Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton , 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. After the Second World War, a newly affluent United States reached for its own gourmet culture, one at ease with the French international style of Escoffier, but also distinctly American. Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties were synonymous with the nation's food for decades, even after his death in 1985. In the first biography of Beard in twenty-five years, acclaimed writer John Birdsall argues that Beard's struggles as a closeted gay man directly influenced his creation of an American cuisine. Starting in the 1920s, Beard escaped loneliness and banishment by travelling abroad to places where people ate for pleasure, not utility, and found acceptance at home by crafting an American ethos of food likewise built on passion and delight. Informed by never-before-tapped correspondence and lush with details of a golden age of home cooking, The Man Who Ate Too Much is a commanding portrait of a towering figure who still represents the best in food. 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.
Hardcover. Louisville KY, Touchstone Publishing , 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, unclipped. Griffith's autobiography was never finished (Griffith died in 1948), here edited and annotated by James Hart, who was a friend of the filmmaker late in his life. Griffith was the leading exponent in the 'blockbuster' genre of popular film, but with style. Chronologic listing of his innovative works, all profusely illustrated. Forward by Frank Capra. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Louisville KY, Touchstone Publishing , 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, unclipped. Griffith's autobiography was never finished (Griffith died in 1948), here edited and annotated by James Hart, who was a friend of the filmmaker late in his life. Griffith was the leading exponent in the 'blockbuster' genre of popular film, but with style. Chronologic listing of his innovative works, all profusely illustrated. Forward by Frank Capra. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Vancouver, Raincoast Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 307 pages. b&w illustrations. In the mid-1800s, George Back went on three Arctic expeditions with Sir John Franklin across the barren lands of the Canadian north. But unlike Franklin, Back lived to tell his tales in journals, drawings, watercolors, and maps. Noted writer Peter Steele drew on these sources, along with contemporary accounts, to craft this gripping tale of resilience in the face of incredible odds. The book thrillingly recounts the near-impossible circumstances of these expeditions -- the fights with the Hudson Bay Company, rations that failed to get through, even cannibalism. Back survived these horrors to lead an exploration of the Great Fish River, now named Back River in his honor. His return upstream, hauling his handmade boat up 83 sets of rapids, is one of the greatest-ever feats of heroism and endurance. 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. Hoboken NJ, John Wiley, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 367 pages, with illustrations. Like Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Marshall Field was one of the overlords of capitalism in the Gilded Age of the late 19th C. His wealth and philanthropy masked a disastrous personal life. Alienated from his children, deserted by his wife, he left a legacy of immense wealth and misery. This multigenerational saga of money, madness, and mystery tells a Jekyll-and-Hyde story of American capitalism--a tale of drive and nerve and moral stumbles. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages, photos in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. A sparkling life of the monumental fashion designer Cristobal Balenciaga. One of the most innovative and admired figures in the history of haute couture, Cristobal Balenciaga was, said Christian Dior, "the master of us all." Despite his extraordinary impact, Balenciaga was a man hidden from view. He saw to it that little was known about him, to the point that some French journalists wondered if he existed at all. Even his most devoted clients-Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Hutton, a clutch of Rothschilds-never met him. But one woman knew Balenciaga very well indeed. The first person he hired when he opened his Paris house was Florette Chelot, who became his top vendeuse. She witnessed the spectacular success of his first collection, and they worked closely for more than thirty years, until 1968, when Balenciaga abruptly closed his house without telling any of his staff. Youth-oriented fashion was taking over, Paris was in upheaval, and the elder statesman wanted no part of it. In The Master of Us All, Mary Blume tells the remarkable story of the man and his world. Intimate and revealing, this is an unprecedented portrait of a designer whose vision transformed an industry but whose story has never been told until now.
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. University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 512 pages. Historians, biographers, and scholars of John James Audubon and natural history have long been mystified by Audubon's 1843 Missouri River expedition, for his journals of the trip were thought to have been destroyed by his granddaughter Maria Rebecca Audubon. Daniel Patterson is the first scholar to locate and assemble three important fragments of the 1843 Missouri River journals, and here he offers a stunning transcription and critical edition of Audubon's last journey through the American West. Patterson's new edition of the journals--unknown to Audubon scholars and fans--offers a significantly different understanding of the very core of Audubon's life and work. Readers will be introduced to a more authentic Audubon, one who was concerned about the disappearance of America's wild animal species and yet also loved to hunt and display his prowess in the wilderness. This edition reveals that Audubon's famous late conversion to conservationism on this expedition was, in fact, a literary fiction. Maria Rebecca Audubon created this myth when she rewrote her grandfather's journals for publication to make him into a visionary conservationist. In reality the journals detail almost gratuitous hunting predations throughout the course of Audubon's last expedition.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 408 pages, index. Black and white frontis photo portrait of author. "Moffat served for a protracted period and with notable distinction in the key position of what was then termed Chief of the Division of European affairs; he accompanied me as my chief assistant when FDR sent me to Europe as his personal representative in the spring of 1940; and I was in the closest touch with him during the time he served as American Minister to Canada, a service so tragically terminated by his untimely death in 1943. I know of no man who came up through the ranks of the Foreign Service with whose work I am personally familiar who impressed me as having in his latter years greater knowledge, a wiser and more balanced judgement, or a greater devotion to the highest interests of this country." - Sumner Welles.
Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in dust jacket with some fading to edges, spine. 421 pages, b&w illustrations. ."This story of an outstandingly strange and interesting man is a triumph of modern biography. Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay (1846-1888) was one of the most extraordinary of all the nineteenth-century savant-adventurers. a brilliant student of Ernst Haeckel, he embraced the natural sciences at a time when the genius of Darwin was revolutionizing Western cosmology. In his short lifetime he made the whole world his laboratory: sponges in the Red Sea, and the ancestry of sharks, head measurements in New Guinea; Negrito races in Malay jungles; marine life in Sydney Harbor -- all these and a hundred other topics and places engaged his curiosity. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 3rd pr., 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 527 pages, b&w illustrations. No one predicted success for Henry Ward Beecher at his birth in 1813. The blithe, boisterous son of the last great Puritan minister, he seemed destined to be overshadowed by his brilliant siblings--especially his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who penned the century's bestselling book Uncle Tom's Cabin. But when pushed into the ministry, the charismatic Beecher found international fame by shedding his father Lyman's Old Testament-style fire-and-brimstone theology and instead preaching a New Testament-based gospel of unconditional love and healing, becoming one of the founding fathers of modern American Christianity. By the 1850s, his spectacular sermons at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights had made him New York's number one tourist attraction, so wildly popular that the ferries from Manhattan to Brooklyn were dubbed "Beecher Boats." SIGNED BY APPLEGATE on the half-title page. Clean copy.
Softcover. Greenwich CT, Fairview Printers, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, glossy pictorial stiff wraps, softcover; 187 pages plus index; black and white illustrations and photographic illustrations; very good.
Hardcover. Chapel Hill , University of North Carolina, 1st, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth, gilt lettering, design on spine, 280 pages. "The story of a Confederate childhood, a Reconstruction boyhood, and the education of a medical pioneer in the new South." This book is first of all a personal narrative that is alternately dramatic, thoughtful, and hilariously funny. It is also a vivid picture of plantation life before and during the Civil War and the beginnings of the building of a New South. Clean copy, spine a bit darkened.
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. Rutland VT, Tuttle Publishing Co,, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, terra-cotta cloth, 87 pages, limited to 500 copies. SIGNED BY NAY on the half-title page. "This is the real authentic story of an old Vermont country doctor written not as fiction but as the life of one of Vermont's oldest physicians....that beloved figure, the old-fashioned country doctor..." Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 3rd pr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Tojiro, a nine-year-old orphan, sells rice cakes on the streets of 19th-century Edo, the bustling city we now call Tokyo. One of his customers is the grumpy, eccentric octogenarian Hokusai. The old man takes a liking to Tojiro, and soon employs him as his assistant. The boy's ignorance provides a convenient vehicle for introducing the artist's life and work. Much of the dialogue and action is written for the purpose of conveying information about Hokusai, as well as the technique of woodblock printing and the social customs of Edo. The book's greatest strength is not the text, but the art that enlivens every page. A combination of the author's watercolors and reproductions of Hokusai's drawings and woodblock prints, the illustrations are arranged in enticing and varied page designs.
Hardcover. NY, Gotham Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 455 pages, b&w photos. The definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our time. Playing 350 shows a year at his peak, with more than forty Billboard hits, James Brown was a dazzling showman who transformed American music. His life offstage was just as vibrant, and until now no biographer has delivered a complete profile. The One draws on interviews with more than 100 people who knew Brown personally or played with him professionally. Using these sources, award-winning writer RJ Smith draws a portrait of a man whose twisted and amazing life helps us to understand the music he made. The One delves deeply into the story of a man who was raised in abject-almost medieval-poverty in the segregated South but grew up to earn (and lose) several fortunes. Covering everything from Brown's unconventional childhood (his aunt ran a bordello), to his role in the Black Power movement, which used "Say It Loud (I'm Black and Proud)" as its anthem, to his high-profile friendships, to his complicated family life, Smith's meticulous research and sparkling prose blend biography with a cultural history of a pivotal era. Clean, bright copy.
Hampshire UK, Drift Books, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, green wrappers, 170 pages, b&w illustrations, map. The author went to the Falklands as a young man to work on a sheep farm. His memoir offers a personal glimpse of the harsh but rewarding life of the Islands in the 1950s. Previous owner's inscription on inside cover, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Wiley, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 320 pages. Having signed the most lucrative contract in NHL history with the Washington Capitals, Alexander Ovechkin, at 24, is an undisputed hockey legend. In the mold more of a rock star than hockey player, Ovechkin courts the limelight, is never shy with his opinions, and, in a sport that thrives on the collective culture of the team-Ovechkin is an iconoclast who flouts convention, while loving the game. In The Ovechkin Project, veteran hockey writers Damien Cox and Gare Joyce trace his elite sports pedigree, his role representing Russia in the World Juniors, and how since entering the NHL, he's taken his team from worst to first in their division, and the hockey world by storm. Clean copy.
 "The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard by: Birdsall John")
 "The Man Who Found Thoreau: Roland W. Robbins and the Rise of Historical Archaeology in America by: Donald W. Linebaugh")
 "The Man Who Invented Hollywood: The Autobiography of D.W. Griffith by: Hart, James /Ed.")
 "The Man Who Invented Hollywood: The Autobiography of D.W. Griffith by: Hart, James /Ed.")
 "The Man Who Mapped the Arctic: The Intrepid Life of George Back, Franklin's Lieutenant by: Steele, Peter")
 "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 Marshall Fields: The Evolution of an American Business Dynasty by: Madsen, Axel")
 "The Master of Us All: Balenciaga, His Workrooms, His World by: Blume, Mary")
 "The Memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren by: Warren, Earl")
 "The Mint by: Lawrence, T. E.")
 "The Missouri River Journals of John James Audubon by: John James Audubon and Daniel Patterson")
 "The Moffat Papers; Selections From the Diplomatic Journals of Jay Pierrepont Moffat, 1919-1943 by: Moffat, Jay Pierrepont; Nancy Harvison Hooker (Ed.)")
 "The Moon and I by: Betsy Byars")
 "The Moon Man: A Biography of Miklouho-Maclay by: E. M. Webster")
 "The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (SIGNED COPY) by: Debby Applegate")
 "The National Cartoonists Society Album 1972-77 Edition by: Walker (compiled by), Mort")
 "The Natural Bent:The Memoirs of Dr. Paul B. Barringer by: Barringer, Paul B.")
 "The Neo-Pagans: Rupert Brooke and the Ordeal of Youth by: Delany, Paul")
 "The Old Country Doctor (SIGNED COPY) by: Winfield Scott Nay")
 "The Old Man Mad about Drawing: A Tale of Hokusai by: Place, Francois")
 "The One: The Life and Music of James Brown by: Smith, R. J.")
 "The Other Side of the Falklands: The Lion and the Lamb by: Edwards, Roger M.")
 "The Ovechkin Project: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Hockey's Most Dangerous Player by: Damien Cox/Gare Joyce")