Hardcover. Santa Fe NM, Twin Palms Pub, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Limited to 3000. 162 pages with 60 illustrations. The cyanotypes reproduced in Mississippi Blue come from an album of photograhs taken by Henry P. Bosse for the Army Corps of Engineers. They show the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Louis, and were taken from 1882 to 1892 as part of the Corps' effort to document and understand the ever-changing river.
Hardcover. Santa Fe NM, Twin Palms Pub, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Limited to 3000. 162 pages with 60 illustrations. The cyanotypes reproduced in Mississippi Blue come from an album of photograhs taken by Henry P. Bosse for the Army Corps of Engineers. They show the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Louis, and were taken from 1882 to 1892 as part of the Corps' effort to document and understand the ever-changing river.
Hardcover. University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, text by Morris, color photos by David Rae Morris. The author's last book, written in his characteristically limpid, lyrical prose, offers a heartfelt appreciation of his home state, a place often dismissed as poor and backward by "outlanders," Morris' term for non-Mississippians. This is not a defensive recitation of Mississippi's virtues nor is it a whitewash of its less-than-attractive features. First, Morris wants the reader to understand the state's beauty--"physically beautiful in the most fundamental and indwelling way, [in that] it never leaves you." Then, with both pride and understanding, he brings into sharp focus Mississippi's peculiar tensions and ambivalence and also its passions--"we are a singular people," he says of his native folk. The second half of the book is an album of full-color photographs taken by Morris' son, a professional photojournalist. These shots informally capture ordinary moments in the lives of Mississippians, from a young couple standing next to their truck with their new baby in their arms to a group of local citizens hanging out in front of the main store in a small town. Together, the text and the photographs showcase Mississippians doing what they do best--being themselves completely without artifice. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press , 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still sealed in publisher's shrinkwrap. Exhibition catalog for a show organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, and the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Mo. Concentrates on Bingham?'s images inspired by the waterborne traffic on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers? in his lifetime, the great highways of the American frontier?and the men who worked on the river's? flatboats and rafts. 11-14" x 10-3/4", 199 numbered pages. A detailed academic analysis of Bingham's work, with numerous color plates and photos of his drawings.
Hardcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 115 pages illustrated throughout in b&w. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. An Anniversary Edition of a book first published in 1971. New introduction by William Maxwell. Photodocumentation of the noted author's personal selection of images made in her native Mississippi soon after her return from college and as publicity agent for the state's Works Progress Administration office.
Hardcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 168 pages. In The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay, Thierry Smolderen presents a cultural landscape whose narrative differs in many ways from those presented by other historians of the comic strip. Rather than beginning his inquiry with the popularly accepted "sequential art" definition of the comic strip, Smolderen instead wishes to engage with the historical dimensions that inform that definition. His goal is to understand the processes that led to the twentieth-century comic strip, the highly recognizable species of picture stories that he sees crystallizing around 1900 in the United States. Featuring close readings of the picture stories, caricatures, and humoristic illustrations of William Hogarth, Rodolphe Topffer, Gustave Dore, and their many contemporaries, Smolderen establishes how these artists were immersed in a very old visual culture in which images--satirical images in particular--were deciphered in a way that was often described as hieroglyphical. Across eight chapters, he acutely points out how the effect of the printing press and the mass advent of audiovisual technologies (photography, audio recording, and cinema) at the end of the nineteenth century led to a new twentieth-century visual culture. In tracing this evolution, Smolderen distinguishes himself from other comics historians by following a methodology that explains the present state of the form of comics on the basis of its history, rather than presenting the history of the form on the basis of its present state. This study remaps the history of this influential art form.
Hardcover. Hartford CT, Hartford Publishing Co., 1st, 1869, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth with gilt lettering and design, embossed rules to covers. 524 pages. Detailed records of travel between the Mississippi River and the Pacific coast on the newly completed transcontinental railroad. Includes much information on the Mormons, Salt Lake City, Indians, gold mining, etc. 12 engraved plates and one map. Bookplate on inside front cover, light fading to spine gilt. Solid, clean copy.
Hardcover. New York , Grosset & Dunlap, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 236 pages, 4 b&w line plates, olive green cloth covers with orange and black decoration. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf otherwise clean, very good.
Softcover. New York, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 208 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs by Charles Moore. With photographs throughout at the Selma March of 1965, of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina, of voter registration in Mississippi and more. With text by Michael S. Durham and an introduction by Andrew Young. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York , Dial, reprint, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. A black family living in Mississippi during the Depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children do not understand.
Hardcover. Santa Fe NM, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 165 pages. Little is known about the fifth and last western expedition of the celebrated explorer John Charles Frmont. The great effort to survey a transcontinental railway route across the 38th parallel ended short of success in the snows of Utah in 1854 but involved a meticulous photographic documentation-in daguerreotypes-of the route from the Mississippi westward. It was believed that a central railroad across the country would favor abolitionists in the great debate then raging in the country over slavery. Solomon Nunes Carvalho was hired by Frmont to photograph the expedition-the first time a western expeditionary survey had been systematically documented in photographs. Tragically, the daguerreotypes were destroyed by fire, and Fremont's fifth expedition was lost to history. Author and daguerreotypist Robert Shlaer remarkably has reconstructed the expedition in 120 original daguerreotypes. Using Frmont's maps, expedition documents, and Carvalho's diary accounts, Shlaer recreates the lost expedition across America's most breathtaking landscape using photography's first and most venerable method of daguerreotypy.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, reprint, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. An uncommon biography of strong-willed Greenwood, Mississippi professional studio photographer Lillian Spurrier with the autobiographical musings of her like-mannered daughter, Mildred Spurrier Topp (1897-1963), who taught creative writing at Ole Miss, authored one book of fiction titled IN THE PINK (Houghton Mifflin, 1950), was a close friend of Eudora Welty, and served one term in the Mississippi State Legislature from 1932 to 1935. Topp family b/w portrait images upon front and rear endpapers.
Hardcover. Iowa City, State Historical Society of Iowa, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 575 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs. Some numbered Stickers on front endpaper. Foxing along edges of dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Dial Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PINKNEY on title page. In the 1940s, as the world was at war, a remarkable jazz band performed on the American home front. This all-female band, originating from a boarding school in the heart of Mississippi, found its way to the most famous ballrooms in the country, offering solace during the hard years of the war. They dared to be an interracial group despite the cruelties of Jim Crow laws, and they dared to assert their talents though they were women in a ?man?s? profession. Told in thought-provoking poems and arresting images, this unusual look at our nation?s history is deep and inspiring.
Hardcover. NY, Arbor House, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 352 pages with photographs. Biography co-written by the author's brother. The definitive biography of one of America's most celebrated playwrights. Drawing on previously unseen diaries, letters, and interviews, the authors explore the life and work of Williams, from his early years in Mississippi to his landmark plays of the 1950s and 1960s. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Abrams Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 352 pages, b&w illustrations. The first full biography of the star Negro Leaguer and Hall of Famer James 'Cool Papa" Bell (1903-1991) was a legend in black baseball, a lightning fast switch hitter elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. Bell's speed was extraordinary; as Satchel Paige famously quipped, he was so fast he could flip a light switch and be in bed before the room got dark. Wheeler recounts the life of this extraordinary player, a key member of some of the greatest Negro League teams in history. Born to sharecroppers in Mississippi, Bell was part of the Great Migration, and in St. Louis, baseball saved Bell from a life working in slaughterhouses. Wheeler charts Bell's ups and downs in life and in baseball, in the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, where he went to escape American racism and MLB's color line.
Hardcover. NY, Junior Literary Guild, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with mild discoloration, 278 pages, previous owner's signature on page opposite half-title. Color frontis painting and black & white illustrations by Herbert Rogers.
Hardcover. Center for American Places, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 232 pages. The Mississippi River flows through American history and culture as a mythic waterway brimming with tragedy and hope, and awash in passionate ambitions and harsh realities. In 1953, a young Charles Dee Sharp traveled twice down the Mississippi (first by towboat and then by car along the renowned river road Highway 61) to make a documentary film of it, taking black-and-white photographs of the river, its communities, and its people.While Sharp's documentary never came to fruition, the striking images he captured survived as moving and evocative historical testaments to a lost era, now collected in his new book The Mississippi in 1953. These images create a vivid portrait of America's heartland a half century ago, and they are enriched with excerpts from Sharp's original trip journal, intriguing anecdotes from the people he encountered along his journey, and an engaging environmental history of the river by historian John O. Anfinson. The Mississippi in 1953 offers an original and poignant look at the living artery of the American landscape and how it molded the United States into the nation it is today.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Thirty years after leaving Eunola, Mississippi, to pursue her dreams of becoming a dancer, Leland Standard returns with her son, and a dinner party given in her honor brings to light the secrets, desires, and life stories of the guests. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. Drawings by Saul Steinberg. Mississippi author, and war correspondent, who toured the World during WWII for the US Army Service Forces (Supply). Foreword says "This book is a personal record. It has to do with a journey that I made in 1944-45 to Great Britain, France, Belgium, Corsica, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, India, Burma, China."
Softcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, reprint, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 339 pages. Although he did not travel farther inland than the slopes of the Appalachians, Thomas Jefferson must take his place alongside Zebulon Pike, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and Lewis and Clark--the men who blazed the great western trails. Donald Jackson cogently recounts Jefferson's fundamental role in promoting and shaping the exploration, settlement, and development of the Trans-Mississippi West. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. Santa Fe, NM, Twin Palms Publishers, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 96 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean. like new copy in publisher's shrink-wrap. 78 full-page, black and white photographs. Limited to 3000 copies. Tight copy. A look at the black experience in late-20th-century America with powerful documentary images that will remain with the viewer long after the books are closed. Mauskopf presents a quiet collection of images made in one part of the South, the most isolated black communities of the Mississippi Delta, where time seems to have stopped in midcentury. The photographs are full of love, joy, and religious faith and are richly reproduced here as sheet-fed gravures. Mauskopf portrays the poorest Americans, who are nonetheless rich in family, church, and community bonds. He documents the unifying and dominant role of religion as well as the joys and sustenance provided by music, dance, romance, family life, and the land itself. These images capture a sense of place so powerfully that captions aren't necessary, though a brief and poetic essay by novelist Kenan nicely complements the photographs.
Hardcover. St. Ann's Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 172 pages. On May 25, 1961, Bruce Davison joined a group of Freedom Riders traveling by bus from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi. The actions of these youths challenged and disobeyed federal laws allowing for integrated interstate bus travel. These historic episodes, which ended in violence and arrests, marked the beginning of Davidson's exploration into the heart and soul of the civil rights movement in the United States during the years 1961-1965. In 1962, Davidson received a Guggenheim Fellowship and continued documenting the era, including an early Malcolm X rally in Harlem, steel workers in Chicago, a Ku Klux Klan cross burning near Atlanta, farm migrant camps in South Carolina, cotton picking in Mississippi, protest demonstrations in Birmingham, and the heroic Selma March that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was instrumental in changing the political power base in the segregated Southern states. In the 140 photographs collected here, many of which have never before been published, we see intimate and revealing portraits of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and other leaders made by Davidson during those turbulent times. These images describe the mood that prevailed during the civil rights movement with a lyrical imagery that is both poignant and profound. As Davidson bears witness to these historical events, and documents the degradation and segregation that were endured, he gives testimony to the struggle for freedom, equality, justice, and human dignity.
Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 644 pages, b&w illustrations. After a protracted squabble over private papers with the playwright's estate, Leverich delivers this hefty first volume of a projected two-volume life of Tennessee Williams (1911-1983). In it, Leverich, who produced several of Williams's plays and calls himself Williams's "chosen biographer", covers the years through 1945, when The Glass Menagerie opened on Broadway. Treated are Williams's youth in Mississippi and St. Louis; the college years at the universities of Missouri and Iowa; bumming around (but always writing) in New Orleans and Greenwich Village; the disaster of his first Broadway play (it closed in Boston); script writing, or avoiding it, at MGM's Hollywood mill; and, finally, the evolution of Menagerie, a wonderfully detailed and dramatic case history in itself. Leverich's overworked conceit, which he restates at intervals, is that this is the life of Tom Williams, a "repressed puritan" poet, who in time created a more flamboyant public persona called Tennessee. A few matters are set straight. Leverich maintains his subject's active homosexual life started in his late 20s, later than Williams stated in his memoirs, and that his sister's infamous lobotomy came later than his mother claimed. Although the accumulation of information is impressive, the lower Leverich keeps his own profile and editorial commentary the better his book is, which means it is at its best when it simply reproduces Williams's sporadically kept journal. If you believe that all the details of a life are but preparation for a single event, in this case, the opening of a remarkable play, this is an impressively argued biography.