Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages. Michael von Graffenried, an award-winning Swiss photographer, covertly photographed civil strife in Algeria from the early 1990s through 1998. In a land where Islamic terrorists have executed over sixty journalists and photographers in the last seven years, Graffenried's very survival is remarkable. His extraordinary accomplishment, however, is these photographs, which form a composite of Algeria that is more whole than the nation itself, fractured by one segment of the population in favor of democracy and another in favor of an Islamic state.Graffenried makes his pictures secretly, using an antique Widelux panoramic camera with a hidden lens. He would risk his picture and his life were he to raise a camera to his eyes. Instead, he shoots from the hip, with his hands clasped over what looks like a pair of binoculars. In learning to frame his photographs without a viewfinder, he opens himself to a rich array of surprise and irony in his pictures, and reveals a society that has been concealed from the international community for nearly seven years.

Hardcover. London, England, Karl Baedeker, 2nd Edition, REvised and Augmented, 1894, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 444 pages. Hardcover (flexible cloth). "With 17 Maps, 44 Plans, and a Panorama of Jerusalem". B/w and color illustrated maps, some fold out. Red fabric cover boards with gilt title on spine (faded) and front cover board. Banded design blind stamped on boards and spine. Fabric ribbon bookmark attached at top of spine. Age wear to covers (see images). Former library book with expected labels, marks, stamps and other identifying characteristics (see images). Decorated marbled edges. Front cover has bump to top right corner (see image). Charming, old, pocket-sized travel book that will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about turn-of-the-century Palestine and Syria.