Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Books, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Chronicling two-hundred years of glamour, intrigue, and hedonism, this rich and vivid history of the French Riviera features a vast cast of characters, from Pablo Picasso and Coco Chanel to Andre Matisse and James Baldwin. In 1835, Lord Brougham founded Cannes, introducing bathing and the manicured lawn to the wilds of the Mediterranean coast. Today, much of that shore has become a concrete mass from which escape is an exclusive dream. In the 185 years between, the stretch of seaboard from the red mountains of the Esterel to the Italian border hosted a cultural phenomenon well in excess of its tiny size. A mere handful of towns and resorts created by foreign visitors - notably English, Russian and American - attracted the talented, rich and famous as well as those who wanted to be. For nearly two centuries of creativity, luxury, excess, scandal, war and corruption, the dark and sparkling world of the Riviera was a temptation for everybody who was anybody. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st US, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 192 pages. The photos are breathtaking not necessarily for their quality - many are washed out and most of the subject matter is routine day to day military stuff - but for their rarity. While the Germans seem to have been at least as far advanced in the use of color photography as the Americans, there is still a paucity of color photography in the public record. That is being addressed by the various nations who took large amounts of color film in an official capacity, including the US, UK, Germany and Canada.The book's captions are adequate to the task, and there are good historical sections, as well as an introduction by Max Hastings as well as commentary by an actual German war correspondent. The strength of the book is in its ability to bring the participants of the subject campaign - the German invasion of Russia up to and including Stalingrad - to life. The use of a large format allows one to note small details of the photos, and relate to the subject matter on a personal level. Despite the lack of "action" shots, there is much to see in facial expressions, uniform details, and especially geography as the Russian steppe is shown in summer and winter, as well as the famous Russian mud (Rasputitsa) about which so much has been written.
Hardcover. Wiley, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 320 pages. Having signed the most lucrative contract in NHL history with the Washington Capitals, Alexander Ovechkin, at 24, is an undisputed hockey legend. In the mold more of a rock star than hockey player, Ovechkin courts the limelight, is never shy with his opinions, and, in a sport that thrives on the collective culture of the team-Ovechkin is an iconoclast who flouts convention, while loving the game. In The Ovechkin Project, veteran hockey writers Damien Cox and Gare Joyce trace his elite sports pedigree, his role representing Russia in the World Juniors, and how since entering the NHL, he's taken his team from worst to first in their division, and the hockey world by storm. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st US, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 287 pages. Translated from the Russian by Gordon Clough. A novel by the author of The Yawning Heights. A Professor in Moscow slowly realises that Communism isn't all it's cracked up to be. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 181 pages. "In the 1960's and 1970's, American professor Norton Dodge forayed on his own in the Soviet Union, bought the work of underground 'unofficial' artists, and brought it out himself or arranged to have it shipped illegally to the United States. John McPhee investigates Dodge's clandestine activities in the service of dissident Soviet art, his motives for his work, and the fates of several of the artists whose lives he touched. The Ransom of Russian Art is a suspenseful, chilling, and fascinating report on a covert operation like no other". Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY , Norton, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with fading to spine, 253 pages. This series of sketches captures Stalin with irony, humor and pathos. The author calls his fictionalized version of Stalin "artistic documentation" in the spirit of reality based on research, personal experience and conversations with others. Yuri Krotkov, a Soviet Georgian, as was Stalin, was a prominent dramatist and screenwriter in the Soviet Union before his defection. As a member of the Russian intelligentsia, he was in the confidence of top-ranking Soviet and party officials in Moscow. Review slip laid in. Foxing to top edge otherwise clean copy.
Softcover. Rochester VT, Park Street Press, 1st thus, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 288 pages. This groundbreaking survey, originally published in London in 1860, is a radically open-minded look at the use of drugs across the world and throughout the ages. Early users of tobacco in Russia would have their noses cut off and repeat offenders their heads. Pope Innocent XII excommunicated any who used it in St. Peters. Marijuana users in 14th century Egypt would have their teeth extracted for the crime. Yet use of these and other forbidden substances continued to grow. If only as a record of the perennial failure of harsh punishments to deter drug use Victorian naturalist Mordecai Cooke's work The Seven Sisters of Sleep would remain significant. But Cooke's natural humor and keen insights have ensured this work's reputation as possibly the best early book from what has grown into an enormous body of literature on mind- and mood-altering substances. Written at a time, similar to our own, when drug use was being reconsidered, The Seven Sisters of Sleep is a thought-provoking and open-minded look at the use of drugs across the world and throughout the ages. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This installment in the delightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno will take all of Bruno's resolve and quick thinking to untangle a mystery that will reach its deadly denouement at the chateau of an aging rock star. But in true Bruno fashion, at least lunchtime is never in danger. It's summer in the Dordogne and the heirs of a modest sheep farmer learn that they have been disinherited. Their father's estate has been sold to an insurance company in return for a policy that will place him in a five-star retirement home for the rest of his life. But the farmer dies before he can move in. Was it a natural death? Or was there foul play? Chief of Police Bruno Courreges is soon on the case, embarking on an investigation that will lead him to several shadowy insurance companies owned by a Russian oligarch with a Cypriot passport. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Washington DC, Brookings Institution Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 303 pages. The author analyzes why it is uneconomical to develop Siberia as the Russians have historically envisioned. Clean copy.
Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 3rd pr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 375 pages, maps. A decade after the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China established their formidable alliance in 1950, escalating public disagreements between them broke the international communist movement apart. In The Sino-Soviet Split, Lorenz Luthi tells the story of this rupture, which became one of the defining events of the Cold War. Identifying the primary role of disputes over Marxist-Leninist ideology, Luthi traces their devastating impact in sowing conflict between the two nations in the areas of economic development, party relations, and foreign policy. The source of this estrangement was Mao Zedong's ideological radicalization at a time when Soviet leaders, mainly Nikita Khrushchev, became committed to more pragmatic domestic and foreign policies. Using a wide array of archival and documentary sources from three continents, Luthi presents a richly detailed account of Sino-Soviet political relations in the 1950s and 1960s. He explores how Sino-Soviet relations were linked to Chinese domestic politics and to Mao's struggles with internal political rivals. Furthermore, Luthi argues, the Sino-Soviet split had far-reaching consequences for the socialist camp and its connections to the nonaligned movement, the global Cold War, and the Vietnam War. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 2nd Ed., 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. 664 pages with index. Volume 2 ONLY. Masaryk was the president of Czechoslovakia after World War I. Long a student of Russia this book was first published in 1913. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Duckworth Overlook, 1st UK, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 290 pages. A novel based in Stalinist Russia around an historical episode involving the poet, Osip Mandelstam.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brick-red cloth covers, 448 pages with index. The attempted modernization of Central Asia by the central Soviet government in the 1920's was a dramatic confrontation between radical, determined, authoritarian communists and a cluster of traditional Moslem societies based on kinship, custom, and religion. The Soviet authorities were determined to undermine the traditional social order through the destruction of existing family structures and worked to achieve this aspect of revolution through the mobilization of women. Gregory J. Massell's study of the interaction between central power and local traditions concentrates on the development of female roles in revolutionary modernization. Women in Moslem societies were segregated, exploited, and degraded; they were, therefore, a structural weak point in the traditional order-a surrogate proletariat. Through this potentially subversive group, it was believed, intense conflicts could be generated within society which would lead to its disintegration and subsequent reconstitution. Marginal notes to about 15 pages, otherwise clean, solid copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with minor edgewear, unclipped, 334 pages. Poet/critic's posthumously published third volume of essays, here mostly writer's he loved, including: Stead, Frost, Stevens, Kipling, Auden, Graves and Chekov and other Russians. Name on blank prelim page, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Basic Books, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 275 pages. Translated from the French by Olivier Bernier. Preface by Virgil Thomson. The autobiography of a Jewish painter who fled from Bolshevik Russia to Spain, moved to France and who was imprisoned during WWWII by the Germans and who moved eventually to the U.S.
Hardcover. NY, Dial, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Color illustrations by Friso Henstra; a Russian folktale about a cow who's magical milk brings back youth to her owners; very good in a very good dust jacket.
Hardcover. NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. From a New York Times best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, a sweeping epic of how the Vikings and their descendants have shaped history and America. Scandinavia has always been a world apart. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when they finally left their homeland in search of opportunity, these wanderers--including the most famous, the Vikings--would reshape Europe and beyond. Their ingenuity, daring, resiliency, and loyalty to family and community would propel them to the gates of Rome, the steppes of Russia, the courts of Constantinople, and the castles of England and Ireland. But nowhere would they leave a deeper mark than across the Atlantic, where the Vikings' legacy would become the American Dream. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 487 pages, b&w illustrations. Napoleon's colorful but disastrous Russian campaign has been strangely neglected by American publishers. Bridging the gap between popular and scholarly history, historian Cate has written a thoroughly detailed and researched account that should also appeal to the lay reader. His writing is deliberately paced but dramatic and does far more justice to the extremely complex political and military situation of 1812 than Philippe de Segur's Napoleon's Russian Campaign (1965), the only other work available in the United States. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. 739 pages, index, b&w illustrations. The War That Ended Peace brings vividly to life the military leaders, politicians, diplomats, bankers, and the extended, interrelated family of crowned headsacross Europe who failed to stop the descent into war: in Germany, the mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm II and the chief of the German general staff, Von Moltke the Younger; in Austria-Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph, a man who tried, through sheer hard work, to stave off the coming chaos in his empire; in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife; in Britain, King Edward VII, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and British admiral Jacky Fisher, the fierce advocate of naval reform who entered into the arms race with Germany that pushed the continent toward confrontation on land and sea. Clean copy.
Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 464 pages. Richard Stites views the struggle for liberation of Russian women in the context of both nineteenth-century European feminism and twentieth-century communism. The central personalities, their vigorous exchange of ideas, the social and political events that marked the emerging ideal of emancipation--all come to life in this absorbing and dramatic account. The author's history begins with the feminist, nihilist, and populist impulses of the 1860s and 1870s, and leads to the social mobilization campaigns of the early Soviet period. Spine with light fading, otherwise a clean, tight copy.
Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 1,025 pages. From English, French, Spanish and Russian to Pashto, Tagalog, and Swahili, this is the first comprehensive reference work to provide detailed information about the world's forty major languages. Written by acknowledged specialists in the field, the volume begins with a general introduction to language and language families, followed by language-family sections that provide an informative essay about that language, and individual chapters that discuss the history, distribution, syntax, grammar and punctuation, writing and spelling systems, standards of usage, and other important aspects of each language. Clean copy.
Softcover. Atlanta, High Museum of Art, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The catalogue of a traveling exhibition organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, examining the significant interrelationships between sports, photography, and culture in the US, Europe, and Russia since the late 19th century. The 141 works featured (32 color, 109 duotone) by 120 photographers (including such masters as Stieglitz, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, and Arbus) are drawn from American and European public and private collections and the archives of Life and Sports Illustrated . Includes essays by Harvey Green, John M. Hoberman, and Peter Schjeldahl.
Softcover. Atlanta, High Museum of Art, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The catalogue of a traveling exhibition organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, examining the significant interrelationships between sports, photography, and culture in the US, Europe, and Russia since the late 19th century. The 141 works featured (32 color, 109 duotone) by 120 photographers (including such masters as Stieglitz, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, and Arbus) are drawn from American and European public and private collections and the archives of Life and Sports Illustrated . Includes essays by Harvey Green, John M. Hoberman, and Peter Schjeldahl.