Hardcover. NY, Hill & Wang, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 544 pages. A bold new history of the Deng years by a leading China scholar. Unlike the former Soviet Union and the once "socialist" countries of Eastern Europe, China's current economy is now the world's second largest and most rapidly growing. Remarkably, today's problems in China are spiritual in nature-"a crisis of faith"-stemming from the clash between capitalist realities and lingering socialist values and ideas. "The Deng Xiaoping Era "is the story of that crisis and of Deng Xiaoping's promise of socialist democracy that has degenerated into bureaucratic capitalism. Maurice Meisner shows how the social contract between the Chinese Communist Party and the people was grossly violated by the Deng regime, and why capitalism has emerged as the dynamic force in today's socioeconomic and cultural life. Now, after more than a decade of capitalist reforms, he argues that Chinese spiritual malaise is deepening with the brutal suppression of the 1989 Democracy Movement and its politically repressive aftermath. This is an indispensable study of contemporary Chinese history-from the Chinese Revolution and the founding of the Maoist state to the establishment of the Deng regime and the social consequences of Deng's reforms-as well as a formidable analysis of the failure of the world's greatest socialist experiment. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Times Books, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 312 pages. A masterful guide to human development that redefines the nature versus nurture debate. A much-needed antidote to genetic determinism, The Dependent Gene reveals how all traits-even characteristics like eye and hair color-are caused by complex interactions between genes and the environment at every stage of biological and psychological development, from the single fertilized egg to full-grown adulthood. How we understand the nature versus nurture debate directly affects our thoughts about such basic issues as sex and reproduction, parenting, education, and crime, and has an enormous impact on social policy. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Shelton CT, Greenwich Workshop Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 176 pages. SIGNED BY DOOLITTLE on the half-title page. Nicely illustrated with Doolittle's signature artwork, including black-and-white pencil sketches overlaid with detailed color paintings. At the end of the novel there is a fold-out poster illustration. This book will have the most appeal to those interested in Doolittle's dramatic illustrations. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Fleming H. Revell, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt on spine and front cover, 224 pages, top edge gilt. Vermonter Humphrey was known as a prolific writer of essays with regional, nature, travel, and religious themes. The pieces in this volume were originally published in various periodicals of the period. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Princeton University Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 475 pages. A balance sheet of thirty years of revolutionary experiment, this work is a comprehensive analysis of the failure of the socialist transformation of Egypt during the regimes of Nasser and Sadat. Testing recent theories of the nature of the developing states and their relation both to indigenous class forces and to external pressures from advanced industrial societies, John Waterbury describes the limited but complex choices available to Egyptian policy-makers in their attempts to reconcile the goals of reform and capital accumulation. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Son's, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY CROWE on the front fly leaf. An account of three extensive journeys undertaken on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund, an international organization working for the protection and conservation of species all over the world. 301 pages with index, b&w photos. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY/London, Routledge, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 283 pages, b&w illustrations. " Richard Schechner explores the nature of ritualised behavior and its relationship to performance and politics. A brilliant and uncontainable examination of cultural expression and communal action, THE FUTURE OF RITUAL asks pertinent questions about art, theatre and the changing meaning of 'culture' in today's intercultural world. It is richly illustrated with over 50 photos of pereformances and public events." Clean copy.
Softcover. Berkeley CA, California University Press, reprint, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 308 pages. The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism traces the thought of a large and neglected group of German thinkers and their encounter with the ideas and ideal of the Enlightenment from 1740 to 1790. Concentrating on the nature of their historical consciousness, Peter Hanns Reill addresses two basic issues in the interpretation of the Enlightenment: to what degree can one speak of the unity of the Enlightenment and to what extent can the Enlightenment be characterized as "modern"? Reill attempts to revise the traditional interpretation of the Enlightenment as an age insensitive to the postulates of modern historical thought and to dissolve the alleged opposition of the Enlightenment to later intellectual developments such as Idealism. He argues that German Enlightened thinkers generated the general presuppositions upon which modern historical thought is founded. Bright, clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 425 pages. Macabre and fantastical, Hoffmann's wildly imaginative tales offer an unflinching view of human nature and sing clearer than ever in a masterful new translation. Whether a surrealist exploration of the anxieties surrounding automation, or a mystery concerning a goldsmith, missing jewels, and a spate of murders, each tale in this collection reveals the complexities of human desire and fear. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Ny, Vanguard Press, 1st, 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an edgeworn and chipped dust jacket. "Collection of stories including scientific romances, contes philosophiques and stories of the supernatural. The most important of the latter is the novella Dromenon, in which an antiquarian discovers the true nature of medieval Christian worship by means of a restored church organ". Bookplate on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, decorated boards with green cloth spine with gilt lettering. 116 pages, clean, bright copy, no dj. This is a collection of excerpts from the public addresses of Robert F. Goheen during his twelve years as President of Princeton University. The emphasis is on the people whose responsibility it is to promote and defend the principles underlying the modern American university-students, faculty, administrators, trustees, alumni. Several fundamental themes emerge the theme of individual responsibility, and the ever-present need to join rational intelligence with moral commitment, for example. Dr. Goheen sees the university as a continuing institution with long range goals, responding conservatively (in its best sense) to the human needs of the times. He seeks to define its institutional relationships in the context of the university's tasks in educ1tion and research, which must be understood and kept in balance if universities are to serve their functions effectively. Laid in are two reprints of postcards from the 1890s featuring Princeton athletes.
Softcover. UK/Burlington VT, Ashgate Publishing, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 187 pages. First published in hardcover in 2008, this is the expanded Second Edition. It must be noted, no illustrations. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1st US, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Title page excised or missing (no sign of tear or extraction). Otherwise like new. Thomas, the child-protagonist of The Issa Valley, is subject to both the contradictions of nature in this severe northern setting and sometimes enchanting, sometimes brutal timbre of village life. There are the deep pine and spruce forests, the grouse and the deer, and the hunter's gun. There is Magdalena, the beautiful mistress of the village priest, whose suicide unleashes her ghost to haunt the parish. There are also the loving grandparents with whom Thomas lives, who provide a balance of the not-quite-Dostoevskian devils that visit the villagers. In the end, Thomas is severed from his childhood and the Issa River, and leaves prepared for adventures beyond his valley. Poetic and richly imagined, The Issa Valley is a masterful work of fiction from one of our greatest living poets. Clean.
Hardcover. NY, Dalkey Archive Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 160 pages, clean copy. Made speechless by her eccentric father, the beautiful Etheria is traded for a piece of precious jade. Memory, her sister, tells her story, that of a childhood enlivened by Lewis Carroll and an orangutan named Dr. Johnson and envenomed by the pernicious courtship of Radulph Tubbs, Queen Victoria's own Dragon of Industry. The novel travels from Oxford to Egypt where one million ibis mummies wait to be transformed into fertilizer, where Baconfield the architect will cause a pyramid to collapse, and where a scorned and bloated hunger artist who speaks in tongues will plot a bloody revenge. The fourth element in a tetralogy of novels - Earth (The Stain), Fire (Entering Fire), Water (The Fountains of Neptune) and Air - The Jade Cabinet is both a riveting novel and a reflection on the nature of memory and desire, language and power. Following the novel is an afterword, "Waking to Eden," in which Ducornet reflects on the sources for her writing and on the quartet of novels completed by The Jade Cabinet.
Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk., 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 359 pages. In this major reevaluation of Isaac Newton's intellectual life, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs shows how his pioneering work in mathematics, physics, and cosmology was intertwined with his study of alchemy. Professor Dobbs argues that to Newton those several intellectual pursuits were all ways of approaching Truth, and that Newton's primary goal was not the study of nature for its own sake but rather an attempt to establish a unified system that would have included both natural and divine principles. She also argues that Newton's methodology was much broader than modern scholars have previously supposed, and she traces the evolution of his thought on the intertwined problems of the microcosmic "vegetable spirit" of alchemy and the "cause" of the cosmic principle of gravitation. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket that has been price-clipped. Miniature studies of bird and animal life with lovely wood engravings by Brian Hope-Taylor. Translated from the Russian by W.L. Goodman. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two large hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets. 940 total pages. John Constable, one of the most beloved of British painters, is renowned for his poetic approach to nature and his extraordinary use of broken color. In this beautiful two-volume set, the dean of Constable scholars, Graham Reynolds, discusses all the paintings and drawings the artist produced between 1790 and 1816, both before and after his breakthrough into the original style that is the basis of his fame. Together with Reynolds`s award-winning The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable (1984), the books are a catalogue raisonne, of this artist`s monumental oeuvre.The two volumes, one of text and one of plates, describe and reproduce 1370 paintings and drawings in chronological order. They begin with Constable`s juvenilia and tentative experiments before he went to London in 1799 to become a professional artist. Next are some lesser-known works-elegant figure studies of girls, Constable`s first portraits, and his Lake District watercolors. Finally are the works after 1808-Dedham Vale: morning, Flatford Mill from a Lock on the Stour, A Summerland, The Stour Valley and Dedham Village, and the recently rediscovered The Wheatfield-works that made Constable a major force in British landscape painting. The volumes also include Constable`s numerous sketches of his homeland around East Bergholt and Dedham from this period, drawings on which he based his later masterpieces. An appendix records and reproduces, as addenda to The Later Paintings and Drawings, 94 works produced between 1817 and 1836 that have come to light since those books were published. Small 1/2" closed tear to front corner of dust jacket, otherwise a clean, crisp set. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. Birmingham AL, The Legal Classics Library , reprint, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Dark green calf with decorative gilt stamping, raised bands, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, ribbon marker, 946 pages. Previous owner's bookplate on inside front pastedown, otherwise clean and bright. Facsimile of the 1925 edition containing all 3 volumes of the original work from 1646. The author established the system of modern public international law, based on the concept of "droit naturel," a morality-based law that superseded the laws of individuals or nations. Though based on Christian natural law, Grotius advanced the novel argument that his system would still be valid if it lacked a divine basis. In this regard Grotius pointed to the future by moving international law in a secular direction.
Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Six matching volumes, red cloth bindings with black/gilt titling on spines, gilt initials on front board. Covers Emerson's letters from 1813 to 1881. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an influential American essayist, philosopher, and poet, known for leading the Transcendentalist movement. His works emphasized individualism, nature, and self-reliance, significantly impacting American literature and thought. NOT ex-lib, clean complete set. Due to weight DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 200 pages, large format. Profusley illustrated with color photographs of trees. Trees are vital- without them we simply wouldn't be here. Not only essential, they have been an inspiration throughout our history. In breathtaking photographs and stories we are taken on a journey from the boreal forest at the edge of the Arctic to the rainforests girdling the planet; from ancient bristlecones to fresh-leaved seedlings; from the charming and familiar to the scary and rare. An elegantly written and highly accessible text is complemented by an extraordinary collection of images created by some of the world's leading nature photographers.
Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 535 pages. This work contains Shaftesbury's philosophical notebooks from 1698 to 1712. It includes reflections on such topics as the natural affections, good and evil, God, self, the passions, pleasure and pain, nature, life, and philosophy, as well as a brief Life of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, by his son. A reprint of the 1900 edition. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Garland Publishing, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Seven hardcover volumes, orange cloth covers, A reprint of the 1805 edition published in London. Name on front fly leafs, light pencil marking to many text pages. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. NY, Dunreath Publishing, 2nd Ed., 1893, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light blue cloth, lightly soiled, stamped in dark blue with a decorative cover. 80 pages with charming line drawings by George W. Bardwell. The story follows the exploits of a band of elves as they search for the world's most picturesque location. The elves face many difficulties and impediments on their voyage, but they keep going for their goal. They pick up valuable lessons about cooperation, tenacity, and the wonders of nature along the way. Hinge cracked at title page, book a little shaken but holding, clean copy.
Softcover. Baltimore MD, Johns Hopkins University, 1st pbk., 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 210 pages. Historian and literary scholar Christopher Celenza argues that serious interest in the intellectual life of Renaissance Italy can be reinvigorate, and the nature of the Renaissance itself re-accessed, by recovering a major part of its intellectual and cultural activity that has been largely ignored since the Renaissance was first "discovered": the vast body of works-literary, philosophical, poetic, and religious-written in Latin. Produced between the mid-fourteenth and the early sixteenth centuries by major figures such as Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, and Leon Battista Alberti, as well as minor but interesting thinkers like Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger, this literature was initially overlooked by scholars of the Renaissance because they were not written in the vernacular Italian which alone was seen as was the supreme expression of a culture. Clean copy.