Biography

Hardcover. NY, Putnam, 1st , 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 259 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. With these interwoven autobiographical essays, Geoffrey Wolff, author of the acclaimed The Duke of Deception, recounts the moral (and immoral) education of a writer, friend, husband, and father, as he offers his spirited, elegant, and deeply felt observations on an extraordinary life: from wildly dysfunctional childhood Christmases to a concupiscent career teaching literature in Istanbul; from a victory over the chaos of drink to a life-affirming surrender to the majesty of the Matterhorn; and from a foundering friendship to the transcending love of family.

Softcover. NewYork, Aperture, 2nd, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Vol. 1: 214 pages. Softcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Covers slightly yellow with age, clean inside and intact. Vol. 2: 290 pages. Softcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Covers slightly yellow with age, clean inside and intact. Soil/stain on bottom foredge, does not affect pages. From the back cover of Vol. 1: "To see, to react, to create; these are the fundamentals of all art production. But also to share is the measure of the great artist and the great person. In both his magnificent photographs and in the confidences and clarifications of his Daybook, Edward Weston takes us into himself and shares with us his particular mirror of beauty and compassion."

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 281 pages. A journalist reminisces about his freelancing days. A veteran of newspaper beats from Broadway to Hiroshima, from Costello's Bar to Toots Shor's, his assignments brought him in touch with notable politicians and celebrities. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, The Grolier Society, 1st Thus, ND, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 2 Hardcover Volumes. Edition de Luxe - Limited to One Thousand Copies for England and America - this being No. 746. Gray cloth covers. Top edges gilt. Fading to spine labels. Full color and black & white illustrations. Clean, tight copies.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 480 pages, b&w photos. The first full-length biography of the 'Prince of Broadway' highlights the wit and sophistication of playwright and director Moss Hart as it describes his rise from poverty to success in the New York theatrical world, his remarkable contributions to the American theater, and his sometimes turbulent private life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 317 pages, b&w illustrations. Portrays the history of the ballet company, the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, and examines the achievements of its choreographers and dancers

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover (cloth) in near fine condition with dust jacket which is protected by clear plastic covering, also in near fine condition. 293 pages., including 226 illustrations with 65 color plates. A beautiful and large-format monograph focusing on Willem De Kooning's life and paintings.

Hardcover. NY, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 466 pages, b&w illustrations. Name on front fly leaf, minor wear to dj. Otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian Books, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 250 pages, photos, notes, bibliography. An influential ornithologist, curator of birds at the American Museum of Natural History; expert on the birds of Central and South America, New York City and Massachusetts, Griscom was influential in the shift to modern "binocular" birding and mentored a generation of notable ornithologists. Draws on Griscom's writings and those of his contemporaries. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W W Norton & Co , 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In these extraordinary letters, we see May Sarton in all her complexities and are privy to her tangled relationship with Juliette Huxley, whom May considered her muse and the greatest love of her life. May Sarton's love for Juliette Huxley, ignited that first moment she saw her in 1936, transcended sixty years of friendship, passion, rejection, silence, and reconciliation. The letters chart their meeting, May's affair with Juliette's husband Julian (brother of Aldous Huxley) before the war, her intense involvement with Juliette after the war, and the rich, ardent friendship that endured until Juliette's death. While May's intimate relationship with Julian was not a secret, May's more powerful romance with Juliette was. May's fiery passion was a seductive yet sometimes destructive force. Her feelings for and demands on Juliette were often overwhelming to them both. In fact, Juliette refused all contact with May for nearly twenty-five years. Their reconciliation, after Julian's death, wasn't so much a rekindling as it was a testament to the profound affinity between them. Theirs was a relationship rife with complications and misunderstandings but the deep love and compassion they shared for one another prevailed. Included in this book are Sarton's original drafts of an introduction to these letters. 400 pages including index. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Freeport ME, Bond Wheelwright Co. , 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 204 pages, b&w illustrations. The author, great grandson of Captain Barry, contextualizes the captain's correspondence and journals with information about transportation, economic conditions and the ice trade of the 19th century. Documents vessels commanded by Capt. Barry, including the James Perkins, Oakland, Madagascar, Delhi and William Lord. Glossary of sea terms; bibliography. Name stamp to front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Windsor CT, Tide-Mark, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 296 pages. the first definitive biography of one of America?'s first successful female architects, Theodate Pope Riddle (1867-1946). In addition to designing schools and private homes in Connecticut and New York, Theodate designed and supervised the reconstruction of President Theodore Roosevelt?'s Birthplace in New York City. Theodate?'s masterpiece is the unusual medieval campus of Avon Old Farms School, where she served as founder and pioneered a progressive curriculum far ahead of its time. The school continues to flourish today and receives ongoing acclaim as an architectural tour de force and as an innovative educational institution. According to writer and critic Brendan Gill, Theodate Pope Riddle was one of the ten most distinguished American women of the 20th century. Her friend, the famed psychologist Carl Jung, saw her as an "intuitive" woman who trusted her instincts, ignored raised eyebrows, and courageously forged ahead despite the restrictions of her day. Clean copy.

Softcover. Salisbury VT, Vermont Society of Colonial Dames, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 48 pages, bound in green card wrappers with gilt lettering, b&w plates. Inscribed by a member of the Vermont Society of Dames, Sarah Clement on the front fly leaf.

Softcover. Chicago, Chicago Review Press, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 430 pages, b&w photos. This first major biography of the most romanticized icon in jazz thrillingly recounts his wild ride. From his emergence in the 1950s--when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared on the West Coast to become, seemingly overnight, the prince of "cool" jazz--until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. Here, drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously untapped sources, James Gavin gives a hair-raising account of the trumpeter's dark journey. Clean copy.

Hardcover. University Press of Mississippi,, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 260 pages, b&w illustrations. Former New York Times correspondent John N. Herbers (1923-2017), who covered the civil rights movement for more than a decade, has produced Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist, a compelling story of national and historical significance. Born in the South during a time of entrenched racial segregation, Herbers witnessed a succession of landmark civil rights uprisings that rocked the country, the world, and his own conscience. Herbers's retrospective is a timely and critical illumination on America's current racial dilemmas and ongoing quest for justice.Herbers's reporting began in 1951, when he covered the brutal execution of Willie McGee, a black man convicted for the rape of a white housewife, and the 1955 trial for the murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 597 pages, b&w illustrations. Demagogue is a masterful portrait of a human being capable of immense evil, yet beguiling charm. McCarthy was a tireless worker and a genuine war hero. His ambitions knew few limits. Neither did his socializing, his drinking, nor his gambling. When he finally made it to the Senate, he flailed around in search of an agenda and angered many with his sharp elbows and lack of integrity. Finally, after three years, he hit upon anti-communism. By recklessly charging treason against everyone from George Marshall to much of the State Department, he became the most influential and controversial man in America. His chaotic, meteoric rise is a gripping and terrifying object lesson for us all. Yet his equally sudden fall from fame offers reason for hope that, given the rope, most American demagogues eventually hang themselves.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 432 pages, b&w illustrations. A moving account of Theodore Roosevelt's post-presidential years. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1st US, 1941, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 352 pages. Translated from Russian by Malcolm Burr. Cloth covers, blue stamped titles, 3 b&w illustrated maps, blue top edge stain. Rubbing and light soiling to covers, spine lightly cocked, previous owner's bookplate and signature to front endpapers, light foxing and discoloration to endpapers, discoloration to page block ends; otherwise, a neat, tight copy of a scare book.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 499 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Black cover boards, gilt title on spine. Dust jacket unclipped, excellent. Beautiful, like new condition. This is the first intellectual biography of Descartes in English; it offers a fundamental reassessment of all aspects of his life and work.

Hardcover. San Juan, P.R., Fundacion El Nuevo Dia, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 375 pages, Spanish text with copious photographs throughout. Volume 1 only. Light dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, Rare Bird Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 312 pages. The highlight of Desolation Peak is the journal Kerouac kept, starkly revealing the depth of his poverty, the extremity of his mood swings, and the ongoing arguments with himself over the future direction of his life, his writing, and faith. Along with the journal, he worked on a series of projects, including "Ozone Park," another installment of the Duluoz Legend beginning in 1943, after his discharge from the Navy; "The Martin Family," an intended sequel to The Town and the City, and "Desolation Adventure," a series of sketches that became part 1 of Desolation Angels. In writing it, Kerouac was re-committing himself to his more experimental, then-unpublishable style, declaring in the journal that "the form of the future is no-form." Also included in Collected Writings is "The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing," Kerouac's "transliteration" of the Diamond Sutra, his "Desolation Blues" and "Desolation Pops" poems, and assorted prose sketches and dreams. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, First Edition, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 266 pages. Hardcover. Black cloth boards with silver titles to spine. Black and white illustrations. Dust jacket in cream & white with photograph & only light marginal wear. Clean & unmarked. A biography of the controversial fighter follows Liston from the mean streets, where he was a petty criminal, to the heavyweight championship and his life as a pawn of organized crime. By the author of Power on Earth.

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.

Softcover. NY, Harper Design, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 308 pages. Eleanor Dwight delivers the definitive biography of Diana Vreeland, the twentieth century's most influential fashion editor. Lavishly illustrated with exclusive photographs and personal materials from the legendary style maker's private collection, and featuring a new preface from Vogue's Andre LeonTalley, Diana Vreeland is an indispensible look at a grand dame of great couture. Lavishly illustrated with more than three hundred drawings and photographs, many by the best fashion photographers of the time: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Irving Penn, Cecil Beaton, and Brassai. Here, too, are the trendsetters, artists, models, and celebrities with whom Vreeland worked and played, including Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta, Elsie de Wolfe, Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, and Jacqueline Kennedy.