Biography

Hardcover. NY, Crown Publishers, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 251 pages. An true account of a couple's settling in the Great Smokey Mountains after living in the big city. Very detailed depiction of Appalachian life and written with humor. B&w illustrations by Glen Rounds.Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Flatiron Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 304 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Black and white photographs throughout. A tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, David R Godine, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 99 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Black and white images throughout. These letters were written between 1950 and 1964 as Lebrun moved between the United States, Mexico and Italy and provide a glimpse into the artist's thoughts during that period.

Hardcover. Boston, David R Godine, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 99 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Black and white images throughout. These letters were written between 1950 and 1964 as Lebrun moved between the United States, Mexico and Italy and provide a glimpse into the artist's thoughts during that period.

Hardcover. Zurich, Edition Olms, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages, with dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Delving into the photo archives of French magazine, Paris Match, where Chaigneau is an editor, and accompanied by several of the interviews and articles the magazine published, the author offers a glimpse into the working processes and personal lives of some of the 20th century's canonical visual artists . Focused mostly on European masters such as Pablo Picasso, Bernard Buffet, Rene Magritte, Marc Chagall, and Joan Miro, the book's highly accessible, if minimal, commentary and anecdotes allow the photos to take center stage. Georg Baselitz, for example, is pictured perched on a chair with his head in his arms, as if "haunted by invisible demons," with several large scale paintings in the background. In contrast, Salvador Dali, ever the "wily publicist," seems to relish the camera's presence: in one shot dressed as a Spanish nobleman with an expression of faux-seriousness. Elsewhere, as a testament to his creative drive, Henri Matisse is pictured in 1954, bedridden but still painting with a specially devised long brush mere months before his death. Moving beyond the studio, some attention is given to the private lives of the artists, adding a human element to these creative giants. Photographer Willy Rizzo captures Picasso in a rare candid and intimate moment, reading the comics of a newspaper while his boxer, Yan, looks on. But perhaps the most illuminating moments are when the artists, in interviews, talk about their creative process; there is something humble and brave, for instance, in Jacques Villon's quip, "I don't know what I've discovered... but I know that I'm still looking". Color and b&w photos.

Hardcover. New York , Times Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 273 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY NOEL on title-page. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. Cincinnati, OH, J.A. Brainerd, 1st, 1853, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 304 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Heavy wear to bottom spine, fabric cover frayed. Corners heavy rubbing and bumped. Gutter cracked in multiple places. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf. Light pencil markings.

Softcover. West Danville VT, United Methodist Church, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover booklet, stapled wrappers, 16 pages. Indian Joe was a Native American guide active in the early conflicts and settlement of Vermont in the 1700s. B&w illustrations, photo of his tomb in the Oxbow cemetery in Newbury, Vermont. Clean copy.

Softcover. The MIT Press , reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, The first publication documenting the work of Brooks Stevens, one of America's most influential twentieth-century designers. A long overdue introduction to the work of visionary industrial designer Brooks Stevens (1911-1995). Believing that an industrial designer "should be a businessman, an engineer, and a stylist, in that order," Stevens created thousands of ingenious and beautiful designs for industrial and household products--including a clothes dryer with a window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. ("There's nothing more aerodynamic than a wiener," he explained.) He invented a precursor to the SUV by turning a Jeep into a station wagon after World War II, and streamlined steam irons so that they resembled aircraft. It was Brooks Stevens who, in 1954, coined the phrase "planned obsolescence," defining it as "instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary." This concept has since been blamed for everything from toasters that stop working to today's throwaway culture, but Stevens was simply recognizing the intentionally ephemeral nature of a designer's work. Asked once to name his favorite design, he replied, "none, because every one would have to be restudied for the tastes of tomorrow." Clean copy still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1st, 1977, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a shelfworn dust jacket. 214 pages includes index, b&w photographs and illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, W.H. Allen, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 303 pages, b&w photos. Previous owner's signature on fly leaf otherwise very good in a similar dust jacket. The filmmaker of Nanook of the North.

Hardcover. Hartford, CT, American Publishing Company, 1st Edition, 1870, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 651 pages plus publisher's ads. Hardcover. Front and back hinges cracked, binding tight otherwise. Frontispieces with tissue guard. Tanning to edges. Pages clean with just a touch of tanning. Spine straight. Cover boards bound in black cloth, gilt title on spine and design on front cover board. Borders and decoration blind-stamped to front and back cover boards. Some agewear to boards: fraying/chipping at top and bottom of spine and corners, rubbing. "Being some account of the steamship Quaker City's pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land; with descriptions of countries, nations, incidents and adventures, as they appeared to the author." Perfect for any collector's bookshelf.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace , 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Illustrated with 16 pages of black and white photographs, 338 pages. With wry humor and sharp observation, playwright Pifer elegantly mixes memory and research to reconstruct the world of his South African boyhood from 1933 to 1945. Pifer's father, an idealistic mining engineer in search of challenge and stability during the Depression, found it in Africa, but his earnest American egalitarianism soon put him in conflict with Afrikaner mine overseers, and his career under magnate Sir Ernest Oppenheimer stalled. The author deftly evokes his family--"my mother had the freedom of a disobedient daughter"--and the isolation of the desert town of Oranjemund. The book is even more resonant in its snapshots of mid-century Southern Africa: the still-simmering enmity between Afrikaners and the English; the ripples from Hitler's war in what prior to WW I had been the German territory of South West Africa (currently Namibia). Pifer's knowing account of the travails of servants--"the chasm that exists between white mistress and African maid"--still rings true today. Clean copy.

Softcover. Emeryville CA, Seal Press, 1st pbk, 2006, Softcover, 549 pages, b&w illustrations. Set amidst the political upheaval of the McCarthy trials, the Vietnam War, and the rise of the women's movement, Intimate Politics is a courageous and uncompromising account of one woman's personal and political transformation, and a fascinating portrayal of a key chapter in our nation's history.At eight years old, Bettina Aptheker watched her family's politics play out in countless living rooms across the country when her father, historian and U.S. Communist Party leader Herbert Aptheker, testified on television in front of the House on Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. Born into one of the most influential U.S. Communist families whose friends included W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Bettina lived her parents' politics witnessing first-hand one of the most dramatic upheavals in American history. She also lived with a terrible secret: incest at the hands of her famous father and a frightening and lonely life lived inside a home wrought with family tensions. Light marking to ten pages, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dey Street Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 655 pages, b&w illustrations. During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe's geometry. His views on sustainability, as embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth, convinced him that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball, Fuller's legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley. Inventor of the Future is the first authoritative biography to cover all aspects of Fuller's career. Drawing on meticulous research, dozens of interviews, and thousands of unpublished documents, Nevala-Lee has produced a riveting portrait that transcends the myth of Fuller as an otherworldly generalist. It reconstructs the true origins of his most famous inventions, including the Dymaxion Car, the Wichita House, and the dome itself; his fraught relationships with his students and collaborators; his interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright, Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe Luce, John Cage, Steve Jobs, and many others; and his tumultuous private life, in which his determination to succeed on his own terms came at an immense personal cost. In an era of accelerating change, Fuller's example remains enormously relevant, and his lessons for designers, activists, and innovators are as powerful and essential as ever. Remainder mark to top edge, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 208 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black and white comics. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Invisible Ink unfolds like a detective story, alternating between past and present, as Griffith recreates the quotidian habits of suburban Levittown and the professional and cultural life of mid-century Manhattan in the 1950s and '60s as seen through his mother's and his own then-teenage eyes.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co , 1st, 1928, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Set of two hardcover volumes. 1113 pages total. Illustrated frontispiece. B&w illustrations throughout. Includes extensive appendix. With worn, decorative slipcase. Light edge wear to dust jacket otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, letters, and diaries, an authorized biography of the critically acclaimed philosopher and novelist traces her personal life and literary and philosophical career, from her student days at Oxford, through her marriage to John Bayley, to Murdoch's remarkable influence on literary England, from 1940 to the present day.

Softcover. Boston, David R. Godine, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 368 pages. Eagerly exchanging an existence of idle privilege and social intrigue for one of hard work and literary distinction, Origo led a life characterized by vitality and commitment. Born in 1902 into a wealthy American family, she and her British mother permanently left the U.S. after the untimely death of her father in 1910. Traveling extensively throughout Europe, they eventually settled outside of Florence, becoming prominent members of the stuffy Anglo-Florentine community of expatriates. Asserting her trademark independence, she married Antonio Origo, the illegitimate son of a cavalry officer-sculptor. Together Antonio and Iris purchased and totally revitalized an arid Tuscan valley and renovated a crumbling estate. With virtually no experience and few practical skills, they transformed themselves into agrarian pioneers and their extensive acreage into a prosperous working community supporting more than 200 people. During the war years, they quietly supported the Allies, offering refuge to countless numbers of partisans and prisoners of war. In addition to these accomplishments, Iris also buried one child and raised two more, conducted several heart-wrenching extramarital affairs, and distinguished herself as both a biographer and a literary critic. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Macmillan Company, 1st Edition, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 436 pages. Hardcover. Green cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine and front cover with decoration. Tanning to pages and edges (agewear). Top edge gilt (faded). Binding good, spine straight. The autobiography of Justin McCarthy (1830-1912), who was an Irish politician, journalist, novelist, and historian.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putman's Sons, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a nice, unclipped dust jacket, 447 pages. B&w photos. Although he aspired to Princeton, Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff (aka Shaw) had to settle for local Brooklyn College, where he seems to have enjoyed football more than his studies. From his mid-20s, however, Shaw (1913-1984) was a highly regarded New Yorker short story writer ("The Girls in Their Summer Dresses") and left-wing playwright ( Bury the Dead ), and later became a successful Hollywood script writer and novelist ( The Young Lions ; Rich Man, Poor Man ). This sympathetic, objective biography, by a Vanity Fair contributing editor, convincingly shows how Shaw's career, character and fiction, influenced more by Hemingway's lifestyle than by his writing, were marked by incongruities. Far from abating with age, his romantic and alcoholic appetites overwhelmed him. Years of high living in Europe, surrounded by adoring friends, softened his self-judgment, and he took to writing "fluffy essays for swells." The New Yorker dropped him, and "serious" critics panned his novels. Shnayerson capably contrasts Shaw's inclinations and personality with his subject matter and literary output, and is especially astute at explaining the complications of being a commercially successful midcentury American writer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Brunswick NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 242 pages, b&w illustrations. Collins conducted business in Trenton and Burlington and founded New Jersey's first regular newspaper, the "New-Jersey Gazette". Clean, bight copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 192 pages. Isaac Murphy, born enslaved in 1861, still reigns as one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Black jockeys like Murphy were at the top of the most popular sport in America at the end of the nineteenth century. Black jockeys were internationally famous - the first African American superstar athletes--and with wins in three Kentucky Derbies and countless other prestigious races, Murphy was the greatest of them all. At the same time, he lived through the seismic events of Emancipation and Reconstruction and formative conflicts over freedom and equality in the United States. And inevitably he was drawn into those conflicts, with devastating consequences. Katherine C. Mooney uncovers the history of Murphy's troubled life, his death in 1896 at age thirty-five, and his afterlife. Clean copy.