Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 156 pages. Create and Be Recognized is the first survey of a compelling, always surprising art form -- outsider photography. Presented here is the work of seventeen largely self-taught artists who have used photography or photographic elements in their creations, including such luminaries as Adolf Wolfli, Howard Finster, and Henry Darger, as well as discoveries from little known, equally dramatic artists. As with most outsider art, the work here is fuelled by singular passions, marginalized mindsets, and extreme circumstances, falling outside mainstream picture-making. Employing collage (affixing photos or reproductions to a background), photocollage (photographs cut and pasted together to form a new whole), and tableaux (works based on manipulation and staging), the artists here present work that is, by turns, lyrical and frightening, and always fascinating. Published to coincide with a major touring exhibition of the same name originating at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Create and Be Recognized documents an emerging and important facet of contemporary photography.
Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 168 pages. How early jazz musicians improvised together and how the blues became a part of jazz has until now been a mystery. Part of the reason New Orleans jazz developed as it did is that all the prominent jazz pioneers sang in barbershop quartets. This book describes how the practices of quartet singing were converted to the instruments of a jazz band, and how this, in turn, produced collectively improvised, blues-inflected jazz. Clean, like new.
Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi , 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 235 pages. Throughout his life, Louis Armstrong tried to explain how singing with a barbershop quartet on the streets of New Orleans was foundational to his musicianship. Until now, there has been no in-depth inquiry into what he meant when he said, "I figure singing and playing is the same," or, "Singing was more into my blood than the trumpet." Creating the Jazz Solo: Louis Armstrong and Barbershop Harmony shows that Armstrong understood exactly the relationship between what he sang and what he played, and that he meant these comments to be taken literally: he was singing through his horn. Clean copy, like new.
Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 458 pages. Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, delivers a "gripping and essential account" (The Boston Globe) of how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact. Braiding biography with "cultural history and criticism...that honors the complexity of [its] subject, even, perhaps particularly, when it gets ugly" (Los Angeles Times), Crumb is the story of a richly complex life at the forefront of both the underground and popular cultures of post-war America. Including forty-five stunning black-and-white images throughout and a sixteen-page color insert featuring images both iconic and obscure. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 2nd pr., 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 458 pages. Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-Century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, delivers a "gripping and essential account" (The Boston Globe) of how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact. Braiding biography with "cultural history and criticism...that honors the complexity of [its] subject, even, perhaps particularly, when it gets ugly" (Los Angeles Times), Crumb is the story of a richly complex life at the forefront of both the underground and popular cultures of post-war America. Including forty-five stunning black-and-white images throughout and a sixteen-page color insert featuring images both iconic and obscure. Clean copy.
Softcover. Fonthill Media, reprint, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 144 pages illustrated in color. Cuba Cars and Cigars is full of glorious color images of the rare and varied Cuban-owned 1950s American and European automobiles, trucks, and station wagons that were imported before 1961. Among the famous Marques that feature are Cadillacs, Chevys, Buick, Dodge, Oldsmobile, Ford, Packard, De Soto, Pontiac, Plymouth, Edsel, Mercury and Metropolitan, Hillman, Singer and Austin, Nash Sedans, a Lloyd 600 German 2-cylinder/4-stroke 596cc car, Ramblers and SAABs, Mercs, Humber, Standard Vanguard, Ford Consul/Zephyr, Hillman Husky and Minx, Singer Gazelle and Austin. Most of these vehicles are still in running order, and are passed down from generation to generation. Trucks include Fords, a Fargo, Dodges and Chevys, not forgetting cigars, street urchins, and the lovely ladies of Havana. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Pound Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Photographing the intersection between culture and nature for over 25 years, Virginia Beahan creates luminous and finely detailed images with an 8x10 view camera that describe the complexities of this relationship in diverse geographic settings. Her eight-year project in the waning years of Fidel Castro's revolutionary Cuba resulted in a major 2009 monograph entitled CUBA singing with bright tears. The images depict a country both tragic and beautiful, struggling beneath the weight of history. Larger-than-life images of revolutionary heroes Che Guevara and Jose Marti populate the island. The Bay of Pigs is sublime and treacherous; an atmospheric body of water rimmed with jagged black coral is the same unwelcoming shore that greeted invading CIA-trained Cuban exiles over forty-seven years ago. On a billboard, Fidel Castro reminds us that the US might invade again, and if so, he "will die fighting." Virginia Beahan's work falls within the tradition of great American photographers such as Walker Evans and Robert Adams. Her luminous and detailed large-format photographs reveal a landscape imbued with nuanced stories of culture shaped by geography and human action. Cuba's long and complicated relationship with the United States is part of this unfolding drama. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 416 pages. Open from 1942 until 1945, the Hollywood Canteen was the most famous of the patriotic home front nightclubs where civilian hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted men of the Allied Nations. Since the opening night, when the crowds were so thick that Bette Davis had to enter through the bathroom window to give her welcome speech, the storied dance floor where movie stars danced with soldiers has been the subject of much U.S. nostalgia about the 'Greatest Generation.' Drawing from oral histories with civilian volunteers and military guests who danced at the wartime nightclub, Sherrie Tucker explores how jitterbugging swing culture has come to represent the war in U.S. national memory. Yet her interviewees' varied experiences and recollections belie the possibility of any singular historical narrative. Some recall racism, sexism, and inequality on the nightclub's dance floor and in Los Angeles neighborhoods, dynamics at odds with the U.S. democratic, egalitarian ideals associated with the Hollywood Canteen and the 'Good War' in popular culture narratives. Clean copy in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 416 pages. Open from 1942 until 1945, the Hollywood Canteen was the most famous of the patriotic home front nightclubs where civilian hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted men of the Allied Nations. Since the opening night, when the crowds were so thick that Bette Davis had to enter through the bathroom window to give her welcome speech, the storied dance floor where movie stars danced with soldiers has been the subject of much U.S. nostalgia about the 'Greatest Generation.' Drawing from oral histories with civilian volunteers and military guests who danced at the wartime nightclub, Sherrie Tucker explores how jitterbugging swing culture has come to represent the war in U.S. national memory. Yet her interviewees' varied experiences and recollections belie the possibility of any singular historical narrative. Some recall racism, sexism, and inequality on the nightclub's dance floor and in Los Angeles neighborhoods, dynamics at odds with the U.S. democratic, egalitarian ideals associated with the Hollywood Canteen and the 'Good War' in popular culture narratives. Clean copy in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. Berlin GR, Nicolai Publishing, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. GERMAN TEXT. The history of Berlin's grand hotel. The Adlon opened on October 23, 1907, with the Kaiser, his wife, and many other notables in attendance. It quickly became the social center of Berlin. As the rooms in the Stadtschloss were cold and drafty, the Kaiser paid an annual retainer to keep suites available for his guests.[2] Likewise the Foreign Office used the Adlon for accommodation during state visits, with guests including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. Notable guests of the early years included industrialists such as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as politicians like Walter Rathenau, Gustav Stresemann and the French prime minister Aristide Briand. Many wealthy Berliners lived for extended periods of time in the hotel, while its ballrooms hosted official government functions and society events. Many photos. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York , Oxford University Press , 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 237 pages, color plates. Very good in a similar, unclipped dust jacket. Charles Cushman (1896-1972) photographed a disappearing world in living color. Cushman's midcentury America--a place normally seen only through a scrim of gray--reveals itself as a place as vivid and real as the view through our window. The Day in Its Color introduces readers to Cushman's extraordinary work, a recently unearthed archive of photographs that is the largest known body of early color photographs by a single photographer, 14,500 in all, most shot on vivid, color-saturated Kodachrome stock.
Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, reprint, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 947 pages. Complete in one volume. Revised and annotated by Charles S. Singleton. Singleton preserves the genius of Payne's language and style, but removes the Victorianisms that intrude upon the enjoyment of contemporary readers. He adds essential annotation and original interpretation to round out this unexcelled English edition of Boccaccio's great work. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Humanoids, Inc., 1st Ltd Ed., 2021, Book: Very Good, Visionary author, filmmaker, and philosopher Alejandro Jodorowsky has created -- along with some of the world's most singular and talented sequential artists -- an incredible Sci-Fi universe, full of love, revenge, intrigue, betrayal, and redemption: THE JODOVERSE. The Jodoverse's two cornerstone series are The Incal and The Metabarons, which together have sold over 5 million copies worldwide. This deluxe box set (two oversized books in one deluxe slipcase box) is limited at 1500 numbered copies.Book 1 contains the reference guide on The Incal, Deconstructing the Incal, which lifts the veil on many of the mysteries and secrets surrounding the seminal science-fiction graphic novel. This encyclopedic reference book is packed with fascinating insights from the creators, Jodorowsky and Moebius, alongside revealing text and rare and unseen preliminary illustrations. The book also contains the original 56 pages drawn by Moebius of the unfinished first version of the sequel story (After The Incal).Book 2 features the second reference guide to the Jodoverse, Deconstructing the Metabarons, focused on unveiling the secrets of the universe's fiercest warrior clan: the Metabarons. Book 2 also includes Weapons of the Metabaron, the seminal series' spin-off story recounting how the mightiest warrior in the universe built his arsenal of war and featuring A-list comics star Travis Charest's (Wildcats, WildC.A.T.s/X-Men: The Golden Age, and Star Wars comics covers) interpretation of The Metabarons' mythology. 376 total pages. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. London, Titan Comics, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 208 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor rubbing to boards. A tight copy. Before Marilyn and Madonna, Betty booped and wriggled her way into hearts worldwide with her unique mix of wide-eyed innocence and powerful cartoon sensuality. Although she made her film debut as a curvaceous canine cabaret singer in the Max Fleischer short Dizzy Dishes on August 9, 1930, Betty Boop remains animation's first leading lady and a glamorous international icon. This beautiful volume collects Betty's adventures as they appeared in the funny pages of daily newspapers in the 1930's, capturing all the cheeky fun embodied by the character.
Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages with 250 color and b&w images. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The first Vreeland book to focus on her three decades at Harper's Bazaar, where the legendary editor honed her singular take on fashion.
Hardcover. New York, Ecco, 2nd pr., 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 734 pages, b&w illustrations. The definitive biography of the beguiling Diane Arbus, one of the most influential and important photographers of the twentieth century, a brilliant and absorbing exposition that links the extraordinary arc of her life to her iconic photographs. It is impossible to understand the transfixing power of Arbus's photographs without exploring her life. Lubow draws on exclusive interviews with Arbus's friends, lovers, and colleagues; on previously unknown letters; and on his own profound critical insights into photography to explore Arbus's unique perspective and to reveal important aspects of her life that were previously unknown or unsubstantiated. He deftly traces Arbus's development from a wealthy, sexually precocious free spirit into first, a successful New York fashion photographer and then, a singular artist who coaxed secrets from her subjects. Lubow reveals that Arbus's profound need not only to see her subjects but to be seen by them drove her to forge unusually close bonds with these people, helping her discover the fantasies, pain, and heroism within each of them, and leading her to create a new kind of photographic portraiture charged with an unnerving complicity between the subject and the viewer.
Hardcover. David Zwirner, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards. A new collection of photographs by Diane Arbus illuminates her singular ability to enter private worlds. It brings together forty-five photographs made in private places across New York, New Jersey, California, and London between 1961 and 1971. Through her singular combination of intelligence, charisma, intuition, and courage, Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was frequently invited into personal realms seldom seen by strangers. Though made in intimate settings, the photographs collected in this volume convey no sense of intrusion or trespass-instead, they reveal an unspoken exchange between photographer and subject, a moment of recognition in which confidences emerge freely and without judgment. Arbus's desire to know people embraced a vast spectrum of humanity. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. Los Angeles, Taschen, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, tan cloth in a bright dust jacket. Folio. 672 pages. This is the original large format edition: 17.5 x 11.75 inches and 2.5 inches thick and weighing in at nearly 20 lbs. "This groundbreaking book covers every aspect of Diego Rivera's Career and brings together in a single volume comprehensive information about his murals, both in Mexico, and beyond, with a host of hitherto unknown details also includes a wide selection of over 200 easel paintings, numerous drawings and sketches, period photographs and documents (some of them previously unpublished) from both private and public collections to complete this lavish publication. This especially heavy book will require additional charges for priority. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
NY, Pantheon, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 546 pages. Stanley Crouch's gloriously bold first novel provides an intimate and epic portrait of America that breaks all the rules in crossing the boundaries of race, sex, and class. Blonde Carla from South Dakota is a jazz singer who has been around the block. Almost suddenly, she finds herself fighting to hold on to Maxwell, a black tenor saxophonist from Texas. Their red-hot and sublimely tender five-year union is under siege. Those black people who oppose such relationships in the interest of romantic entitlement or group solidarity are pressuring Maxwell, and he is wavering. As Carla battles to save the deepest love of her life, her past plays out against the present, vividly bringing forth a startlingly fresh range of characters in scenes that are as accurately drawn as they are unpredictable and innovatively conceived. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Atheneum , 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, terra-cotta cloth covers, 240 pages. As Menolly uncovers magic and intrigue, mischievous Piemur discovers the rhythm of adventure in the final book in the Harper Hall trilogy, set within science fiction legend Anne McCaffrey's beloved and best-selling Dragonriders of Pern series. Mischievous Piemur is used to getting away with a lot. He has one of the most impressive voices at Harper Hall and, in the world of Pern, there are few things more important than the ability to sing and write songs. But when his voice begins to change, Piemur loses all confidence and questions everything he thought he knew about himself. Clean copy, no dust jacket.
Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 768 pages. One of the most influential singers and songwriters of all time, Sam Cooke was among the first to blend gospel music and secular themes--the early foundation of soul music. He was the opposite of Elvis: a black performer who appealed to white audiences, who wrote his own songs, who controlled his own business destiny. No biography has previously been written that fully captures Sam Cooke's accomplishments, the importance of his contribution to American music, the drama that accompanied his rise in the early days of the civil rights movement, and the mystery that surrounds his death. Bestselling author Peter Guralnick tells this moving and significant story, from Cooke's childhood as a choirboy to an adulthood when he was anything but. With appearances by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Aretha Franklin, Fidel Castro, The Beatles, Sonny and Cher, Bob Dylan, and other central figures of this explosive era, DREAM BOOGIE is a compelling depiction of one man striving to achieve his vision despite all obstacles--and an epic portrait of America during the turbulent and hopeful 1950s and 1960s. The triumph of the book is the vividness with which Peter Guralnick conveys the astonishing richness of the black America of this era--the drama, force, and feeling of the story.
Hardcover. Montreal, Drawn and Quarterly, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 430 pages illustrated in b&w by Beaton. Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times best-selling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, a tight-knit seaside community. After university, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coast Canadians who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Katie will be far more than she anticipates. Beaton's natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Oxford UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 382 pages. This study addresses the need for a more current understanding of Cartesian philosophy by considering the different constructions of Descartes's thought that emerged in the Calvinist United Provinces (Netherlands) and Catholic France, the two main centers for early modern Cartesianism, during the period dating from the last decades of his life to the century or so following his death in 1650. It turns out that we must speak not of a single early modern Cartesianism rigidly defined in terms of Descartes's own authorial intentions, but rather of a loose collection of early modern Cartesianisms that involve a range of different positions on various sets of issues. Though more or less rooted in Descartes's somewhat open-ended views, these Cartesianisms evolved in different ways over time in response to different intellectual and social pressures. Chapters of this study are devoted to: the early modern Catholic and Calvinist condemnations of Descartes and the incompatible Cartesian responses to these; conflicting attitudes among early modern Cartesians toward ancient thought and modernity; competing early modern attempts to combine Descartes's views with those of Augustine; the different occasionalist accounts of causation within early modern Cartesianism; and the impact of various forms of early modern Cartesianism on both Dutch medicine and French physics. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Softcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st pbk, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 50 pages of text, followed by hundreds of b&w illustrations. The original edition of Early Victorian Architecture in Britain was published in two volumes, one containing an extensive discussion and appreciation of early Victorian architecture by Mr Hitchcock, and the other containing a list of the illustrations the author had collected and the plates themselves. This single-volume paperback edition includes the original Preface, Acknowledgements, and first chapter of the original, as well as the illustrations. Clean, bright copy, small ownership stamp to front fly leaf.