opera

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages. Aarons, erstwhile photographer to the rich and famous, has combed his archives to compile a collection of slick, upscale snapshots that vividly capture the lives of the "polo set." After the violence he witnessed as a combat photographer in WWII, Aarons decided that the only beaches he wanted to invade in the future were "decorated with beautiful girls tanning in a tranquil sun"-which are amply presented here. Aarons imparts a nearly tactile quality to these razor-sharp images, and every photograph, from the 1950s through the 1980s, is richly evocative of its era. One 1955 photo captures longtime fashion icon C.Z. Guest poolside in typically modest mid-century swimming attire with her son and dogs. A 1964 spread for Town & Country pictures the deeply tanned "young matrons of Palm Beach" in day-glow floral Lilly Pulitzer dresses. In a 1968 picture, fellow photographer Lord Lichfield is shown on the Italian Riviera wearing groovy yellow pants and flanked by Pucci-clad Italian princesses. Aaron's caption notes that "a photographer's life without a wife" seems to agree with the young cousin to Queen Elizabeth. While much of Aarons' work is focused on "horsey" types, he also turns his lens on creative folks. A dashing Gore Vidal is pictured at his Italian villa, the late Gianni Versace is shown at work in his home on Lake Como and Wanda Horowitz, daughter of Arturo Toscanini, is photographed at her father's podium at La Scala opera house in Milan. Aarons' gossipy captions, which accompany each photograph, help make this striking volume a voyeur's dream. 250 color photographs

Softcover. London, Frank Cass, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 526 pages, b&w illustrations. An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France 1940-1944. Maps, appends., sources, index, Updated edition of the HMSO Official History Volume. Originally withdrawn shortly after publication due to threats of legal action by Peter Churchill, then re-released with emendations, Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A young, female university student, is found murdered. The signs point to sexual molestation, a probable rape. Bert, retired now and ailing after an operation, falls under police suspicion. He knew the girl, befriended her even, but did he kill her?

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket., 317 pages. Northern sympathizer in the Confederate capital, daring spymaster, postwar politician: Elizabeth Van Lew was one of the most remarkable figures in American history, a woman who defied the conventions of the nineteenth-century South. In Southern Lady, Yankee Spy, historian Elizabeth Varon provides a gripping, richly researched account of the woman who led what one historian called "the most productive espionage operation of the Civil War." Under the nose of the Confederate government, Van Lew ran a spy ring that gathered intelligence, hampered the Southern war effort, and helped scores of Union soldiers to escape from Richmond prisons. Clean copy.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 2nd pr., 2026, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 264 pages in color. Basil Wolverton is one of the greatest, most idiosyncratic talents in comic book history. Though he is best known for his humorous grotesqueries in MAD magazine, it is his science-fiction character Spacehawk that Wolverton fans have most often demanded be collected. The wait is over: Spacehawk features every story from Spacehawk's intergalactic debut in 1940 to his final, Nazi-crushing adventure in 1942. Spacehawk is the closest thing to a colorfully-costumed, conventional action hero Wolverton ever created, yet the strip is infused with Wolverton's quintessential weirdness: controlled, organic artwork of strangely repulsive aliens and monsters and bizarre planets, and stories of gruesome retribution that bring to mind Wolverton's peer, Fletcher Hanks. Spacehawk had no secret identity, no fixed base of operations beyond his spaceship, and no sidekicks or love interests. He had but one mission in life: to protect the innocent throughout the Solar System, and to punish the guilty. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, 8th pr., 1956, Hardcover, blue cloth covers in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. Illustrated with color reproductions of the work of the Navajo Boy Artist, Little No-Shirt (Beatien Yazz). True story of operating a trading post in the Navaho country of Arizona in mid 20th century. Clean copy.

Softcover. New Lebanon NY, Omega Publications, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 234 pages, b&w photos. Everything about Noor Inayat Khan was extraordinary. A great-great-great granddaughter of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, she was born in Moscow to an American mother and an Indian Sufi Muslim father. Due to the unrest in Russia the family moved to London and from there to France where she spent the happiest years of her life studying music, child psychology and writing children's books. In 1940, her father having deserted the family and died in India years before, the family moved once again to England where Noor was trained as a wireless operator with the aim of sending her to German-occupied France to join up with the resistance. Noor was small and delicate, emotional, imaginative, shy, easily flustered and distracted. On the other hand there was her steely determination to serve her country, the desperate need for wireless operators and her perfect French. She was sent on her mission in June 1943. Her biography contains all the elements of an exciting spy novel but it was horrific and deadly reality. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MD, Cornell Maritime Press, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 192 pages, b&w photographs. The story of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company's "Old Bay Line"that maintained faithful and uninterrupted service on the Chesapeake Bay from its founding in 1840 until operations suspended in 1962. The line line offered transportation of passengers and frieght between Norfolk and Baltimore. Edge wear, small tears to dust jacket. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York , W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. SIGNED BY SMALL on half-title page. David Small, a best-selling and highly regarded children's book illustrator, comes forward with this unflinching graphic memoir. Remarkable and intensely dramatic, Stitches tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy who awakes one day from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he has been transformed into a virtual mute-a vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot. From horror to hope, Small proceeds to graphically portray an almost unbelievable descent into adolescent hell and the difficult road to physical, emotional, and artistic recovery.

Softcover. New York , W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, SIGNED BY SMALL on half-title page. David Small, a best-selling and highly regarded children's book illustrator, comes forward with this unflinching graphic memoir. Remarkable and intensely dramatic, Stitches tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy who awakes one day from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he has been transformed into a virtual mute-a vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot. From horror to hope, Small proceeds to graphically portray an almost unbelievable descent into adolescent hell and the difficult road to physical, emotional, and artistic recovery.

Hardcover. New York, Random House , 1st, 1943, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover. 247 pages. Color, black & white illustrations by Gustaf Tenggren. Rubbing to spine, corners. Dust jacket with light soiling, chipping.

Softcover. Mancheser, U.K., Manchester University, Reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Softcover, 221 pages. Foreword by George Melly. Highlighting on two pages. B&W photos and illustrations. Street Noises combines the diverse materials of mass culture with literary and archival sources, to produce an innovative and critical re-reading of twentieth-century Paris as the city of the people and of cultural modernity. It concentrates on popular song and opera, cultural theory and records of police surveillance (such as the unpublished archives concerning the sexual mores of sailors in Toulon), sensational weekly magazines (including the weekly Detective Magazine with its remarkable photomontage) and writers of the Academie Goncourt. The author picks out their common realisation of the experience of the city, also showing how the faits divers and the entertainment industries frame the writing of a Benjamin, a Colette or a Genet. Rifkin reworks modern critical theory through these sources, reflecting on its relation to the production of mass cultures.

Hardcover. NY, Schirmer Books, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Talking Music is comprised of substantial original conversations with seventeen American experimental composers and musicians--including Milton Babbitt, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, and John Zorn--many of whom rarely grant interviews.The author skillfully elicits candid dialogues that encompass technical explorations; questions of method, style, and influence; their personal lives and struggles to create; and their aesthetic goals and artistic declarations. Herein, John Cage recalls the turning point in his career; Ben Johnston criticizes the operas of his teacher Harry Partch; La Monte Young attributes his creative discipline to a Morman childhood; and much more. The results are revelatory conversations with some of America's most radical musical innovators. 489 pages, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Theo. Audel & Company, 1st, 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 334 pages plus publisher's ads in rear. Bright, clean copy with gilt title, design on spine. All edges gilt. Chapter headings include: Summary of Arithmetic; Useful Measurements; Parts of a Circle; Measuring Machines; Screw cutting in the Lathe; Boring Machines & operations; Milling Machines & Operations; Drilling Machines and Operations; Grinding Operations; Punching & Shearing Machines .Bolt Cutting.Auxiliary Machines; Utilities and Accessories; Shop Management; Useful Workshop Recipes; Aid to the Injuried in Accidents, etc.

Hardcover. Pittsburgh PA, GoodKnight Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The Art of Selling Movies presents the first-ever look at 60 years of newspaper advertising for motion pictures great and small. These ads created by Hollywood and adapted by local and regional exhibitors motivated patrons to leave their homes, part with precious income, and spend time in the dark. Because of the high stakes involved, theater operators used wildly creative means to make that happen. They made movie advertising equal parts art and psychology, appealing to every human instinct (especially sex) in an effort to push product and keep their theatres in business. From the pen-and-ink masterpieces of the 1920s and 30s to location-specific folk art to ad space jam-packed with enticements for every member of the family, The Art of Selling Movies dissects the psyche of the American movie-going public ... and the advertisers seeking to push just the right buttons.

Hardcover. Pittsburgh PA, GoodKnight Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The Art of Selling Movies presents the first-ever look at 60 years of newspaper advertising for motion pictures great and small. These ads created by Hollywood and adapted by local and regional exhibitors motivated patrons to leave their homes, part with precious income, and spend time in the dark. Because of the high stakes involved, theater operators used wildly creative means to make that happen. They made movie advertising equal parts art and psychology, appealing to every human instinct (especially sex) in an effort to push product and keep their theatres in business. From the pen-and-ink masterpieces of the 1920s and 30s to location-specific folk art to ad space jam-packed with enticements for every member of the family, The Art of Selling Movies dissects the psyche of the American movie-going public ... and the advertisers seeking to push just the right buttons.

Softcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 155 pages. Thomas Dennis emigrated to America from England in 1663, settling in Ipswich, a Massachusetts village a long day's sail north of Boston. He had apprenticed in joinery, the most common method of making furniture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain, and he became Ipswich's second joiner, setting up shop in the heart of the village. During his lifetime, Dennis won wide renown as an artisan. Today, connoisseurs judge his elaborately carved furniture as among the best produced in seventeenth-century America. Robert Tarule, historian and accomplished craftsman, brilliantly recreates Dennis's world in recounting how he created a single oak chest. Writing as a woodworker himself, Tarule vividly portrays Dennis walking through the woods looking for the right trees; sawing and splitting the wood on site; and working in his shop on the chest-planing, joining, and carving. Dennis inherited a knowledge of wood and woodworking that dated back centuries before he was born, and Tarule traces this tradition from Old World to New. He also depicts the natural and social landscape in which Dennis operated, from the sights, sounds, and smells of colonial Ipswich and its surrounding countryside to the laws that governed his use of trees and his network of personal and professional relationships. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, reprint, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Volume X in The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. 399 pages, illustrated with maps (one fold-out) and b&w photos. Gilt on spine with light fading, lacks dust jacket, dj flap copy pasted inside front cover, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, reprint, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Volume I in The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. 432 pages, illustrated with maps and b&w photos. Gilt on spine with light fading, lacks dust jacket, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 313 pages plus index. Tan cloth boards that show minor fading to top, spine and light discoloration to back cover. Otherwise very good. No dust jacket. Generous selection of black and white illustrations. This copy also complete with both the fold-out maps that are often missing: (1) City of Richmond in 1861; and (2) Richmond-Petersburg Theatre of Operations. These ten chapters reconstitute, across an eighty-year gap, the everyday life of a capital city close behind the fighting fronts of a prolonged war. From records that originated close to the facts or in the midst of them--newspapers, advertisements, diaries, letters, stenographic reports of the time--Mr. Bill discloses how people lived on the home front of the Confederacy. He tells in abundant detail what the people did to amuse themselves, what rumors alternately exalted and depressed them, about what and whom they gossiped, what they found procurable in the black market and what it cost them.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 352 pages. A groundbreaking study of cultural life during a turbulent and formative decade in contemporary China, this book seeks to explode several myths about the Cultural Revolution (officially 1966-1976). Through national and local examination of the full range of cultural forms (film, operas, dance, other stage arts, music, fine arts, literature, and even architecture), Clark argues against characterizing this decade as one of chaos and destruction. Rather, he finds that innovation and creativity, promotion of participation in cultural production, and a vigorous promotion of the modern were all typical of the Cultural Revolution. Using a range of previously little-used materials, Clark forces us to fundamentally reassess our understanding of the Cultural Revolution, a period which he sees as the product of innovation in conflict with the effort by political leaders to enforce a top-down modernity. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st US, 1945, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with front and spine printed in black and gilt, 417 pages. This volume publishes his speeches, broadcasts, messages, statements, and letters made, sent, and issued between 22 February and 31 December 1944. A full and momentous year, 1944 included the Normandy invasion, the largest amphibious operation in history, which re-established the Allied military presence in German-occupied Europe. Light spotting to covers, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st US, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED by the author on the title page, without dedication. Jasper Fforde's novel introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England. In a world where one can literally get lost in literature, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world's Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. NY, Small, Maynard & Co., reprint, 1911, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in green cloth with gilt title box, 312 pages. Early printing of this mystery set in the world of international opera. Light shelf wear, otherwise clean.