-century Russia, with scholarly introduction and analysis. Pauline Wengeroff's memoir tells what it was like to be a Jewish girl and a Jewish woman in 19th-century Russia, as foundations of faith and tradition eroded around her. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Company, 2nd pr., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped with gilt lettering, 608 pages. After the Revolutionary War, the federal government awarded bounty lands to citizens and soldiers for services rendered. In its simplest form, this involved the exchange of free land for military service. Federal records of these Revolutionary War bounty land awards are well known and readily accessible to genealogists. But the federal government was not alone in rewarding its citizens and soldiers with bounty lands. Nine state governments adopted similar policies, generating even more records. Unlike the federal bounty land records, however, these state records are not centralized; instead, they are found in the various states in the form of manuscript records and printed books and are all but inaccessible to the researcher. Until now, that is! Because with this work by Lloyd Bockstruck we now have a master index to state bounty land records, a Revolutionary War resource unparalleled for freshness, originality, and research potential. The nine states that awarded bounty lands in their western reserves or on their western borders (directly affecting the future states of Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Ohio, and Tennessee) are Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. (The basis for the Connecticut and Georgia awards, by the way, differ from the norm.) Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Berryville, VA, Rockbridge Publishing Company, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 300 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Very clean inside and out. Buff fabric covered with gilt title on spine. From the back cover: "Season of Fire is the most complete and dramatic study to date of Early's invasion of the north and battle of Monocacy--an engagement that may well have saved the Nation's Capitol from capture."

Hardcover. New York, John S. Taylor, 2nd pr., 1837, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, leather bound with gilt design on front and rear covers, spine also with gilt design with the title Cabinet of Freedom (the series under which the publisher issued this narrative). 517 pages with an extra illustrated title page dated 1836, the regular title page dated 1837. All edges gilt. First published by John Shugert in Lewistown PA a year earlier. Written with the help of Isaac Fisher, a white Philadelphia lawyer, who declares in his preface that he has edited the oral narrative Ball had dictated to him to omit any beliefs or feelings Ball may have expressed about slavery. This declaration of significant editing has led scholars to debate the authenticity of Ball's narrative, but most agree that it represents a true story. Ball describes his experiences as a slave, including the uncertainty of slave life and the ways in which the slaves are forced to suffer harsh and inhumane conditions. In particular, he recounts the qualities of his various masters, and the ways in which his fortune depended on their temperament. The leather has separated from the spine of the book but appears to be very repairable. The first 3 pages loose (a blank leaf and the two title pages), there is a light stain to the illustrated one and light foxing. The interior of the book is clean, tight with minimal foxing throughout.

Hardcover. NY, Dial Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 300 pages, b&w illustrations. The children's book author has won the Newberry Medal and National Book Award. Now in these fascinating stories from her life, she reveal the origins of her book characters from events in her life; from China with missionary parents to single life in Japan to life in Maryland with four children. Filled with personal photos and letters. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, embossed blue cloth with gilt lettering and design on spine, 180 pages. INSCRIBED BY RICHTER on the front fly leaf. Vivid and sometimes startling in its comic invention, this is the story of a sixteen-year-old girl, the eldest of a brood of fatherless children in a Maryland mountain valley community, and the story also of the men, some young and some old, whose lives, personalities, and strong characters supply the routes through which she enters womanhood. Mild soil to covers, clean copy.

Softcover. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 205 pages, b&w illustrations. A comprehensive look at a controversy that continues to fuel debates about the role of public art in America. Since its installation at and subsequent removal from New York City's Federal Plaza, noted sculptor Richard Serra's Tilted Arc has been a touchstone for debates over the role of public art. Installed in 1981, the 10-foot-high, 120-foot-long curved wall of Cor-Ten self-rusting steel instantly became a magnet for criticism. Art critics in the New York Times and the Village Voice labeled it the city's worst public sculpture, and many denounced it as an example of the elitism associated with art and as an obstacle to the use and enjoyment of the plaza. Harriet F. Senie explores the history of Tilted Arc, including its 1979 commission and the heated public hearings that eventually led to its removal in 1989 (it was dismantled and is currently stored in a government warehouse in Maryland). Analyzing the archive of popular opinion, Senie shows how the sculpture was caught in an avalanche of shifting local and national discussions about public funding for the arts. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Lyons Press , 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 300 pages. James M. Cain was among the prominent member of the "hard-boiled" school of writing that characterized the 1930s and 1940s, one of the masters of the genre that included Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. His novels became such popular film noir classics as The Postman always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce, and his 1937 novel Serenade boldly portrayed its hero as a bisexual. Cain also taught journalism at various colleges in Maryland, wrote editorials for the New York World, and was for a brief time managing editor at The New Yorker. This is the first biography of James M. Cain written with the full cooperation of the late novelist's family.

Softcover. Forest VA, TLC Publishing, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages, profusely illustrated in b&w. This book outlines the history of railroading in West Virginia from the earliest entry of Baltimore & Ohio into what was then western Virginia up to the 1860s. In addition to B&O, Chesapeake & Ohio, Western Maryland, Norfolk & Western, and Virginian have major chapters. Smaller sections cover the New York Central, short lines, logging railroads, and others that had only a smaller presence in the state. Clean copy.