Softcover. New York, Grossman Publishers, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 124 pages. Softcover with moderate wear to spine and paper wrappers. Creasing to spine. Previous owner's writing on front fly leaf, remainder mark.
Philadelpia, Vertex Book/Auerbach Publishers, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, lightly soiled dust jacket, 243 pages. Map endpapers One man's story of being arrested on trumped up charges as an enemy of the Soviet State and being sent to Siberia for eight years. Inscription on dedication page (by book jacket designer).
Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 330 pages, b&w illustrations. Paris in the 1920s was bursting with talent in the worlds of art, design and literature. The city was at the forefront of everything new and exciting; there was no censorship; life and love were there for the taking. At its center was the gorgeous, seductive English socialite Nancy Cunard, scion of the famous shipping line. Her lovers were legion, but this book focuses on five of the most significant and a lifelong friendship. Her affairs with acclaimed writers Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Louis Aragon were passionate and tempestuous, as was her romance with black jazz pianist Henry Crowder. Her friendship with the famous Irish novelist George Moore, her mother's lover and a man falsely rumored to be Nancy's father, was the longest-lasting of her life. Cunard's early years were ones of great wealth but also emotional deprivation. Her mother Lady Cunard, the American heiress Maud Alice Burke (who later changed her name to Emerald) became a reigning London hostess; Nancy, from an early age, was given to promiscuity and heavy drinking and preferred a life in the arts to one in the social sphere into which she had been born. Highly intelligent, a gifted poet and widely read, she founded a small press that published Samuel Beckett among others. A muse to many, she was also a courageous crusader against racism and fascism. She left Paris in 1933, at the end of its most glittering years and remained unafraid to live life on the edge until her death in 1965. Remainder dot top edge otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Ludion/ D.A.P., 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 167 pages with color and b&w photographs & illustrations. Red cloth boards. Dustjacket. A nice crisp copy. Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Includes notes and acknowledgements. Rene Magritte, the Surrealist artist, began experimenting with photography at any early age. This book studies the ways in which the photographic medium played a constant role in Magritte's social and artistic life.
Softcover. Wilkes-Barre PA, Etruscan Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 304 pages. This book of essays by Norman Mailer's biographer, Dr. J. Michael Lennon, collect personal and literary reminiscences, insights, and investigations from the last half century. Through the rising action of his life in literature, Lennon's remembrances track the influence not only of his literary pater familias, Norman Mailer, but his actual father, a booze-bitten blue-collar bibliophile with his own reputation for genius, and how together these mentors forged and focused the 20/20 literary vision Lennon takes to the work of some of the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century, from Baldwin and Bishop to Didion and DeLillo and, not least, Mailer himself.
Hardcover. Baltimore, MD, Butternut & Blue, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 335 pages. Hardcover. b/w illustrations throughout. Blue cover boards, black title and design on spine and covers. Dust jacket is unclipped, some scratches/rubbing to back cover, otherwise excellent.
Hardcover. NY, Random House Studio , 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color illustrations throughout by Claire Keane. SIGNED BY KUNKEL on the title page. In the beginning, there was a boy named Robert McCloskey, growing up in Ohio, his hands always moving, always creating. Many years later, after attending art school in Boston, he would reflect on his days wandering through Boston Garden and write the classic picture book Make Way for Ducklings. In the beginning, there was also a girl named Nancy Sch n. She grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, working in her father's greenhouse, twisting wire and boughs into wreaths. Many years later, Nancy would look at Robert's drawings in Make Way for Ducklings and get the seed of an idea. That seed became the beloved bronze sculptures of Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings that stand in Boston Garden today. This stunning and clever picture book biography intertwines the lives of two phenomenal artists--who were contemporaries and friends--and reveals the extraordinary impact they've had on generations of children.
NY, Viking, 4th pr., 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 594 pages, b&w illustrations. Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Hardcover. Lexington KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. An Armenian national raised in Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897--1987) studied in the influential Stanislavski studio, renowned as the source of the "method" acting technique. Shortly after immigrating to New York in 1926, he created a sensation with an all-black production of Porgy (1927). He then went on to direct the debut Broadway productions of three of the most popular shows in the history of American musical theater: Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), and Carousel (1945). Mamoulian began working in film just as the sound revolution was dramatically changing the technical capabilities of the medium, and he quickly established himself as an innovator. Not only did many of his unusual camera techniques become standard, but he also invented a device that eliminated the background noises created by cameras and dollies. Seen as a rebel earlier in his career, Mamoulian gradually gained respect in Hollywood, and the Directors Guild of America awarded him the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1983. In this meticulously researched biography, David Luhrssen paints the influential director as a socially conscious artist who sought to successfully combine art and commercial entertainment. Luhrssen not only reveals the fascinating personal story of an important yet neglected figure, but he also offers a tantalizing glimpse into the extraordinarily vibrant American film and theater industries during the twenties, thirties, and forties.
Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 350 pages, B&w frontispiece of Houssaye. A condensation of his six-volume Confessions. Entertaining observations of nineteenth century Parisian life, culture and government. Clean copy in a lightly worn dust jacket.
Hardcover. New Brunswick NJ, Rutgers University Press,, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 243 pages, b&w photos. In a bright dust jacket. A much needed biography of the father of quality, live theatrical productions for television in the "golden age of television" in the 1950s is finally here. Fred Coe won multiple awards during his career, including the Emmy and Tony awards, among many others.
Hardcover. New York, Gotham, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 453 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Illustrated endpages and flyleaves. Gilt titles on spine. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.
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. 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.
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.