Biography

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan Publishing, 3rd pr., 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Here is the story of Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton, the director, producer, writer and star--the sad-faced little man who was one of the prime masters of silent film comedy. The book includes hilarious accounts of the filming--usually without script--of some of his now-classic films and more the-an 100 photographs. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Columbia MO, University of Missouri Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 356 pages. Eleanor Roosevelt called her one of the most influential women in America. Among the earliest and most assertive members of the Book-of-the-Month Club selection committee, Dorothy Canfield Fisher helped define literary taste in America for more than three decades. She helped shape the careers of such great writers as Pearl Buck, Isak Dinesen, and Richard Wright. A best-selling author herself, Fisher was also a deeply committed social activist. In Keeping Fires Night and Day, Mark J. Madigan collects much of Fisher's copious correspondence. With letters to Willa Cather, W.E.B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, James Thurber, and E.B. White, he documents Fisher's personal and professional life and career in a way that no biography could. Clean copy.

Softcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 351 pages. George Wilkins Kendall, who founded the New Orleans Picayune in 1837, was a restless, impatient, and colorful character in an exciting era. For thirty years he guided the Picayune and built it into a powerful force in behalf of America's westward expansion. Kendall's vigorous editorials championed the cause of the infant Republic of Texas. When the Texan Santa Fe Expedition was organized in 1841, for the purpose of occupying New Mexico (then still under Mexican rule), Kendall left his editorial chair to participate--and was marched off to Mexico as a captive for seven months when the expedition was overwhelmed at Santa Fe. A few years later, when Kendall accompanied American forces invading Mexico during the Mexican War, he became America's first war correspondent--reporting directly from the battlefront. His effective "courier expresses" brought the first news of each battle to an eager nation, including President Polk, who often read news of the war in Kendall's Picayune before hearing it from his field commanders. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 624 pages, black and white illustrations. The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy and one of its most complex. Drawing on many previously untapped sources, Frank Costigliola's authoritative biography offers a new picture of a man of extraordinary ability and ambition whose idea of containing the Soviet Union helped ignite the Cold War but who spent the next half century trying to extinguish it. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cleveland, World Publishing, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, price-clipped dust jacket, mild soil to rear panel. In-depth biography of the author most well known for 'The Wind In The Willows', which also includes extensive information on the societal changes of the time. 399 pages with Index, Bibliography, and Notes, 6" X 8-3/4", several black and white photos through the text. There is small discard stamp on front fly leaf, no other markings.

Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi , 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 227 pages, b&w illustrations. A self-made woman with no formal art training, Rose O'Neill (1875-1944) was not only hugely financially successful through her illustration work and the production of Kewpie dolls, but also through her exhibited drawings and sculpture in solo shows in Paris and New York. Kewpie made her a famous figure commercially, but few recognize her today as a serious artist and a political subversive who expressed sympathy for minorities, suffragettes, and victims of intolerance and who struggled with her own expression in a male-dominated field. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, PublicAffairs, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 220 pages. Robert Skidelsky brilliantly synthesizes Keynes career and life, and offers nervous capitalists a positive answer to the question we now face: When unbridled capitalism falters, is there an alternative? Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 400 pages. Price-clipped. Clean covers and dust jacket, pages crisp and unmarked, tight binding; clean copy. A generation before Walt Disney, Fred Thompson was the "boy-wonder" of American popular amusements. At the turn of the 20th century, Thompson's entrepreneurial drive made him into an entertainment mogul who helped to define the popular culture of his day.In this lively biography, Woody Register tells Thompson's remarkable story and examines the transformation of commerce and entertainment as American society moved into an era of mass marketing and large-scale corporate enterprise. Getting his start as a promoter of carnival shows at world's fairs, Thompson was one of the principal developers of Coney Island, where he created the majestic Luna Park. Register traces Thompson's career as he built the mammoth Hippodrome Theater in Manhattan, where he mounted many productions noted for their spectacular--and spectacularly costly--staging effects. Register shows how Thompson's fantasies appealed to the growing legions of Americans who found themselves in a world that seemed increasingly "businesslike" and profit oriented. He illustrates how Thompson aggressively marketed to adult consumers a world of make-believe and childlike play, carefully crafting his own public image as "the boy who never grew up."Colorful, well-written, and insightful, The Kid of Coney Island brings to life a kaleidoscopic era in New York history as well as one of its most striking characters.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 290 pages, color and b&w illustrations. Kiki was once the symbol of bohemian Paris. But if she is remembered today, it is only for posing for several now-celebrated male artists, including Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Calder, and especially photographer Man Ray. Why has Man Ray's legacy endured while Kiki has become a footnote? Kiki and Man Ray met in 1921 during a chance encounter at a cafe. What followed was an explosive decade-long connection, both professional and romantic, during which the couple grew and experimented as artists, competed for fame, and created many of the shocking images that cemented Man Rays reputation as one of the great artists of the modern era. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston/NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Boston Globe reporter Haygood ( Two on the River ) weaves together interviews and research to create a nuanced yet vivid narrative about the crusading Harlem congressman who served in the House for 24 years and whose controversial behavior and womanizing often overshadowed his crucial contribution to the War on Poverty. Haygood astutely traces how the light-skinned Powell (1908-1972), who tried to pass as white when a Colgate student, later embraced his blackness and demanded acceptance in the white world. Mixing New York and national political history with Powell's rise as a Baptist minister and politician, Haygood adds deft cameos of characters like Hattie Dodson, Powell's devoted secretary, and Hazel Scott, the jazz star whose wedding to the divorced congressman was "the stuff of grand romance and intrigue." Expelled from Congress in 1966 for alleged misappropriations and an unpaid libel judgment, Powell, Haygood writes poignantly, was shunned by black leaders and, even after reinstatement by the Supreme Court, disparaged by many he had helped. Though less authoritative in assessing Powell's political milieu than Charles V. Hamilton's 1991 book, Adam Clayton Powell Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma , this is a richer portrait of Powell the man. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Greenwillow Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 256 pages. The award-winning young adult author gives us his personal story. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, E. P. Dutton & Company, First Edition, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 107 pages. Hardcover. Previous owner's signature to front flyleaf. Black & white illustrations throughout. Dust jacket with moderate wear, tears to edges & chipping, now protected with a plastic cover. Toning throughout. Clean & unmarked.

Hardcover. New York , Abrams, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 254 pages, 173 illustrations, 131 in color. Although he is now seen as a progenitor of the "naive" style, during his lifetime Edward Hicks (1780-1849) was known only as a devout, impoverished Quaker minister who liked to paint. With a few exceptions, his extant body of work is made up of 62 "Peaceable Kingdom" pictures, based on Isaiah's biblical prophecy. Although these paintings, known for their charmingly wide-eyed and sensuous beasts, use potent color and effective design, they are technically unsophisticated and repetitive in the extreme. But they contain a powerfully serene devoutness, a mood probably expressed in compensation for Hicks's guilt about an avocation viewed as frivolous by other Quakers. As the popularity of folk art boomed in the early 20th century, Hicks's homely visions were popularized and became the focus of scholarly attention, and this work is probably the best to date. Weekley, the director of museums at Colonial Williamsburg, shrewdly considers Hicks's "secular" life and art through the filter of his intense piety and copiously illustrates her large-format book with brilliant color plates.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday and Company, reprint, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1st us, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket. Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl, Kitchener of Khartoum (1850-1916) , English soldier and statesman. The commander of the Anglo-Egyptian army from 1890, he helped to win back the Sudan for Egypt, and was made a peer. After the Boer War in South Africa he was made viscount and became secretary for war in August 1914, losing his life aboard the H. M. S. HAMPSHIRE when it was mined off Orkney. Index. 12 pages of b/w illustrations, plus 3 illus in text and 3 pages of maps. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1st, 1941, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with paper label on front and spine. 286 pages. B&w frontispiece and illustrations by Warren Chappell. Minor edgewear to cover and age staining to endpapers. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, New York Graphic Society, 1st US, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 251 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. 2 color, 69 black & white plates. Light edgewear, chipping to dj. Tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harper, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 560 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Color pictures in center. Black and white pictures throughout. Remainder dot on bottom edge.

Mystic CT, Mystic Seaport Museum, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 449 pages, many b&w illustrations. L. Francis Herreshoff (1890-1972) was the most remarkable yacht designer of his time. Beginning his career in the shadow of his famous father, Nathanael G. Herreshoff, he emerged to become a designer who approached the perfection of form in yacht design. His unconventional designs, and his innovative engineering of hull and rig, made him a peer among his more prolific contemporaries. Taylor's book is well researched and documented and brings out many relatively unknown aspects of LFH's life and designs through 1930, the phase in which he was primarily a racing yacht designer. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Paris, Jose Corti, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 215 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on half title page. French text. Wraparound red band with light wrinkle, wear. Otherwise very good.

Hardcover. San Francisco, H.H Bancroft, 1st, 1870, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 658 pages. Hardcover. Beveled green covers with gilt decoration of White House. 15 steep engravings (with library stamped on rear) of portraits of Presidential wives. Ex-library with stamping on pages, paper pocket residue on rear end paper, previous owner's signature on both end papers. Corners bumped, cloth fraying. Spine cracked in a few pages.

Hardcover. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1st, 1903, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Original publisher's red/brown cloth; front cover decoratively stamped and lettered in gilt; spine lettered in gilt; rear cover decoratively stamped in gilt; top edge gilt, other edges deckled. With the 10 tissue-guarded plates as called for, of which 8 are in color; and numerous other illustrations in the text. 316 pages. Beauclerk illustrated a number of literary productions, including Horace Walpole's tragedy The Mysterious Mother, the English translation of Gottfried August Burger's Leonora (1796) and The Fables of John Dryden (1797). After 1785 she was one of a circle of women, along with Emma Crewe and Elizabeth Templetown (1746/7-1823), whose designs for Josiah Wedgwood were made into bas-reliefs on jasper ornaments. Hinges cracked, spine cloth chipped at front top, mild foxing throughout. Otherwise clean. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO SIZE AND WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. London, Chapman & Hall, 1st, 1912, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 312 pages. 16 B&W illustrations. Brown cover with gilt title to spine. Sun-fading and spotting. Unfinished front edge. Heavy foxing to all edges. Ex-Lib sticker on front end page. Tissue-protected frontispiece. Soiling to end pages. Overall, a clean, tight copy. A biography of Agnes Sorel, known by the sobriquet Dame de beaute, was a favorite and chief mistress of King Charles VII of France, by whom she bore four daughters. She is considered the first officially recognized royal mistress of a French king.

Softcover. NY, John Wiley & Sons, 1st pbk, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover,452 pages, b&w illustrations. Harlow Unger's Lafayette is a remarkable and dramatic account of a life as fully lived as it is possible to imagine, that of Gilbert de Motier, marquis de Lafayette. To American readers Unger's biography will provide a stark reminder of just how near run a thing was our War of Independence and the degree to which our forefathers' victory hinged on the help of our French allies, marshaled for George Washington by his 'adopted' son, Lafayette. But even more absorbing and much less well known to the general reader will be Unger's account of Lafayette's idealistic but naive efforts to plant the fruits of the American democracy he so admired in the unreceptive soil of his homeland. Short inscription to half-title page, otherwise a clean, bright copy.