Hardcover. University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 592 pages. Ring Lardner's influence on American letters is arguably greater than that of any other American writer in the early part of the twentieth century. Lauded by critics and the public for his groundbreaking short stories, Lardner was also the country's best-known journalist in the 1920s and early 1930s, when his voice was all but inescapable in American newspapers and magazines. Lardner's trenchant, observant, sly, and cynical writing style, along with a deep understanding of human foibles, made his articles wonderfully readable and his words resonate to this day. Ron Rapoport has gathered the best of Lardner's journalism from his earliest days at the South Bend Times through his years at the Chicago Tribune and his weekly column for the Bell Syndicate, which appeared in 150 newspapers and reached eight million readers. In these columns Lardner not only covered the great sporting events of the era--from Jack Dempsey's fights to the World Series and even an America's Cup--he also wrote about politics, war, and Prohibition, as well as parodies, poems, and penetrating observations on American life.
Hardcover. NY, Seven Stories Press, 2nd pr., 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, illustrated in color by Joanna Concejo. The Lost Soul is a deeply moving reflection on our capacity to live in peace with ourselves, to remain patient, attentive to the world. It is a story that beautifully weaves together the voice of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk and the finely detailed wash-and-ink drawings of illustrator Joanna Concejo, who together create a parallel narrative universe full of secrets, evocative of another time. Here a man has forgotten what makes his heart feel full. He moves to a house away from all that is familiar to him to wait for his soul to return. Originally published in Poland in 2017. Clean copy.
Lebanon NH, University of New Hampshire Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 294 pages, b&w illustrations. Presents a succinct, articulate examination of the work of the pioneering but controversial archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins (1908-1987) and the development of historical archaelogy in America. In 1945, the self-taught Robbins discovered the remains of Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond. He excavated the site, documented his findings, and in 1947 published a short book, Discovery at Walden, about the experience. This project launched Robbins's career in archaeology, restoration, and reconstruction, and he went on to excavate at a number of New England iron works and other sites, including the Philipsburg Manor Upper Mills in New York, Stawbery Banke in New Hampshire, and Shadwell, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia birthplace. Although lacking academic training, Robbins quickly developed remarkably sophisticated techniques for the period. However, his "pick and shovel" methods were considered suspect and increasingly frowned upon by the emerging American historical archaeological establishment. Clean copy.
Softcover. The Woodlands,TX, New Century Books, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 210 pages. With a typewritten letter laid in containing an inscription and the author's signature, "Tom". The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss is the first major personal and literary biography of Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. It describes the origins of the rhyme scheme he used for many of his books; his views of international justice; the morals for children in his books; why parents are seldom seen in Dr. Seuss books and finally, among fabulouse facts and fanciful fables, how and why Dr. Seuss eventually became an American icon. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st US, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly sunned, price-clipped dust jacket, 254 pages. "In this elegant memoir, Quennell turns from biographer of others to creating a self-portrait as well as frank and affectionate pictures of his parents. His father, C.H.B. Quennell, was an architect, a popular historian, and a formidable eccentric. The two men could scarcely have been more dissimilar, yet they shared many tastes and traits, and although they were lifelong adversaries the influence of the father had a determining effect on the education of the son." (from the jacket) Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf which is tanned from clipping laid in.
Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st thus, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 204 pages. With a portrait frontispiece. Original publisher's brown cloth, lettered in gilt, pictorial dustwrapper. Very minor shelf-wear, some spotting to dustwrapper. A 1973 reprint of the unexpurgated edition of T. E Lawrence's The Mint. Two editions were published simultaneously in 1955; an unexpurgated text in a limited edition, and an expurgated version (reprinted once in the same year); the present publication is a reissue of the former. The memoir records his service in the ranks of the R.A.F. Lawrence enlisted in 1922; in an effort to escape public and media attention he assumed the name John Hulme Ross. Upon the discovery of his identity he was discharged, but two and a half years later was permitted to re-enlist, this time using the name of Shaw, under which he had meanwhile served in the Tank Corps.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, orange cloth stamped in black and gray, 234 pages. INSCRIBED BY RICHTER on the front fly leaf. A philosophical journey through the New Mexican desert. It is a book that Conrad Richter himself describes as an extension of the meaning inherent in his novels. The leader of the journey is Michael, who has chosen to live in the barren land of New Mexico, employing himself as a rug-weaver, because he has found there clues to the mystery of free and harmonious personal existence. Several young students hear of Michael and go to him to learn. He guides them through the land whose secrets and whose people he has come to understand, and shares his intuitions of the simple, essential relations between the individual and the primitive and natural worlds of which he is a part. A bright, sharp copy missing the dust jacket.
Hardcover. NY, Free Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 270 pages, b&w illustrations. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. Recounts the life of the English poet who died during World War I, looks at the group of his friends and fellow poets known as the Neo-Pagans, and discusses the influence of homosexuality on his life. His sonnet "The Soldier" and early death in World War I made British poet Rupert Brooke a key figure in the nation's myth of patriotism and youthful valor. Biographer Delaney places him among the Neo-pagans, a small circle of writers, artists, and intellectuals who flourished from 1908 to 1912. The group honored youth, comradeship, and the simple life and aimed to set aside the constraints of Victorianism. Delany shows how the internal dynamics of the group, not shock of war, led to its disintegration.
Hardcover. Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 176 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on front end paper. In the 1960s, as the underpinnings of society weakened, the traditional novel form seemed less suited to describe American reality. Theorists groped towards non-mimetic fiction as the tools that had sustained the novel since its birth-coherent characterization, linear plot, symbolism-became tools of New Journalism. The New American Novel of Manners explores the virtual reinvention of the novel of manners in America out of the same subjectivity that charged the works of New Journalism. In place of the rigid social structures that never seemed to depict America, novelists such as Richard Yates, Dan Wakefield, and Thomas McGuane located America's modern-day manners in its semiotics, in the system of signs that envelops us-the blue jeans people wear, the fast food they eat, the decor of the bars they drink in and the rock-and-roll lyrics that play through memories. The new generation of mannerists describe lifestyles that are determined by words and images, by actions that are dictated by what has been read and seen, and patterns of behavior in which life is edited and fictionalized. Klinkowitz reveals a fiction that is once again capable of reflecting the way people live. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a nice, unclipped dust jacket with light tanning to spine. 290 pages plus index. Clean copy. THE ENLIGHTENMENT has long been the victim of uninformed or hostile criticisms. Even so respected a source as the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines the Enlightenment as "shallow and pretentious intellectualism, unreasonable contempt for authority and tradition," thus collecting in one sentence most of our current prejudices. In this provocative book--at once a scholarly study and a vigorous polemic--Peter Gay sets out to shatter old myths, to sort out illusion from reality, and to restore the men of the Enlightenment--Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot--to the esteem they deserve.
Hardcover. Boston, The Beacon Press, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth covers, 289 pages. 12 pages of b&w photos. Fifty years of letters (1899-1949) by the crusader for liberal and humane causes as well as Jewish rights. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 105 pages. Translated by Helen Weaver. Writings by Artaud about his experience with the Tarahumara Indians in 1936, their rituals and ceremonies, and his efforts to find alternatives to what he felt was an increasingly limited European view of the mind and consciousness. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st US, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket, 79 pages. Talks originally delivered on the BBC Third Programme, on what goes on in the body when men and animals are thinking. A Series of Broadcast Talks by Sir Charles Sherrington, E.D. Adrian, W.E. Le Gros Clark, S. Zuckerman, E.T.O. Slater, Wilder Penfield, W. Russell Brain, Viscount Samuel, A.J. Ayer & Gilbert Ryle. Dust jacket shows wear at edges and darkening to paper. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. Milwaukie OR, M Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The third installment of Playboy interviews gives their claim some validity (although probably not enough). The first two collections were grouped under the topics of sports figures and film directors, while the latest simply has the designation "Larger Than Life," and indeed those interviewed were awfully big for their britches. The interviewees include Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, Bob Dylan, Mae West, and Muhammad Ali, among others. The interviews--in true Playboy fashion--are revealing, but also fascinating to realize are the periods in which they occurred. Sinatra was interviewed in 1963, and the cold war was definitely on his mind. Bette Davis, in 1982, had a long career of ups and downs to sound off about. But Muhammad Ali is the perfect example of how honest these personalities could become when allowed to digress; asked why he flunked the army's preinduction test, he replied, "I have said I am the greatest. Ain't nobody ever heard me say I was the smartest." 398 pages, clean copy.
Softcover. Seattle, Wave Books, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 219 pages. A collection of essay/talks that the poet Rachel Zucker, expanded from lectures presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2016. Devastating in their revelations, yet hopeful in their endurance, these are lectures of protest and reckoning. Zucker declares 'I write against. My poetics is a poetics of opposition and provocation that I never outgrew. Against the status quo or the powers that be, writing out of and into wrongness.' Thus, Zucker deftly dismantles the outdated paradigms of motherhood, aesthetics, feminism, poetics, and politics. Bringing Bernadette Mayer, Marina Abramovic, Alice Notley, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde-among many others-into the conversation, Zucker questions the categories that have been imposed on poetry, as well as a poet's need to speak, and the resulting responsibilities. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY/London, Palgrave , 2nd Ed., 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 244 pages. Taking into account recent developments in historical and ecological criticism, and incorporating fresh research into poetry and politics in the 1790s, the second edition of The Politics of Nature enlarges and updates Nicholas Roe's acclaimed study of Romanticism. Hitherto marginal figures are restored to prominence, and there is new material on William Wordsworth's radical years.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2003, Two hardcovers in dust dackets with sunning to spines, 479 and 493 pages. Andrew Marvell (1621-78) is best known today as the author of a handful of exquisite lyrics and provocative political poems. In his own time, however, Marvell was famous for his brilliant prose interventions in the major issues of the Restoration, religious toleration, and what he called "arbitrary" as distinct from parliamentary government. This is the first modern edition of all Marvell's prose pamphlets, complete with introductions and annotation explaining the historical context. Four major scholars of the Restoration era have collaborated to produce this truly Anglo-American edition. From the Rehearsal Transpros'd, a serio-comic best-seller which appeared with tacit permission from Charles II himself, through the documentary Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, Marvell established himself not only as a model of liberal thought for the eighteenth century but also as an irresistible new voice in political polemic, wittier, more literary, and hence more readable than his contemporaries. Name, date on front fly leafs, otherwise clean. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. Edinburgh/London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1st thus, 1893, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 187 pages plus publisher's catalog in rear. "Carefully Re-Edited, with Sketches never before published." Mainly a reprint of Hawker's contributions to "Notes and Queries", "Household Words", "All the Year Round". Frontis. photo of Morwenstow Church, protected by tissue guard. Also pasted to inside front cover a clipping of two photos: Hawker and his second wife, taken about the time of their marriage.
Hardcover. London, Unicorn Press, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 580 pages, b&w illustrations. 25 chapters; with a catalog of the writings of Richard Le Gallienne, brief Chronology, and Index in rear. 28 photos and illustrations in section of book including image of Gallienne on frontispiece. Mild fade to spine cloth at bottom. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 305 pages. The Rebecca Notebook provides an unparalleled insight into the mastery of a writer''s craft and the inner vision that made du Maurier a household name. One of the great international bestsellers, Rebecca also inspired a film, a play and television dramas. This perfect companion volume, The Rebecca Notebook, outlines just how Rebecca came to be written, tracing its origins, developments and the directions it might have taken. The author reveals how she first came upon the secret house, hidden deep in the Cornish woodland, that was to become the romantic setting for her most famous novel: a house which stood derelict, and which she lovingly restored to create her own home. The accompanying Memories introduce other members of her family: her father Gerald, the famous actor; her grandfather George, whose Punch drawings made him world famous; and her cousins, for whom J. M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan. Small ownership sticker on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
 "The Lost Journalism of Ring Lardner by: Ring Lardner, Ron Rapoport , et al.")
 "The Lost Soul by: Olga Tokarczuk / Joanna Concejo")
 "The Making of a Poem by: Spender, Stephen")
 "The Man Who Found Thoreau: Roland W. Robbins and the Rise of Historical Archaeology in America by: Donald W. Linebaugh")
 "The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss: The Life and Work of Theodor Geisel by: Thomas Fensch")
 "The Marble Foot: An Autobiography, 1905-1938 by: Quennell, Peter")
 "The Mint by: Lawrence, T. E.")
 "The Moon and I by: Betsy Byars")
 "The Mountain on the Desert: A Philosophical Journey (INSCRIBED COPY) by: Conrad Richter")
 "The Neo-Pagans: Rupert Brooke and the Ordeal of Youth by: Delany, Paul")
 "The New American Novel of Manners: The Fiction of Richard Yates, Dan Wakefield, and Thomas McGuane (SIGNED COPY) by: Klinkowitz, Jerome")
 "The Party Of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment by: Peter Gay")
 "The Personal Letters Of Stephen Wise by: Wise Polier Justine, Waterman Wise James (Ed.)")
 "The Peyote Dance by: Artaud, Antonin")
 "The Physical Basis of Mind: A Symposium. by: Laslett, Peter, ed.")
 "The Playboy Interviews: Larger Than Life by: Stephen Randall (Editor)")
 "The Poetics of Wrongness by: Rachel Zucker")
 "The Politics of Nature: William Wordsworth and Some Contemporaries by: Nicholas Roe")
 "The Preface to the Aeneis of Virgil (1718) Augustan Reprint Society Publication Number 214-215 by: Trapp, Joseph/ Kelsall, Malcolm (Intro)")
 "The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell (Two Volumes) by: Marvell, Andrew/ Editors: Dzelzainis, Martin, Patterson, Annabel")
 "The Prose Works of Rev R S Hawker, Vicar of Morwenstow Including Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall by: Hawker, R. S. (Rev.)")
 "The Prose Works of William Byrd of Westover: Narratives of a Colonial Virginian by: Wright, Louis B {Edited by}")
 "The Quest of the Golden Boy: The Life and Letters of Richard Le Gallienne by: Whittington-Egan, Richard / Geoffrey Smerdon")
 "The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories by: du Maurier, Daphne")