Women

Hardcover. Astra House, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 288 pages. In these confessional pages, women control their own bodies and desires, work toward healing their painful pasts, and learn to assert their sexual power. Weaving a rich tapestry of experiences with a sex positive outlook, The Sex Lives of African Women is an empowering, subversive book that celebrates the liberation, individuality, and joy of African women's multifaceted sexuality. From a queer community in Egypt, to polyamorous life in Senegal, and a reflection on the intersection of religion and pleasure in Cameroon, feminist author Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah explores the many layers of love and desire, its expression, and how it defines who we are.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Quirk Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright acetate dust jacket, 240 pages. Meet more than one hundred of the most heroic female characters in comics history, complete with backstories, vintage art, and colorful commentary. This spectacular sisterhood includes costumed crimebusters like Miss Fury, super-spies like Tiffany Sinn, sci-fi pioneers like Gale Allen, and even kid troublemakers like Little Lulu. With vintage art, publication details, a decade-by-decade survey of industry trends and women's roles in comics, and spotlights on iconic favorites like Wonder Woman and Ms. Marvel, The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen proves that not only do strong female protagonists belong in comics, they've always been there. Clean copy.

New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, decorated black cloth, 160 pages. An amazing treasure trove of unpublished images, this intriguing and entertaining book looks at how women explored their identity through popular photography in the 20th centurySnapshots preserve more than individual likeness and memory. Photographs of celebrations, vacations, and gatherings of family and friends are collected with the aim of constructing and preserving a personal identity for future generations. What happens, however, when a snapshot is subsequently discarded or displaced and becomes merely an "anonymous" image? This and many other questions are discussed in this fascinating selection of anonymous images depicting three women. Presumably all taken by nonprofessionals, these snapshots were acquired over time by a private collector interested in their eclectic yet familiar details, who named the grouping after the iconic Greco-Roman motif.

Softcover. Boston, Samuel Hall, reprint, 1794, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover 12mo, 56 pp. Small, tall 16mo, original marbled paper wrappers. First published in 1695 by Lady Mary Cressy, under the title The Whole Duty of a Woman; or, A Guide to the Female Sex, from the Age of Sixteen to Sixty, &c. For a new edition in 1753, the author was simply listed as "A Lady." In fact, this author was William Kenrick (1725-1779), English novelist, playwright, and founder of the book review digest The London Review. Kenrick was described by Paul Fussell in PMLA (June 1951) as "one of London's most despised, drunken, and morally degenerate hack writers in the later eighteenth century." In this tiny volume, Kenrick assumes the persona of a fallen woman, now reformed, who wants to persuade other women to live a life of virtue. Chapters include Curiosity, Reflection, Vanity, Knowledge, Reputation, Applause, Censure, Insinuation, Affectation, Modesty, Chastity, Complacence, Acquaintance, Friendship, Elegance, Frugality, Employment, Virginity, Marriage, Education, Authority, Widowhood, and Religion. Considerable wear to wrappers, still intact.

Softcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 2nd pr., 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 170 pages. Selections from the work of Gertrude Kasebier, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Margaret Bourke, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, Barbar Morgan, Diane Arbus, Alisa Wells, Judy Dater, and Bea Nettles. 100 b&w plates plus 10 text illustrations; 10 x 9 inches.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 464 pages. Richard Stites views the struggle for liberation of Russian women in the context of both nineteenth-century European feminism and twentieth-century communism. The central personalities, their vigorous exchange of ideas, the social and political events that marked the emerging ideal of emancipation--all come to life in this absorbing and dramatic account. The author's history begins with the feminist, nihilist, and populist impulses of the 1860s and 1870s, and leads to the social mobilization campaigns of the early Soviet period. Spine with light fading, otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 191 pages, color photography by Greenfield. Critically acclaimed for Girl Culture and Fast Forward, Lauren Greenfield continues her exploration of contemporary female culture with Thin, a groundbreaking book about eating disorders. Greenfield's photographs are paired with extensive interviews and journal entries from twenty girls and women who are suffering from various afflictions. Very good in a similar dust jacket.

Softcover. Montpelier VT, Vermont State Division of the American Association of University Women, 2nd Ed., 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 84 pages, b&w illustrations. Related newspaper clipping laid in. Mild soil to wraps, otherwise a clean copy.

Softcover. Hensonville NY, Black Dome Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 199 pages. Softcover. Extensive b&w photography throughout. Some curling to dust jacket, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Softcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st pbk, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 296 pages, b&w illustrations. The apt subtitle of this award-winning biography, Photographer & Revolutionary, sums up the creative tensions that characterized Tina Modotti's life and brief photographic career. Active as a photographer for only nine years, Modotti was pulled between formal and social concerns. Producing striking modernist compositions of everyday objects, photojournalism of poverty and conflict, and portraits of celebrities and common people alike, Modotti balanced political concerns with formal rigor.First published in 1993 and long out of print, Tina Modotti: Photographer & Revolutionary is the definitive portrayal of Modotti's life and work. Few photographers are more deserving of a biographical treatment than Modotti, whose work as an actress and artist's model introduced her to Edward Weston, who was to become her lover. Soon after she arrived in Mexico City with Weston, Modotti became increasingly politicized, working for the communist newspaper El Machete and establishing herself as the go-to photographer for the Mexican Muralist movement. The book includes extensive archival material, interviews with Modotti's contemporaries and many rare photographs. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. In 1972, underground cartoonists Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli produced Tits & Clits - a funny, rowdy, raucous underground comix series about female sexuality that one reviewer described as "the ultimate in vaginal politics" - and became the first American women ever credited with writing, drawing, and publishing their own comic books. A feminist answer to Zap, Tits & Clits quickly became an anthology showcase for other women cartoonists, featuring the work of Mary Fleener, Roberta Gregory, Krystine Kryttre, Lee Marrs, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Trina Robbins, Dori Seda, among others. Like other underground comix, Tits & Clits leaned into being lewd in order to satirize women's experiences with so-called sexual liberation. Featuring stories about birth control, abortion, menstruation, masturbation, and more, Tits & Clits featured intimate politics which occasionally clashed with contemporaneous feminist concepts about sex and sexuality. As Chevli put it: their work had something to offend everyone. (In 1973, conservative legal authorities in Orange County deemed their work pornographic and even threatened the two editors with arrest on obscenity charges.)Now, for the first time in half a century, a new generation of readers will be shocked, entertained, enlightened, and scandalized by the bold satirical cartoonists that comprised the band of sisters in Tits & Clits. In addition to reprinting the seven-issue run of the Tits & Clits series, this collection also includes in their entirety two classic solo comics from 1972 written and drawn by Farmer and Chevli - Abortion Eve and Pandora's Box. Also included is an introductory essay providing context to Tits & Clits' place in the history of women's cartooning by the book's editor, Samantha Meie

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 311 pages. As the Civil War drew to a close, newly emancipated black women workers made their way to Atlanta-the economic hub of the newly emerging urban and industrial south-in order to build an independent and free life on the rubble of their enslaved past. In an original and dramatic work of scholarship, Tera Hunter traces their lives in the postbellum era and reveals the centrality of their labors to the African-American struggle for freedom and justice. Household laborers and washerwomen were constrained by their employers' domestic worlds but constructed their own world of work, play, negotiation, resistance, and community organization. Hunter follows African-American working women from their newfound optimism and hope at the end of the Civil War to their struggles as free domestic laborers in the homes of their former masters. We witness their drive as they build neighborhoods and networks and their energy as they enjoy leisure hours in dance halls and clubs. We learn of their militance and the way they resisted efforts to keep them economically depressed and medically victimized. Finally, we understand the despair and defeat provoked by Jim Crow laws and segregation and how they spurred large numbers of black laboring women to migrate north. Clean copy.

Hardcover. US, Reel Art Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Beautiful photography. Clearly 50's era glamour and models. Tastefully erotic but not pornographic. The famous "red velvet series" featuring Marilyn Monroe is included, along with many many others.

Hardcover. NY, G.K.Hall, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 243 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Reproduced from their work pub. in the 1930s. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Minneapolis, Twenty-First Century Books, 1sy, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 96 pages illustrated in color. For most of human history, the garments women wore under their clothes were hidden. The earliest underwear provided warmth and protection. But eventually, women's undergarments became complex structures designed to shape their bodies to fit the fashion ideals of the time. In the modern era, undergarments are out in the open, from the designer corsets Madonna wore on stage to Beyonce's pregnancy announcement on Instagram. This feminist exploration of women's underwear reveals the intimate role lingerie plays in defining women's bodies, sexuality, gender identity, and body image. It is a story of control and restraint but also female empowerment and self-expression. You will never look at underwear the same way again. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Richmond, Croscup & Co., 1st Edition, 1893, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 314 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations including frontispiece with tissue guard. Tan, textured cover boards, Blue title on spine and front cover board, agewear to covers (see image). Gilt top edge. Tanning to pages and edges. Binding tight. In great shape for its age.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, In this sumptuous over-sized volume, Taschen celebrates a remarkably candid, confident and exuberantly sexual woman: the Latina porn star Vanessa Del Rio. Presented through Vanessa's own archive, in her own words, is a life at once shocking, titillating, amusing, and inspiring. And because paper and ink can't do justice to a personality this big, an original 140 minute DVD documentary is included. First Trade Edition. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred van der Marck, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 176 pages. Profusely illustrated with full color reproductions (including one fold-out) of pin-up art and paintings by Alberto Vargas. Foreword by Kurt Vonnegut. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Portland, OR, Collector's Press, 1st US, October 1, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Unpaginated, color illustrations throughout. Light edge wear to wrappers. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Berlin GR, Benedikt Taschen, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, illustrated wrappers, 80 pages. Black laminated wraps with 'red Queen' 1954 on the front. Introductory text by Astrid Rossana Conte (grand-niece of Vargas) A monograph dedicated to the Peruvian painter and illustrator Alberto Vargas, famous for his pin-ups and portraits inspired by actresses, which examines four decades of his production, from the 1920s to the 1950s. Parallel texts in German, English and French; well illustrated with two photographs of Vargas, black and white examples of his drawings and many full colour examples of his paintings. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Harmony Books, 3rd pr., 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages. Foreword by Hugh Hefner, illustrated in color and black & white. A monographic study of the art of Alberto Vargas back to his earliest known work. His draughtsmanship and technique in depicting the female nude is unsurpassed. Moreover, he was a cultural force. The work he did for Playboy is confined to a few pages at the end. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 342 pages, b&w illustrations. In the spring of 1995, twelve extraordinary basketball players were chosen to represent the United States in the yearlong march to the 1996 Olympics. For Rebecca Lobo, Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and their teammates, winning the gold medal was only one of many goals. Around them swirled the dreams of the millions of young girls who played organized basketball, the hopes of the fans who sent the team an average of 125 pounds of fan mail each month, the multimillion-dollar bets of Nike, Champion, and other corporate sponsors, the promise of a new women's professional league, and not least, the hopes of female athletes across the country finally to gain the respect accorded male athletes.

Softcover. NY, Writers And Readers Publishing, reprint, 1993, Book: Good, Softcover, 201 pages. Ex-lib with residue to endpapers, spine label. This photographic essay provides a fascinating historical overview of 34 black women photographers from 1839 to 1985. It is divided into five time periods and includes the general history of each period, along with the particular photographers' place in it. This volume is profusely illustrated with the work of each photographer and includes both biographical information and a critique of her work. All photographs are in black and white and are excellently reproduced. The writing is personalized and exciting. This is an upbeat, positive presentation of the role black women played in recording their history and their world. One page (179) loose, laid in.

Hardcover. Novato, CA, Underwood Miller, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 147 pages. Black & white illustrations by Virgil Finlay. Dust jacket is protected by a mylar cover.