Biography

Hardcover. New York, Random House, First Edition, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 354 pages. Hardcover. Black cloth boards with gilt titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Dust jacket with only light marginal wear. Clean & unmarked.

Softcover. NY, Da Capo Press, reprint, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 449 pages, b&w illustrations. Man Ray was the quintessential modernist figure - painter, sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, poet, and philosopher. One of the most fascinating of the Surrealists who transformed the Paris art world during the 1920s, Man Ray was an enigma - a Dadaist who revered the Old Masters, an anarchist pursued by wealthy patrons. Driven to make his mark in as many art forms as possible, he struggled bitterly to win acceptance as a painter even as his skill as a photographer brought him world wide fame. Remainder line to bottom edge, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Boston MA, Little, Brown and Company, reprint, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 319 pages, paperback. Man Ray's extraordinary autobiography, which reveals the entertaining life and times of the remarkable artist. Color and black-and-white illustrations throughout. Mild rubbing and edgewear to wraps. Lower fore edge corner slightly creased. Light pen mark to front flyleaf. A bright and tight copy.

Hardcover. US, Getty Research Institute, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover with dust jacket. Like new still in publisher's shrink wrap.

Hardcover. London, Author Baker Limited, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 186 pages. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. Dust jacket shows heavy fraying on top and spine, protected with plastic sleeve. Previous owner's sticker and stamp on end papers, otherwise clean tight copy.

Hardcover. US, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 247 pages, illustrations in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Lucian Freud, perhaps the world's leading portrait painter, spent seven months painting a portrait of the art critic Martin Gayford. Gayford describes the process chronologically, from the day he arrived for the first sitting through to his meeting with the couple who bought the finished painting, and he vividly conveys what it is like to be on the inside of the process of creating a work of art. As Freud completes his portrait of Gayford, so the art critic produces his own portrait of the artist, giving a rare insight into Freud's working practice. Through their wide-ranging conversations, the reader learns not only about Freud's choice of models, lighting, setting, pose, and colors, but also about his likes and dislikes, his encounters and experiences, and the ways in which he approaches his relationship with each portrait subject. Gayford records Freud's observations on the work of Michelangelo, Vermeer, Titian, Chardin, Goya, van Gogh, Mondrian, and his great contemporary Francis Bacon. The book is full of revealing anecdotes about the people Freud has met in the course of his long career, including Max Ernst, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, George Orwell, W. H. Auden, Greta Garbo, and his grandfather Sigmund Freud.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 352 pages. Translated by Sam Taylor. As a bilingual bestselling novelist with a mixed Franco-British bloodline and a host of eminent forebears, Tatiana de Rosnay is the perfect candidate to write a biography of Daphne du Maurier. As an eleven-year-old de Rosnay read and reread Rebecca, becoming a lifelong devotee of Du Maurier's fiction. Now de Rosnay pays homage to the writer who influenced her so deeply, following Du Maurier from a shy seven-year-old, a rebellious sixteen-year-old, a twenty-something newlywed, and finally a cantankerous old lady. With a rhythm and intimacy to its prose characteristic of all de Rosnay's works, Manderley Forever is a vividly compelling portrait and celebration of an intriguing, hugely popular and (at the time) critically underrated writer.

Hardcover. NY, Bobbs-Merrill , 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with faging to spine. Illustrations and jacket art by Al Hirschfeld. One woman's humorous take on life in New York City in the early 1950s. The author was married to NYT drama critic, Brooks Atkinson, but she could write too. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket, 149 pages. Life of a Japanese, rescued from shipwreck by an American whaler, who spent his youth in New England, returned to Japan, and was important in the opening of Japan to the Occident in the 19th century. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Argosy-Antiquarian, reprint, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Ltd to 750 w/ new material edited by Abraham Nasatir, 1st pub in 1911 by the Missouri Historical Society, b&w Illustrations 207 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to boards. Decorative staining to top edge. Previous owner's signature on end paper (in pencil).

Softcover. NY, Ballantine Books, reprint, 1988, Softcover, 544 pages, b&w illustrations. The Chicago Tribune claimed that this 'the liveliest most astringent and eminently readable biography of Frank Lloyd Wright yet written'. It traces the full span of Wright's career. Clean copy.

Softcover. Chicago, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 327 pages, b&w photographs and illustrations. Light edge wear to wrappers, else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Hastings House, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 316 pages, b&w illustrations. Written by his ex-lover, business associate, and close friend, an explicit memoir offers a new perspective on the renowned celebrity photographer with a taste for kinky sex and drugs who died of AIDS in 1989. Fritscher's brutally frank memoir of his ex-lover, confidant, and colleague, drawn from the author's personal documents, seeks to strip away the notoriety surrounding the defiant photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. As editor and writer for the gay magazine Drummer, Fritscher was the first to publish Mapplethorpe's highly charged camera shots depicting a seamy world of "leathersex," sadomasochism, taboos, and fetishes. Here, Fritscher graphically portrays the masculine subculture of the homosexual community that Mapplethorpe inhabited until his death from AIDS in 1989, at age 42. He also discusses the censorship of Mapplethorpe's work within the mainstream gay community. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 1056 pages, b&w illustrations. This work presents a biography of the artist Marc Chagall in dialogue with events and ideologies of his time. It encompasses different aspects of his life (1889-1985) including his roots in folk culture, his personal relationships and his interests.

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 684 pages. Marcus Aurelius is one of the great figures of antiquity who still speaks to us today, more than two thousand years after his death. His Meditations has been compared by John Stuart Mill to the Sermon on the Mount. A guide to how we should live, it remains one of the most widely read books from the classical world. But Marcus Aurelius was much more than a philosopher. As emperor he stabilized the empire, issued numerous reform edicts, and defended the borders with success. His life itself represented the fulfillment of Plato's famous dictum that mankind will prosper only when philosophers are rulers and rulers philosophers. Frank McLynn's Marcus Aurelius, based on all available original sources, is the definitive and most vivid biography to date of this monumental historical figure. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 423 pages. INSCRIBED BY CAPPER on front fly leaf with presentation bookplate opposite on inside front cover. With this first volume of a two-part biography of the Transcendentalist critic and feminist leader, Margaret Fuller, Capper has launched the premier modern biography of early America's best-known intellectual woman. Based on a thorough examination of all the firsthand sources, many of them never before used, this volume is filled with original portraits of Fuller's numerous friends and colleagues and the influential movements that enveloped them. Writing with a strong narrative sweep, Capper focuses on the central problem of Fuller's life--her identity as a female intellectual--and presents the first biography of Fuller to do full justice to its engrossing subject. This first volume chronicles Fuller's "private years": her gradual, tangled, but fascinating emergence out of the "private" life of family, study, Boston-Cambridge socializing, and anonymous magazine-writing, to the beginnings of her rebirth as antebellum America's female prophet-critic. Capper's biography is at once an evocative portrayal of an extraordinary woman and a comprehensive study of an avant-garde American intellectual type at the beginning of its first creation.

Hardcover. New York, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 423 pages, with photographs. Minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, spotless and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 423 pages. No price on dj so assumed Book Club edition. With this first volume of a two-part biography of the Transcendentalist critic and feminist leader, Margaret Fuller, Capper has launched the premier modern biography of early America's best-known intellectual woman. Based on a thorough examination of all the firsthand sources, many of them never before used, this volume is filled with original portraits of Fuller's numerous friends and colleagues and the influential movements that enveloped them. Writing with a strong narrative sweep, Capper focuses on the central problem of Fuller's life - her identity as a female intellectual - and presents the first biography of Fuller to do full justice to its engrossing subject. This first volume chronicles Fuller's "private years": her gradual, tangled, but fascinating emergence out of the "private" life of family, study, Boston-Cambridge socializing, and anonymous magazine-writing, to the beginnings of her rebirth as antebellum America's female prophet-critic. Capper's biography is at once an evocative portrayal of an extraordinary woman and a comprehensive study of an avant-garde American intellectual type at the beginning of its first creation. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton/ Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 153 pages, b&w illustrations. "Mather and Weston first met in Los Angeles in 1913. They soon developed a close relationship, eventually working together as full-fledged artistic partners and even co-signing the photographs they produced. Weston was also madly in love with Mather, and the two engaged in an affair during his first marriage, even though Mather was more interested in women. This book which features art by both artists, chronicles their twelve-year association and sheds light on Mather, whose artistry, sexual identity, and mysterious past have been overshadowed by the massive reputation of Edward Weston and his subsequent association with Tina Modotti."

Hardcover. NY, Calla Editions, 1st thus, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 119 pages. Hardcover. Black and white illustrations. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition. Picture this: A master photographer shoots the most breathtaking movie star of her time high in the Canadian Rockies in the summer of 1953. And the negatives are filed away for nearly 60 years -- most never seen until now.It was yet another assignment for LOOK magazine staff photographer John Vachon. But when he arrived in Banff, Alberta, in mid-August of 1953 to shoot Marilyn Monroe on location making River of No Return, Vachon encountered an opportunity never afforded the many great photographers who took pictures of Marilyn during her short life. Due to an injured ankle that prevented her from filming, Vachon got access to Marilyn over a period of several days.Vachon's lens captured her in a variety of contexts and countenances. Here is Marilyn the way we want to remember her: luminous, sexually charismatic, smiling radiantly -- even on crutches. This extraordinary portfolio of revealing images ranges from her mugging poolside to riding high on a ski lift to nuzzling with her then-husband-to-be, the legendary Joe DiMaggio -- the only time that the two posed formally together for a photographer.In his ability to present her humanity without either idealization or guile, Vachon has given the legions of Marilyn fans worldwide a very rarely seen portrait of their idol. 102 duotone photos. Text by Brian Wallis

Hardcover. US, Dey Street Books, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 256 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. A stunning collection of hundreds of rare and unseen photographs, behind-the-scenes notes, and interviews chronicling the media's lifelong love affair with Marilyn, created by the acclaimed curator and author of Marilyn Monroe: Metamorphosis. Drawing on unseen troves from dozens of photographers, archives, and collectors, acclaimed photography expert David Wills brings together an unprecedented array of press photos from throughout Marilyn's career--including hundreds of unpublished and rare photographs that have been beautifully restored; uncropped and unretouched outtakes; handwritten notations; period captions; clippings; and more. With a foreword by Robert J. Wagner and interviews from key press agents and others, this portfolio of images offers a fresh, indelible portrait of one of the most enduring icons in history and illuminates the special alliance she shared with the press as never before.

Hardcover. NY, Peder Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The biography of an immigrant girl from Fubine, a small village in Northern Italy, who makes a life for herself in the Bronx. A rambling account but very interesting with many b&w personal photos. Privately printed. Much on NY city life in the 20s and 30s in the Italian immigrant community. Clean copy.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press , reprint, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 281 pages. A fascinating exploration of the life and work of one of America's most famous and enigmatic postwar visual artists Mark Rothko, one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Citadel Press, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 296 pages, b&w photographs. Edgewear, rubbing to price-clipped dust jacket; in brodart. Else a very clean, tight copy.