Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 168 pages. A native of Kazakhstan, Ljalja Kuznetsova traversed the expanses of the Central Asian steppe to photograph the gypsies, or Roma people, whose mysterious comings and goings have fascinated her since she was a child. Shaking the Dust of Ages: Gypsies and Wanderers of the Central Asian Steppe is the first book devoted to these pictures, for which Kuznetsova won the Mother Jones Leica Medal of Excellence and the Paris Grand Prix for Photography.Kuznetsova's photographs present rare, intimate portraits of gypsies-- whose freedom from the ties of civilization is reflected in the wild winds and unlimited vistas of the steppe landscape. As Kuznetsova traveled through Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the Ukraine, the gypsies continually inspired her. She found in them a people without frontiers, living independent of politics, religious dispute, or social class. Though their presence on the steppe is becoming a thing of the past, Kuznetsova's cast of characters and their world seem timeless in these images.
Hardcover. London, Methuen, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 283 pages. Shopkeepers and master artisans had a striking presence in the history of nineteenth-century Europe, not only in the development of industrial and urban economies, but also the fabric of social life and the politics of protest. The experience of 1848, the differing pace of various forms of nationalism and liberalism and, at the end of the century, the shift towards right-wing nationalist or Catholic political movements reflected a developing 'crisis' in the petite bourgeoisie. The essays examine the nature of this crisis and ask critical questions about the social relations of the petite bourgeoisie with the developing working classes. This book as a whole provides a fresh and integrated approach to the world of these shopkeepers and master artisans and illuminates much else besides in the social history of nineteenth-century Europe. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st Edition, 1920, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 580 pages. Hardcover. 24 b/w illustrations throughout including frontispiece with tissue guard and 6 maps (fold out). Blue cover boards, gilt title on spine (slightly faded) and front cover, some moisture damage to front cover, bump to bottom right corner of board. Tanning to pages and edges, pages otherwise unmarked.
Hardcover. NY, Overlook Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 180 pages. Jeff Gusky, a doctor of emergency medicine, decided at the age of 42 that he wanted to better confront the reality of modern Jewish history. A self-taught photographer who subsequently learned to make museum quality prints, he bought what he calls "a good, journalist-type camera and some lenses" and traveled to Poland-once the home of the largest concentration of Diaspora Jews. He read the instruction manuals on the plane en route. Over four trips, accompanied each time by a top Polish guide, Gusky traveled through the country, beyond the city ghettos and the sites of concentration camps, into remote villages where Jews had lived and worked for almost 1,000 years before the Holocaust-capturing on film the austere landscapes and the remains of a once thriving Jewish culture. The silence is deafening: here are Jewish cemeteries full of broken gravestones, ruined synagogues filled with trash and disfigured with graffiti, a Jewish home now used as a public toilet-"where people lived, walked, worshipped, and were, ultimately, exterminated," says Gusky. The doleful, understated clarity of what he saw and photographed captures a poignant sense of loss-making at the same time an indelible connection to the past.
Hardcover. John L Caulon, 1st, 1880, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 87 pages, brown cloth covers with gilt lettering on front. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf otherwise clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 443 pages. In the first political analysis of unemployment in a socialist country, Susan Woodward argues that the bloody conflicts that are destroying Yugoslavia stem not so much from ancient ethnic hatreds as from the political and social divisions created by a failed socialist program to prevent capitalist joblessness. Under Communism the concept of socialist unemployment was considered an oxymoron; when it appeared in postwar Yugoslavia, it was dismissed as illusory or as a transitory consequence of Yugoslavia's unorthodox experiments with worker-managed firms. In Woodward's view, however, it was only a matter of time before countries in the former Soviet bloc caught up with Yugoslavia, confronting the same unintended consequences of economic reforms required to bring socialist states into the world economy. Clean copy.