nature rural

Hardcover. NY, Bulfinch Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 112 pages. Abelardo Morell makes magical camera obsucra images in darkened interiors. The deceptively simple process - he blacks out all the windows, leaving just a pinhole opening in one of them - produces photographs of astonishing, complex beauty. Because of the nature of refracted light, the world outside is projected upside down into the nearly blackened room, in essence converting the space into the interior of a camera. Morell then photographs the results with a large-format view camera, often requiring exposures of eight hours or more. Locations around the world were chosen for the interesting details and juxtapositions they would elicit - the Empire State Building lies across a bedspread in a midtown Manhattan interior; the Tower of London is imprinted on the walls of a room in the Tower Hotel; the countryside in rural Cuba, Morell's birthplace, plays across the walls of a crumbling chamber that is rich with the patina of its own history. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , Henry Holt and Company, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 151 pages. 81 black-and-white wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker. Dust jacket with light wear, chipping.on dust jacket. clean, tight copy.

Softcover. US, Prestel, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages. Softover. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Photographer Iain McKell offers an extraordinary and breathtakingly beautiful glimpse into the lives of a real and raw group of present-day nomads whose culture is built around ideals of freedom, nature, and simplicity. Historically despised the new gypsies are there by choice, not heritage. Unrelated to the Roma, the movement began in 1986 when a group of Post-Punk Anti-Thatcher protesters headed out of London into the English countryside. McKell followed these New Age Travellers to the West Country and over the years he watched them become a hybrid tribe - the new gypsies - present-day rural anarchists, living the subversive lifestyle in elaborately decorated horse-drawn caravans. Known as 'Horse-drawn', the new gypsies share a desire for sustainability, a love of self-reliance and a disdain for the trappings of contemporary life. For more than a decade McKell has focused his lens on travellers of all ages: parents, children, couples and loners. With sensitivity and honesty he captures a way of life that seems at once romantic, strange, beautiful and simple. The result is a deeply insightful portrayal of a culture that eschews the traditional creature comforts of urban life in favour of the simplicity and freedom of the natural world.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon Books, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket ($3.95 on flap), b&w illustrations by Maurice Sendak. "Childhood" focuses on the character Nikolenka, a young boy who shares many similarities with Tolstoy himself. The novel provides an intimate and nostalgic portrayal of Nikolenka's inner world as he navigates the joys, sorrows, and formative experiences of his early childhood. Set in rural Russia during the 19th century, the novel captures the idyllic and carefree nature of Nikolenka's early life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Charlotte VT, Camden House Publishing, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 144 pages. Extensive color photography by Richard Brown throughout. Offers advice on photographing people, landscapes, and animals, discusses composition, light, and equipment, and discusses the background of a variety of photographs. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. First edition of this collection of pieces penned in the first half of the 1970s, by four-time Pulitzer nominee. Included are reflections on man and nature in rural Georgia ("Travels in Georgia"), a profile of an Arkansas horseman hoping to make it big in an important horse race ("Ruidoso"), a quest to discover the true location that inspired the "Marvin Gardens" square in the Monopoly game, ("In Search of Marvin Gardens"), and more. Very bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. Madison, WI, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1st, 1948, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Volume dedicated to the rural art originating in Wisconsin. Discusses 30 different artists and contains illustrations (color and black/white) of their pieces. Good condition; cloth bound book shows some wear on the edges of the covers. No dust jacket. Commemorates the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the University of Wisconsin by means of the work of rural Wisconsin artists such as Ambrose G. Ammel, Joan Arend, John M. Black, WIlliam H. Boose, Frances Burt, Frank H. Engebretson, Francis D. Grady, Louis Grebetz, Rachel Gertrude Grimm, Lois Ireland, Arthur Johnson, and many more.

Softcover. UK, Dodo Press, reprint, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 261 pages. Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper (1813- 1894) was an American writer and amateur naturalist. She was the daughter of the well known novelist James Fenimore Cooper. Her most famous work is Rural Hours (1850), a nature diary of Cooperstown, New York. Amongst her works are Female Suffrage: A Letter to the Christian Women of America, The Lumley Autograph, and Elinor Wyllys; or, The Young Folk of Longbridge (1846), a novel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 212 pages. A chronicle of Jerome's year spent building a stone wall on his property in the Massachusetts Berkshires - a task which leaves his mind "as free as a colt turned out to pasture" as he muses on the "grace and beauty found within nature and the possibilities inherent in stillness." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 2nd pr., 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 133 pages. In 1968 the photographer Richard Brown fulfilled a romantic childhood dream when he moved to the Northeast Kingdom, a remote corner of Vermont just barely entering the twentieth century. There he encountered a way of life that was fast disappearing, a land of sheep, cattle, work horses, wood-burning stoves, and small family-run farms far removed from the industrial Northeast. Determined to record it before it disappeared, he saw a pastoral vision where, "for the briefest interval, a window opened and the spirit of Vermont's past" granite hills cleared and formed, hard lives lived and lost, struggle and endurance, a harsh land made starkly beautiful by nature and man? "was made palpable." He saw the land and also a people whose "endless hours of backbreaking, monotonous work were spent with a quiet ferocity" and who believed their "age-old labors were a struggle waged against time itself " labors that might just hold modernity at bay." And Brown did record it, with an 8 x 10" large plate view camera. Not only the hauntingly beautiful landscape but also the people who stayed and worked the stubborn hills and "did so with great but fierce attachment." This is a great ode to an America that has passed before our eyes almost without comment or notice. It is a valiant, indeed a brilliant, effort to make the past tangible, to bring it back to life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, The Stratford Company, 2nd pr., 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, green cloth with bright gilt lettering, 334 pages. An loving exploration of New Hampshire's country roads with personal anecdotes by the author, 16 b&w plates. Dust jacket with big chip to top of spine, book is tight and clean.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light tan cloth with green lettering and decoration. No dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. A memoir of a year in rural Pennsylvania. Clean copy.