Hardcover. London, John Murray, 2nd pr., 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 254 pages, index, b&w illustrations, double-page map. Light beige cloth, gilt lettering on spine, top of spine with fraying, light spotting to front cover otherwise clean. An illuminating record of travel in the Aden Protectorate in 1939 on the eve of World War II by a Dutch scholar of the region and it's people.
Hardcover. London, Travel Book Club , 1st, Book: Good, Hardcover, 233 pages, color frontispiece and 8 b&w plates by Mary Gordon West, endpapers map. Light shelfwear. No date but appears to be about 1940.
Hardcover. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1st, 1895, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two volumes complete. 811 pages, many b&w illustrations. Green cloth with black rule, gilt design and lettering, top edge gilt. Volume one with fraying to cloth at top of spine, previous owner's sticker inside front covers. Otherwise clean, very good set.
Hardcover. New York, Aperture, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 96 pages, color photographs, Like new in publisher's shrinkwrap. Doors of the Kingdom is a unique collection of photographs depicting the ancient and disappearing craft of doormaking in Arabia. The Islamic concept of hurma, or sanctity of a place of dwelling or worship, is recurrent throughout Arabic poetry and literature. The door (bab), preserver of sanctity, becomes symbolic of the boundary between public and private space, and between the profane and the sacred. In 1995, Haajar Gouverneur traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula photographing each region's distinctive doorways and the remaining artisans who make them. The doors of Arabia, painstakingly hand-carved from the wood of the Al-Athel trees, last in their exquisite variety for hundreds of years. This ancient craft, passed down from generation to generation in the central and northern regions of Saudi Arabia, is now nearly extinct. Modern materials, technology, and changing priorities threaten the continuity of the sacred and artisanal tradition of doormaking.
Hardcover. Reading, Garnet, 1st UK, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 118 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs by Freya Stark. 1/2" deep closed tear at top right corner of first 4 pages - appears to be publishers error. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Geo. H. Ellis, 1st, 1895, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with bright gilt lettering, all edges gilt, 209 pages, b&w illustrations. Previous owner's stamp on front endpapers. Bright original 1895 edition.
Hardcover. Steidl, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 296 pages. Inge Morath traveled to the Middle East for Holiday magazine where she wore the traditional chador and traveled alone most of the time. "It was difficult to photograph there as a woman," she later wrote. Morath's subjects range from politics to religion and from work to commerce; from the Shahs palace to the nomads tent to the Zoroasters sacred shrine.
Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages. Michael von Graffenried, an award-winning Swiss photographer, covertly photographed civil strife in Algeria from the early 1990s through 1998. In a land where Islamic terrorists have executed over sixty journalists and photographers in the last seven years, Graffenried's very survival is remarkable. His extraordinary accomplishment, however, is these photographs, which form a composite of Algeria that is more whole than the nation itself, fractured by one segment of the population in favor of democracy and another in favor of an Islamic state. Graffenried makes his pictures secretly, using an antique Widelux panoramic camera with a hidden lens. He would risk his picture and his life were he to raise a camera to his eyes. Instead, he shoots from the hip, with his hands clasped over what looks like a pair of binoculars. In learning to frame his photographs without a viewfinder, he opens himself to a rich array of surprise and irony in his pictures, and reveals a society that has been concealed from the international community for nearly seven years.
Hardcover. NY, Frederick A. Stokes Company , 1st, 1933, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, rose color cloth stamped in black. 138 pages. Shelf-worn but solid. B&w cartoon illustrations by O. Soglow. Humorous memoir of the Inspector-General of Antiquities in Egypt and his camel. Ink name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.
Hardcover. London, John Murray, reprint, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt titles, 169 pages. B&w decorations by Reynolds Stone. Musings on travel by intrepid explorer Dame Freya Stark (1893-1993). Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Broadway Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 304 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Minor foxing to top edge of text block. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.
Softcover. Hanover NH, Brandeis University Press , reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps, 228 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. The Dead Sea is unlike any other place on earth. Situated a quarter mile below sea level, so saline it can't support life, surrounded by a desolate landscape, it is not just a geologic feature but a source of mystery connected to religious faith. In elegant and vivid prose, Barbara Kreiger re-creates and analyzes the myths and legends surrounding the site and examines both its natural history and its gradual and difficult exploration. But The Dead Sea (first published as Living Waters in 1988) is more than a detailed and delightful travelogue. It is also an inquiry into the human and political drama that has swirled around this mysterious place for more than 12,000 years. In an afterword to the new edition, Kreiger shows how the sea in the post-Peace Accord era may come to take on a new symbolism: with perpetual need for water and a thriving mineral industry as common bonds, Israel and Jordan, two traditional antagonists whose border bisects the sea, may find themselves joining forces to preserve its fragile ecosystem against the threats of technology and tourism. Tan stain to top corner of text b;ock, otherwise clean.
