biography

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1948 , Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 234 pages. Green cover with small gilt head silhouette to cover and lettering to spine, acetate-protected dust jacket, "Sally and Rockwell Kent" bookplate - formerly owned by the famous illustrator Rockwell Kent. Color frontispiece, 59 b&w plates of Allston's paintings. Light wear and chipping evident to dust jacket under acetate cover; overall, a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 218 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED BY DUNNE on title page. Mesmerizing, revelatory text combines with more than two hundred photographs -- most of them taken by the author -- in a startling illustrated memoir that will both astonish and move you. He partied with all the stars and big shots. Each weekend he carefully arranged his snapshots along with the week's invitations, telegrams, and news-clippings into a set of scrapbooks. In a bright dust jacket with sticker on front panel.

Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 218 pages, b&w illustrations. Mesmerizing, revelatory text combines with more than two hundred photographs -- most of them taken by the author -- in a startling illustrated memoir that will both astonish and move you. He partied with all the stars and big shots. Each weekend he carefully arranged his snapshots along with the week's invitations, telegrams, and news-clippings into a set of scrapbooks. In a bright dust jacket with sticker residue on rear panel.

Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 218 pages, b&w illustrations. Mesmerizing, revelatory text combines with more than two hundred photographs -- most of them taken by the author -- in a startling illustrated memoir that will both astonish and move you. He partied with all the stars and big shots. Each weekend he carefully arranged his snapshots along with the week's invitations, telegrams, and news-clippings into a set of scrapbooks. In a bright dust jacket with sticker residue on rear panel.

Softcover. Lake Front Editions, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Memoirs of Vermont's own "Big" Joe Burrell with inscription by Big Joe on front fly leaf. Illustrated with photos in b&w. Light wear and rubbing to covers and spine, else a very nice, tight, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Skira Rizzoli, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages. Illustrated in color and b&w. The most comprehensive book on the artist to date, offering an insightful look into the legendary musician and his enormous impact on the development of jazz. Miles Davis explores the life and art of one of the greatest visionaries in jazz history--through photographs, handwritten musical scores, album covers, posters, and more--cementing his reputation as the embodiment of cool, both on- and offstage. To examine his extraordinary career is also to examine the history of jazz from the mid-1940s through the early 1990s, as Davis was crucial in almost every important innovation and stylistic development during that time. His genius paved the way for these changes, both with his own performances and recordings, and by choosing collaborators with whom he forged new directions. Miles Davis--trumpeter, bandleader, and composer--was one of the most important figures in jazz history. He was born in a well-to-do family in St. Louis in 1926 and died in a Los Angeles hospital in 1991. He was at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, and fusion. Davis worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, including Ron Carter, John Coltrane, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Charlie Parker, and Max Roach, among numerous others.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 672 pages. 16 pages of photos. What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary--an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story, beginning with Avedon's coming-of-age in New York between the world wars, when cultural prejudices forced him to make decisions that shaped the course of his life. Compounding his private battles, Avedon fought to be taken seriously in a medium that itself struggled to be respected within the art world. Gefter reveals how the 1950s and 1960s informed Avedon's life and work as much as he informed the period. He counted as close friends a profoundly influential group of artists--Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Harold Brodkey, Renata Adler, Sidney Lumet, and Mike Nichols--who shaped the cultural life of the American twentieth century. It wasn't until Avedon's fashion work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late 1970s that he became a household name. Balancing glamour with the gravitas of an artist's genuine reach for worldy achievement--and not a little gossip--plus sixteen pages of photographs, What Becomes a Legend Most is an intimate window into Avedon's fascinating world. Dramatic, visionary, and remarkable, it pays tribute to Avedon's role in the history of photography and fashion--and his legacy as one of the most consequential artists of his time.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 672 pages. 16 pages of photos. What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary--an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story, beginning with Avedon's coming-of-age in New York between the world wars, when cultural prejudices forced him to make decisions that shaped the course of his life. Compounding his private battles, Avedon fought to be taken seriously in a medium that itself struggled to be respected within the art world. Gefter reveals how the 1950s and 1960s informed Avedon's life and work as much as he informed the period. He counted as close friends a profoundly influential group of artists--Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Harold Brodkey, Renata Adler, Sidney Lumet, and Mike Nichols--who shaped the cultural life of the American twentieth century. It wasn't until Avedon's fashion work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late 1970s that he became a household name. Balancing glamour with the gravitas of an artist's genuine reach for worldy achievement--and not a little gossip--plus sixteen pages of photographs, What Becomes a Legend Most is an intimate window into Avedon's fascinating world. Dramatic, visionary, and remarkable, it pays tribute to Avedon's role in the history of photography and fashion--and his legacy as one of the most consequential artists of his time.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 498 pages. The renowned artist offers a humorous take on his own life, discussing among other topics his Bronx childhood, his jazz career, his legendary excesses, and his brief stint in the military. There is the Larry Rivers whose work hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery, and there is the Larry Rivers who himself has hung out in a variety of other, less respectable milieus. Now the artist, musician, friend, lover, and entertaining writer--with help from his old friend playwright Arnold Weinstein--pens perhaps the most outspoken and candid autobiography ever. B&w, some color illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Effortlessly blending biography, criticism, and memoir, National Book Award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman. Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty--a poet, a New Yorker, and an American--keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work. What is it then between us? Whitman asks. In search of an answer, Doty explores spaces--both external and internal--where he finds the poet's ghost. He meditates on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poet's enduring work: a radical experience of transformation and enlightenment, queer sexuality, and an obsession with death, as well as unabashed love for a great city and for the fresh, rowdy character of American speech. In riveting close readings threaded with personal memoir and illuminated by awe, Doty reveals the power of Whitman's persistent presence in his life and in the American imagination at large. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1973, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket. 401 pages with index. Ex-lib copy with stamp to front fly leaf, envelope on rear endpaper, sticker on dust jacket spine, interior clean.

Hardcover. London, Harrap, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 200 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light soil on top page block, otherwise clean, tight copy. Moderate chipping/rubbing to dust jacket edges now covered in plastic protective sleeve.

Softcover. Jackson Hole WY, self-published, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 341 pages, b&w illustrations. The autobiography of a successful woman rancher in Wyoming. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on front fly leaf. An amusing coming-of-age memoir of a young girl growing up in Newark where her mother was a landlord in an apartment building.

Hardcover. NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 4th pr., 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright. unclipped dust jacket, 340 pages. A compelling, up-close-and-personal portrait of basketball's most inimitable duo. It is also a rollicking ride through professional basketball's best times, the golden age of hoops for the boomer generation. This work tells the story of Magic and Larry from their vantage point and takes the reader inside their fascinating rivalry, with new insights and revealing details about two men who evolved from bitter competitors into lifelong friends. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Watson-Guptill Publications, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 87 pages. 32 color illustrations. Dark blue cloth, gilt lettering to spine. Very nice, clean and tight copy. Dust jacket edgewear on upper corner of spine. In good shape.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 440 pages, colo and b&w illustrations. The first biography in more than twenty years of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is also the first to make extensive use of the artist's private correspondence to tell the story of his life and work. This engaging personal history dispels the popular notion of Whistler as merely a combative, eccentric, and unrelenting publicity seeker, a man as renowned for his public feuds with Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin as for the iconic portrait of his mother. The Whistler revealed in these pages is an intense, introspective, and complex man, plagued by self-doubt and haunted by an endless pursuit of perfection in his painting and drawing. In his beautifully illustrated and deeply human portrayal of the artist, Daniel E. Sutherland shows why Whistler was perhaps the most influential artist of his generation, and certainly a pivotal figure in the cultural history of the nineteenth century. Whistler comes alive through his own magnificent work and words, including the provocative manifestos that explained his bold artistic vision, sparked controversy in his own time, and resonate to this day.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 440 pages, illustrations in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. The first biography in more than twenty years of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is also the first to make extensive use of the artist's private correspondence to tell the story of his life and work. This engaging personal history dispels the popular notion of Whistler as merely a combative, eccentric, and unrelenting publicity seeker, a man as renowned for his public feuds with Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin as for the iconic portrait of his mother. The Whistler revealed in these pages is an intense, introspective, and complex man, plagued by self-doubt and haunted by an endless pursuit of perfection in his painting and drawing. In his beautifully illustrated and deeply human portrayal of the artist, Daniel E. Sutherland shows why Whistler was perhaps the most influential artist of his generation, and certainly a pivotal figure in the cultural history of the nineteenth century. Whistler comes alive through his own magnificent work and words, including the provocative manifestos that explained his bold artistic vision, sparked controversy in his own time, and resonate to this day.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Schenkman Publishing, 1st US, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly faded dust jacket. Written in 1936, long before his fame as a archeologist and anthropologist. He tells the story of his life as an African in White Africa from the time he left his family in search of a new life until he returned as a successful scientist. Leakey vividly describes his experiences as a hunter, gatherer, and farmer, and his encounters with the natural world and the people he met there. He also describes the challenges he and his fellow Africans faced in trying to establish themselves as a minority community in a hostile environment. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lausanne, Acatos, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket., 206 pages. With photographs and reproductions in color and black and white of Lam's paintings and drawings. With facsimile of small booklet by Andre Breton in pocket inside front cover.

Hardcover. Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 357 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Mountaineers Books, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 302 pages. Every year wildfires ravage forests, destroy communities, and devastate human lives, with only the bravery of dedicated firefighters creating a barrier against even greater destruction. Throughout the 2016 wildfire season, journalist Heather Hansen witnessed firsthand the heroics of the Station 8 crew in Boulder, Colorado. She tells that story here, layered with the added context of the history, science, landscape, and human behavior that, year-by-year, increases the severity, frequency, and costs of conflagrations in the West. She examines the changes in both mindset and activity around wildfires and tracks the movement from wildfire as something useful, to something feared, to something necessary but roundly dreaded. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Toronto, The Ryerson Press, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 272 pages. Map endpapers, frontispiece, illustrations, bibliography, index. Black and white frontispiece portrait of Grenfell. Endpapers feature a map of Newfoundland and Labrador. The first full biography of the founder of the Grenfell Mission in Labrador and Newfoundland. Lacks dust jacket, clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Bloomsbury, 1st US , 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 359 pages, hardcover. 16 pages of color illustrations. Extensive b&w illustrations and photographs. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.