biography

Hardcover. NY, Hudson Hills Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 228 pages, 123 color plates. Morisot was a gutsy pioneer among the French impressionists. As a standard-bearer of the avant-garde, she created a scandal by helping to organize a public auction of their works, something very few artists had dared to do. Defying the advice of her parents and Manet, she remained in Paris when Prussian troops besieged the city. In her artistic technique she was no less daring. Around 1874, in pictures of tourists and yacht-filled rivers, she broke through to an abbreviated, shorthand style ahead of her contemporaries. Disregarding her own view that Monet had taken landscape painting to its farthest limits, her late oils of gardens are brilliant fireworks of color. This catalogue of a retrospective exhibition that is to tour the country stands on its own as a valuable study.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 375 pages. B&W photographs and illustrations. Pictorial dust jacket. Green cloth with gilt title to spine. Erratum laid-in. Overall, a clean, tight copy. ohn Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century; his collected poems sold more than two million copies. As poet laureate of England, he became a national icon, but behind the public man were doubts and demons. The poet best known for writing hymns of praise to athletic middle-class girls on the tennis courts led a tempestuous emotional life. For much of his fifty-year marriage to Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of a field marshal, Betjeman had a relationship with Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Betjeman, a devout Anglican, was tormented by guilt about the storms this emotional triangle caused. Betjeman, published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth, is the first to use fully the vast archive of personal material relating to his private life, including literally hundreds of letters written by his wife about their life together and apart. Here too are chronicled his many friendships, ranging from "Bosie" Douglas to the young satirists of Private Eye, from the Mitford sisters to the Crazy Gang. This is a celebration of a much-loved poet, a brave campaigner for architecture at risk, and a highly popular public performer. Betjeman was the classic example of the melancholy clown, whose sadness found its perfect mood music in the hymns of a poignant Anglicanism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Guilford, CT, Lyons Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 144 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Hundreds of never before seen black & white photographs and private letters spanning 1949 - 2000.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 479 pages, b&w illustrations. A comprehensive biography of one of the century's premier musicians focuses on his accomplishments as a composer rather than his popularity as a bandleader.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Adult, 1st, 1996, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 282 pages, with photographs of the artist and her work. Slight foxing on top edge and small stain on fore edge, otherwise, very clean and tight copy. Twenty years after the publication of her autobiography, Through the Flower, the renowned artist and feminist continues the story of her life and takes a provocative look at late twentieth-century American culture and the allocation of our resources.

Hardcover. New York, Dutton Books, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 304 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.

Hardcover. Totowa, NJ, Rowman and Littlefield, reprint, 1973, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 223 pages. Foreword by Walter Shewring. Blue cloth covers with gilt decoration. First edition published in 1953. Frontispiece portrait of Gill and numerous facsimiles of type, text, and illustration. Written by Eric Gill's brother.

Hardcover. New York, Crown Publishers, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 463 pages, b&w illustrations. What do you need to make money making movies? The answer, according to cult hero, creator of the sexploitation film, and the man the Wall Street Journal once dubbed the King Leer of Hollywood, Russ Meyer, is: "big bosoms and square jaws." In the first candid and fiendishly researched account of the late cinematic instigator's life, Jimmy McDonough shows us how Russ Meyer used that formula to turn his own crazed fantasies into movies that made him a millionaire and changed the face of American film forever.

Hardcover. NY, A. A. Wyn, 1st, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 181 pages. Autobiographical story of young Manuel, growing up near his grandfather's cigar store (complete with wooden Indian) on the corner of 50th St. & Third Ave. The years from 1890- 1910 included The Boxer Rebellion, Boer War, airplanes, cars, movies & other world-changing inventions. A fascinating book about the enchanted island of Manhattan for all ages. The author has written many adult books, and was the first editor of The Mobern Library. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Prentice Hall, 2nd pr., 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 258 pages, b&w photographs. The story of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan in the movies.

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 335 pages. Oversized. Black cloth cover, minor wear to edges. Dust jacket has some wear to corners and edges, small faint smudge. Inside is bright and clean. Many b&w photographs throughout. A nice, tight copy.

Softcover. NY, Norton, reprint, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages. A self-described "desert rat" who rocketed to fame at the age of twenty-two, Bill Mauldin used flashing black brush lines and sardonic captions to capture the world of the American combat soldier in World War II. His cartoon dogfaces, Willie and Joe, appeared in Stars and Stripes and hundreds of newspapers back home, bearing grim witness to life in the foxhole. We've never viewed war in the same way since. This lushly illustrated biography draws on private papers, correspondence, and thousands of original drawings to render a full portrait of a complex and quintessentially American genius.92 illustrations

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 384 pages. The definitive biography of the greatest cartoonist of the Greatest Generation. "The real war," said Walt Whitman, "will never get in the books." During World War II, the truest glimpse most Americans got of the "real war" came through the flashing black lines of twenty-two-year-old infantry sergeant Bill Mauldin. Week after week, Mauldin defied army censors, German artillery, and Patton's pledge to "throw his ass in jail" to deliver his wildly popular cartoon, "Up Front," to the pages of Stars and Stripes. "Up Front" featured the wise-cracking Willie and Joe, whose stooped shoulders, mud-soaked uniforms, and pidgin of army slang and slum dialect bore eloquent witness to the world of combat and the men who lived-and died-in it. This taut, lushly illustrated biography-the first of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Mauldin-is illustrated with more than ninety classic Mauldin cartoons and rare photographs. It traces the improbable career and tumultuous private life of a charismatic genius who rose to fame on his motto: "If it's big, hit it."

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, March 27, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 190 pages, b&w illustrations throughout. Light edge wear to dust jacket; small tear on rear cover. Light foxing on top edge. Else a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, reprint, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 207 pages, b&w illustrations. Few of rodeo's early heroes matched the achievements of the black cowboy Bill Pickett, and his story is recounted here for the first time in book form. Pickett grew up in Texas in the 1880s, the child of former slaves, to become nationally famous as the star of the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. Pickett was associated with such western figures as Tom Mix, Will Rogers, Milt Hinkle, and Lucille Mulhall, and earned a reputation as an all around cowboy of legendary abilities. His greatest claim to fame is as the originator of steer wrestling, the only rodeo event to the traced to one individual. Audiences all over the United States, South America, Canada, and England were amazed to see the "Dusky Demon" fell on thousand-pound steers and bring them down bite-'em style with his teeth. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Walker Books, 1st, 2012, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 434 pages, b&w photos. William Louis "Bill" Veeck, Jr. (1914-1986) is legendary in many ways-baseball impresario and innovator, independent spirit, champion of civil rights in a time of great change. Paul Dickson has written the first full biography of this towering figure, in the process rewriting many aspects of his life and bringing alive the history of America's pastime. In his late 20s, Veeck bought into his first team, the American Association Milwaukee Brewers. After serving and losing a leg in WWII, he bought the Cleveland Indians in 1946, and a year later broke the color barrier in the American League by signing Larry Doby, a few months after Jackie Robinson-showing the deep commitment he held to integration and equal rights. Cleveland won the World Series in 1948, but Veeck sold the team for financial reasons the next year. He bought a majority of the St. Louis Browns in 1951, sold it three years later, then returned in 1959 to buy the other Chicago team, the White Sox, winning the American League pennant his first year. Ill health led him to sell two years later, only to gain ownership again, 1975-1981. Veeck's promotional spirit-the likes of clown prince Max Patkin and midget Eddie Gaedel are inextricably connected with him-and passion endeared him to fans, while his feel for the game led him to propose innovations way ahead of their time, and his deep sense of morality not only integrated the sport but helped usher in the free agency that broke the stranglehold owners had on players. (Veeck was the only owner to testify in support of Curt Flood during his landmark free agency case). Bill Veeck: Baseball's Greatest Maverick is a deeply insightful, powerful biography of a fascinating figure.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly soiled. unclipped dust jacket. 325 pages including index. The author explores Sunday's career as the product and expression of his era. A lively account of the famous revivalist's life and the inner workings of mass revivalism. Name stamp on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan Company, 1st, 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth with gilt lettering on spine faded, 271 pages. The book covers the life and work of Bishop Butler and the impact his philosophy had on the Age of Reason. Name, date on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Columbia, SC, State Company, 2nd, 1922, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 345 pages. Hardcover with black stamped lettering on front. Rear top corner bumped. Light foxing on page block and internal pages. Light fading on edges of cover.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Co,, reprint, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. The true story of an African medicine man as he leaves his home to practice his medicine in the city. Wulf Sachs was born in Russia and trained at the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. A citizen of South Africa who resided in Johannesburg, he was a practicing psychoanalyst and the author of many books on psychiatry and literary criticism. Classic account of a two and half year psychoanalysis of a South African witch doctor. This book was earlier published with the title Black Anger. Derived from a review posted on-line: Black Hamlet is at the same time a case study in psychoanalytic therapy, the report of a scientific investigation, a political polemic, a collection of ethnographic observations, and the biography of a common man whose remarkable features would otherwise have been overlooked. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 237 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Memoir of an African-American woman when she was a student at a formerly all white male private prep school.

Hardcover. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1st UK, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an edgeworn , unclipped dust jacket. A biography of poet Harry Crosby, who inexplicably took the life of another man's bride of six months, and subsequently his own life, in 1929. INSCRIBED BY WOLFF on the blank prelim page: "To the yeoman of Chittenden, and to Steve, from the guy whose fat they pulled from the fire/Geoffrey Wolff/Repayment Day, 1977/Waitsfield, Vt".

Hardcover. New York, C.W.F. Scott, 1st, 1933, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 147 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Moderate soil and chipping to dust jacket, previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf. Multiple page corners "dog-eared" folded and creased.