russia

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 3rd Ed., 1941, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 447 pages. Memoir of life on wartime Europe's frontline by a trailblazing female reporter. Virginia Cowles was just twenty-seven years old when she decided to transform herself from a society columnist into a foreign press correspondent. Looking for Trouble is the story of this evolution, as Cowles reports from both sides of the Spanish Civil War, London on the first day of the Blitz, Nazi-run Munich, and Finlands bitter, bloody resistance to the Russian invasion. Along the way, Cowles also meets Adolf Hitler (an inconspicuous little man), Benito Mussolini, Winston Churchill, Martha Gellhorn, and Ernest Hemingway. Her reportage blends sharp political analysis with a gossip columnists chatty approachability and a novelists empathy. Cowles understood in 1937 long before even the average politician that Fascism in Europe was a threat to democracy everywhere. Her insights on extremism are as piercing and relevant today as they were eighty years ago. Clean, bright copy, no dust jacket.

NY, Villard, 1st , 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 86 pages + paintings from Botkin's portfolio. Illustrated with black & white photos and color paintings by Botkin. Text compiled by Botkin's daughter Marina Schweitzer. Foreword by Greg King. Bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 400 pages, b&w illustrations. A touching, brilliant and ground-breaking biography of one of literary history's most famous couple, at once a dual biography, a history, and the portrait of a long and stormy marriage. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Remainder line on bottom edge.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 400 pages. In 1897 Tolstoy wrote his daughter Tonya, explaining his opposition to her desired marriage: "As far as love is concerned, it's an ignoble and unhealthy sentiment-I would not have opened my door to it." Perhaps this passage reflects the turbulent marriage of Leo and Sonya-first the promise of love and then disillusionment. Certainly, there was a love of sorts-their marriage lasted 48 years and brought forth 13 children-but the later half of the marriage was soured by acrimony, secrecy, and great emotional wounding. The greatest division came with the battle over the rights to Tolstoy's works. Sonya finally got sole possession, outliving Leo by nine years and plagued by the thought that she had been wrong for her genius husband. In intimate and scrupulous detail often drawn directly from Leo and Sonya's diaries, Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) has profiled the disintegration of a marriage. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Vertigo/DC Comics, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Graphic novel, 158 pages, art by Danijel Zezelj. Alik is a former Soviet soldier who has relocated to Coney Island only to become a gangland enforcer. He's haunted by memories of his past, and the only thing that soothes his angst is booze, heroin and his lover, the prostitute Marina. But as much as Alik encourages her to break away from the ganglord who owns her, Marina can't because of her daughter, who never leads the ganglord's side. So Alik comes up with a desperate plan to save all three of them, and in doing so, he'll find he's destined to repeat the past over and over again, including a past or two he might not even be aware he has, in a story that flashes from present- day run down Coney Island to the Russia of 10 years ago during the Second Chechen War to turn of the 20th century Coney Island, when the area was at its peak amusement park glory and wonder.

Philadelpia, Vertex Book/Auerbach Publishers, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, lightly soiled dust jacket, 243 pages. Map endpapers One man's story of being arrested on trumped up charges as an enemy of the Soviet State and being sent to Siberia for eight years. Inscription on dedication page (by book jacket designer).

Hardcover. London, Chris Boot, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 252 pages. In this volume, ten Magnum photographers turn their lenses on contemporary Georgia. Situated on the cusp of Russia and Asia, but with a European culture dating back to the 7th century BC, Georgia was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922. Its independence was restored in 1991, but it then suffered from civil war and a breakdown of its economic infrastructure. In the last decade, however, despite ongoing tensions in its relations with Russia, Georgia has mounted a spirited comeback. Magnum photographers Antoine d'Agata, Jonas Bendiksen, Thomas Dworzak, Martine Franck, Alex Majoli, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Mark Power and Alec Soth visited the country during spring 2009, each pursuing their own theme (Alec Soth goes in search of the 'most beautiful woman in Georgia', for example). All found themselves enchanted by the Georgian people, something strongly conveyed in their photographs as well as in personal text journals which accompany the images. This well-designed volume also includes a fold-out map, marked with each photographer's journey; a chapter showing the best of Magnum photographers' work over 60 years (including by Magnum's founders Robert Capa from his visit to Georgia with John Steinbeck in 1948 and Henri Cartier-Bresson); and an illuminating introduction by the Paris-based New Yorker writer, and Georgia expert, Wendell Steavenson.

Hardcover. Sverdlovsk, Mid-Urals Publishing House, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Beautiful 2 volume set exploring the history and various uses and creations of Malachite. Profusely illustrated with color photographs. In pristine condition with original pictorial slip cover (slight edge-wear). Book 1: Poetics of Stone. Book 2:Chronicles Documents Commentaries. Text in Russian and English.

Softcover. Iowa City, University of Iowa, 1st, 1999, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 115 pages, b&w illustrations. Paper wraps. Table of contents with black and white copies of Malevich's sketches and art work. Partial quote from the forward by Stephen Prokopoff "As the work of the principal theoretician of the extraordinary modernist development that occurred in Russia during the first quarter of the twentieth century, Malevich's writings provide an important entry to the understanding of its artistic production and to the thought that animated it."

Softcover. Iowa City, University of Iowa, 1st, 1999, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 115 pages, b&w illustrations. Paper wraps. Table of contents with black and white copies of Malevich's sketches and art work. Partial quote from the forward by Stephen Prokopoff "As the work of the principal theoretician of the extraordinary modernist development that occurred in Russia during the first quarter of the twentieth century, Malevich's writings provide an important entry to the understanding of its artistic production and to the thought that animated it."

Hardcover. Lexington KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. An Armenian national raised in Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897--1987) studied in the influential Stanislavski studio, renowned as the source of the "method" acting technique. Shortly after immigrating to New York in 1926, he created a sensation with an all-black production of Porgy (1927). He then went on to direct the debut Broadway productions of three of the most popular shows in the history of American musical theater: Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), and Carousel (1945). Mamoulian began working in film just as the sound revolution was dramatically changing the technical capabilities of the medium, and he quickly established himself as an innovator. Not only did many of his unusual camera techniques become standard, but he also invented a device that eliminated the background noises created by cameras and dollies. Seen as a rebel earlier in his career, Mamoulian gradually gained respect in Hollywood, and the Directors Guild of America awarded him the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1983. In this meticulously researched biography, David Luhrssen paints the influential director as a socially conscious artist who sought to successfully combine art and commercial entertainment. Luhrssen not only reveals the fascinating personal story of an important yet neglected figure, but he also offers a tantalizing glimpse into the extraordinarily vibrant American film and theater industries during the twenties, thirties, and forties.

Softcover. NY, New York Telephone Company, 1935, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, gray-green covers. a good- copy of this scarce Manhattan phone book, 1072 pages. Spine cocked, rear cover soiled. Ads scattered throughout and on inside covers. (Russian Tea Room: CO lumbus 5-0947, Sardi's: LA cawana 4-5785). Solid copy.

Hardcover. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 152 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy. As a photographer for Life and Fortune magazines, Margaret Bourke-White traveled to Russia in the 1930s, photographed the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and recorded the liberation of Buchenwald at the end of WWII. In 1949, Life sent her to South Africa to take photographs in a country that was becoming racially polarized by white minority rule. Life published two photo-essays highlighting Bourke-White's photographs, but much of her South African work remained unpublished until now. Here, these stunning photographs collected by Alex Lichtenstein and Rick Halpern offer an unparalleled visual record of white domination in South Africa during the early days of apartheid. In addition to these powerful and historically significant photographs, Lichtenstein and Halpern include two essays that explore Bourke-White's artistic and political formation and provide background material about the cultural, political, and economic circumstances that produced the rise and triumph of Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa. This richly illustrated book brings to light a large body of photography from a major American photographer and offers a compelling history of a reprehensible system of racial conflict and social control that Bourke-White took such pains to document.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 414 pages. Translation by Richard Taylor. Dust jacket spine faded. Previous price sticker on dust jacket front flap. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with minor wear. Selected and translated by Olga Davydoff Dax. Color illustrations by the author throughout. Mariamna Davydoff, the Russian lady who wrote and illustrated this memoir of her life before the Revolution, was born in 1871 into a large, aristocratic family whose ancestors can he traced back to the eleventh century. After fleeing Russia in 1919, she eventually settled in Brittany with a sister and there reproduced, from memory, albums of detailed text and watcrcolors that had been abandoned in Russia and were later destroyed by the Bolsheviks. The result is a unique, first-hand account of a way of life that we have previously known almost exclusively through the works of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, and a few other writers of the late nineteenth century.

Softcover. Los Angeles, privately printed, 1st, circa 1980, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 47 pages. Softcover with light blue paper wrappers. Black and white pictures in rear. Faded wrappers, and abrasion on first few pages. Previous owner's name in upper right corner of title page. Boris Novikoff was a ballet dancer and the brother of the ballet master, Ivan Novikoff.

Hardcover. Intercourse, Pennsylvania, Good Books, 1st, 1991, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Very Good, The furniture tradition of the Mennonites, Russian immigrants in North America. 231 pages illustrated with several maps and 241 (mostly color, some black/white) photographic illustrations. Book is in near fine condition, dust jacket is in very good condition with some signs of edge wear.

Hardcover. New York, Aperture, 1st, 2003, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 220 pages, 155 b&w photographs by Casasola. Edited by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, essay by Pete Hamill. Agustin Victor Casasola photographed everyone of consequence in Mexico at the time of the revolution, from Francisco (Pancho) Villa, Emiliano Zapata and the exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky to artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. For this splendid collection of Casasola's work, the noted American author Pete Hamill has written a rich essay on the photographer and the Mexico he pictured so well.

Hardcover. Ann Arbor, MI, Ardis, 1st English, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 565 pages. B/w illustrations throughout. Gilt title on spine. Decorated endpapers. Dust Jacket shows some wear due to age: yellowing, fraying and chipping to edges of front, spine and back, but still in tact. Cover boards clean, covered in teal fabric and in good shape. Pages clean, edges slightly yellowed. From the front flap: "...a landmark work in Russian theater scholarship, this study reveals Meyerhold in the context of his time, as seen by friends and enemies, actors and critics, and analyzes the development of his remarkable career as Russia's most celebrated and influential experimental director."

Hardcover. New York, Atheneum, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 397 pages, a classic adventur of Czarist Russia. 10 color plates including title page by N.C. Wyeth. The definitive edition of the Scribner's Illustrated Classic with the original canvases newly photographed. While not a First Edition it is superior in every way considering the quality of the color plates. Bright, clean copy in a similar dust jacket.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 530 pages. Books about thinkers require a kind of unity that their thought may not possess. This cautionary statement is especially applicable to Mikhail Bakhtin, whose intellectual development displays a diversity of insights that cannot be easily integrated or accurately described in terms of a single overriding concern. Clean, bright copy, as new.

Hardcover. NY, Citadel Press, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 294 pages, b&w illustrations. They were the Godfathers of the Movies. Groundbreaking pioneers of the Hollywood Dream Factory, Joseph and Nicholas Schenck may not have been household names like the Warner brothers or Louis B. Mayer, but they were infinitely more powerful, influential--and ruthless. A pair of Russian immigrants with giant ambitions, the Schencks turned their small nickelodeon business in New York's Bowery into a partnership with Loew's movie theaters and a controlling interest in three major studios: MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, and United Artists. They painted the silver screen silver, laid the foundations for the all-powerful studio system, and ruled a global movie empire from their Gatsby-sized mansions on the East and West Coasts. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Paris, Collection Neuf, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 163 pages, black & white photographs throughout, French text, tan cloth board. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 308 pages, map endpapers. Light edge wear to dust jacket, small sticker on front cover. Else a very clean, tight copy.