Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 310 pages. Tolkien's Lost Chaucer uncovers the story of an unpublished and previously unknown book by the author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked between 1922 and 1928 on his Clarendon edition Selections from Chaucer's Poetry and Prose, and though never completed, its 160 pages of commentary reveals much of his thinking about language and storytelling when he was still at the threshold of his career as an epoch-making writer of fantasy literature. Drawing upon other new materials such as his edition of the Reeve's Tale and his Oxford lectures on the Pardoner's Tale, this book reveals Chaucer as a major influence upon Tolkien's literary imagination. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Henry Z. Walck, Inc., 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, black & white illustrations by Ezra Jack Keats. Light edgewear to dust jacket, short tears at bottom. Ex-library stamp on both end papers, otherwise clean. Dust jacket price clipped .
Hardcover. Glencoe IL, The Free Press, 1st, 1957, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth, 382 pages. Dust jacket flaps laid in, name inside front cover. Light pencil marking to about 10 pages. Ancient civilizations and medieval Europe had no "economies" -- no fixed prices for commodities, no production for markets. People have always exchanged goods, of course, but in the pre-modern world, exchange between individuals was most often done through social networks, always with a non-economic motivation. Scarcity, "entrepreneurship", the universal self-regulating market with fixed prices for goods, and the system of trade as we know it, and economics as the fundamental driving sector for all of society --- are all unique to the modern West.
Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt & Co., 1st, 1926, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light gray boards with a black cloth spine with gilt lettering. Name and ownership stamp on front fly leaf, otherwise clean copy.
Softcover. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Color illustrations throughout.
Hardcover. NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 266 pages. This book focuses on the development of towns in France, taking into account military technology, physical geography, shifting regional networks tying urban communities together, and the emergence of new forms of public authority and civic life as embodied in the "wall," an image at once intensely physical and deeply symbolic. It traces the evolution of towns across much of what is today France from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century when the walls began to come down, opening up new, ultimately revolutionary possibilities for urban life. This long-term perspective on town fortifications--how they were built, the contests to control them, and how they shaped the lives of people both inside and outside them. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Woodstock NY, The Overlook Press, 1st US, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 136 pages. A comprehensive and well researched account of the evolution of instruments and the role of the musician through the ages by first describing and illustrating those instruments bequeathed to us by the civilizations of Greece and Rome. Then, through the dark ages and on to the successive stages which shows the gradual changes to the instruments, how they were played and the music of he era. Clean copy.
Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books , 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Handcover, 96 pages. Being a bridesmaid is one of the greatest honors a dear friend can bestow. But actually wearing the dress the bride picks out? That's the true test of friendship. You Can Wear It Again pays loving tribute to fifty years of bridesmaids' dresses, as featured in real-life weddings. The product of both fashion trends and the bride's whims, bridesmaids' dresses may take the form of medieval costume, complete with wimple; slip dresses with real feathered wings to transform maids into true angels; or the ruffled peach taffeta with puff sleeves that so dominated the 1980s. Whatever the look, you can be sure it's been in and out of fashion more than once.