culture

Hardcover. New York, Sterling Publishing, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 183 pages. Hardcover. Full color illustrations. Light wear. Clean, tight copy. The term pulp fiction has always had a certain resonance; but it is the artwork--bold, energized, dramatic, garishly colorful, and frequently grotesque--that has made pulp magazines memorable to so many people. Pulp Art is the groundbreaking--and ultimate--book on one of America's most important and spectacular forms of illustration art. At last, preserved in this volume are most of the still-existing originals created for the pulp covers, never before seen in all their sharply focused, vibrantly colored brilliance. Robert Lesser, a pioneering collector of this work and an expert on American popular culture, has assembled a gallery of these now-priceless originals. The dynamically pulp-flavored text is a complete historical survey of the pulps and their most important cover artists--Virgil Finlay, J. Allen St. John, Rafael de Soto, Hannes Bok, George and Jerome Rozen, Frank R. Paul, and many others. Also offered are critical discussions of individual paintings, as well as the major themes of the pulp magazines.

Hardcover. NY, W W Norton & Co, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 608 pages. A startling anecdotal history of gay life in twentieth-century New York explores the confluence of historical and social factors that made Manhattan a mecca for homosexuals in the second half of this century.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1923, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, red cloth, 296 pages. Gilt title on spine. Folding maps in rear. Contents: Relation of Bantu to other African races: Africa & Africans - Study of Bantu life & thought: Spirits of things; Spirits of people; Tribal law & politics; Woman & marriage; Training of Bantu youths - Europeanization of Bantu Africa: Discovery of Bantu; White man's burden & how he got it; Some problems of government in Bantu areas; Native labour; Colour bar; Task of Church. Newsp. clippings re author laid in, leaving tan mark.

Hardcover. Paris, Arthaud, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 32 pages of French text followed by full color photographs of the people and culture of the Rajasthan region of India. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, PA, George W. Jacobs & Company, 1st Edition, 1924, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, 334 pages. Hardcover. Color frontispiece and b/w illustrations throughout. Previous owner's bookplate, stamp, and pencil markings on front endpapers. Some pages untrimmed. Blue leather cover boards, gilt title on spine and front cover boards with two color decoration. Boards are excellent. Dust jacket has agewear, but present. binding very good. Pages and edges have some tanning. Top edge dyed. Dr. Gordon brings an artist's eye as well as the knowledge of a historian to the beautiful city of London and her historic landmarks.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, PA, J. M. Stoddart & Co., 1st, 1878, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 326 pages. Hardcover. Scarce, early Frost work. Decorated endpapers. B/w illustrations throughout. Back endpapers have a mended rip at gutter. Cover boards bound in orange. Covers have some age wear. Pages are age-yellowed with a touch of foxing in places. Does not affect text or illustrations. In very good shape for its age.

Hardcover. New York, NYUP, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 303 pages. Hardcover. 246 black & white illustrations, 6 in color. Light wear to dust jacket at corners, edges. Clean, tight copy. Raphael (The Wrightsman Lectures, Delivered Under the Auspices of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts) [Oct 01, 1979].

Hardcover. New York, New York University Press, 1st Edition, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 303 pages. Hardcover. 246 illustrations in black & white. 6 full page, full color illustrations. Red cloth covers with gilt titles to spine. Bright dust jacket with tears to edges. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. London, Phaidon, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 240 pages. Hardcover. Profusely illustrated in full color. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Surrey UK, Ashgate Publishing, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 165 pages. Author Leah Knight explores the physical and figurative potentials of green as they were understood in Renaissance England, including some that foreshadow our paradoxical dependence on and sacrifice of the green world. Ranging across contexts from early modern optics and olfaction to horticulture and herbal health care, this study explores a host of human encounters with the green world: both the impressions we make upon it and those it leaves with us. B&w, color illustrations.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 219 pages. Clean, bright copy. "I doubt very much that I'm the only person who's finding it more and more difficult to want to read or write novels," David Shields acknowledges in Reality Hunger, then seeks to understand how the conventional literary novel has become as lifeless a form as the mass market bodice-ripper. Shields provides an ars poetica for writers and other artists who, exhausted by the artificiality of our culture, "obsessed by real events because we experience hardly any," are taking larger and larger pieces of the real world and using them in their work. Reality Hunger is made of 600-odd numbered fragments, many of them quotations from other sources, some from Shields's own books, but none properly sourced--the project being not a treasure hunt or a con but a good-faith presentation of what literature might look like if it caught up to contemporary strategies and devices used in the other arts, and allowed for samples (that is, quotation from art and from the world) to revivify existing forms. Shields challenges the perceived superiority of the imagination and exposes conventional literary pieties as imitation writing, the textual equivalent of artificial flavoring, sleepwalking, and small talk. I can't name a more necessary or a more thrilling book.

Softcover. New York, Universe, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 143 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition. The chapters cover: jeans & pants; T-shirts & hoodies; shirts & blouses; jackets; formal wear; dresses & skirts; footwear; accessories; hair, makeup & body art; David Bowie.

Hardcover. The Siamanto Press, Reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 438 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Purple endpapers. Dust jacket unclipped, excellent. Black cover boards, white title on spine. Very good condition, just one small spot on bottom edge. Pages clean, binding tight, spine straight.

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages. Sylvia Plachy, a photographer for the Village Voice, and James Ridgeway, a reporter for the same publication, have delved into the depths of the pornography trade to explore and explain both its allure and its vulgarity. There is a sense of shock value in exposing the most lurid of fantasies--a man who has his dominatrix mummify him in concrete--that is tempered with theories as to how such an industry could have evolved. We also get to meet for ourselves those in the trade, providing a walk on the wild side within the safe confines of photographs and words.

Hardcover. London, Macmillan, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt, 407 pages. Chapters include: Myth and Ritual, Religion and Healing, Witchcraft and Sorcery, 20th Century Theories of Religion, The Science of Religion and others. Owner's small sticker inside front cover otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Tokyo, Sophia University, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 210 pages, b&w illustrations. Beige cloth spine with patterned boards and a bright dust jacket with a glassine wrapper.

Hardcover. Orangeburg SC, Sandlapper Publishing, 2nd pr., 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 120 pages, b&w illustrations. The author documents the customs and lifestyles of a proud group of Sea Island blacks. Beginning with the first freedmen and their descendents, he reveals a colorful and provocative story, told in words of island natives and illustrated with photographs taken around the turn of the century. INSCRIBED BY DAISE on the half-title page. Clean copy with color fading to dust jacket spine and part of front cover.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A thoughtful history of the legendary New York City neighborhood chronicles the Village's role as a bohemian enclave that became the home of and transformed the lives of such individuals as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emma Goldman, Eugene O'Neill, Margaret Sanger, and Thomas Wolfe, who came to the neighborhood to pursue individual artistic, personal, and political dreams. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Thunder's Mouth Press, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 259 pages. While the supremely popular Steal This Book is a guide to living outside the establishment, Revolution for the Hell of It is a chronicle of Abbie Hoffman's radical escapades that doubles as a guidebook for today's social and political activist. Hoffman pioneered the use of humour, theatre, and shock value to drive home his points, and in Revolution for the Hell of It he gives firsthand accounts of his legendary adventures, from the activism that led to the founding of the Youth International Party,or Yippies!, to the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests ("a Perfect Mess") that resulted in his conviction as part of the Chicago Seven. Clean. bright copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. Foreword by Luella Cole Lowie. Illustrated with 24 b/w photographs. Chronological biography, bibliography. Lowie wrote this book to document ethnographic study in the early 20th century; to put his own professional life on record; to stress methods of field work and their application under very different circumstances.

Hardcover. New York, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 239 pages. Minor edge wear to dust jacket. Else a very clean, tight copy. The dramatic events of the twentieth century have often led to the mass migration of intellectuals, professionals, writers, and artists. One of the first of these migrations occurred in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, when more than a million Russians were forced into exile. With this book, Marc Raeff, one of the world's leading historians of Russia, offers the first comprehensive cultural history of the "Great Russian Emigration." He examines the social and institutional structure of the emigration and describes its rich cultural and intellectual life. He points out that what distinguishes this emigration from other such episodes in European history is the extent to which the emigres succeeded in reconstituting and preserving their cultural creativity in the West. The flourishing Russian communities of Paris, Berlin, Prague and Kharbin not only enriched Russian arts and letters, but also significantly influenced the culture of their Western hosts, and Raeff concludes with an assessment of their impact on the development of modern Western and Soviet culture.

Softcover. Los Angeles, UCLA Fowler Museum , 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in bright wrappers, 446 pages. This abundantly illustrated anthology brings together 16 essays by scholars, artists, and ritual experts who examine the sacred arts of Haitian Vodou from multiple perspectives. Among the many topics covered are the 10 major Vodou divinities, the paintings of Hector Hyppolite, the multimedia pieces of Pierrot Barra, sequined bottles and sequined flags, and the work of the Brooklyn Priestess Mama Lola. Like new. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the red front fly leaf. With penetrating insight Combs-Schilling illuminates the remarkable survival of one of the world's oldest monarchies, still ruling after 1200 years. The author unravels the paradox of this ancient yet progressive institution that has weathered invasion, economic collapse, and colonial assault. The pillars of stability for which political analysts typically search -- military strength, bureaucratic control, and commercial prosperity -- have often been absent in Morocco, sometimes for centuries. How then has the monarchy stood firm? In this remarkable book, Combs-Schilling argues that the answer is to be found in the distinctive forms of ritual practice developed during times of great crises. Unique among Islamic governments, the Moroccan monarchy became cnetral to the popular celebrations of the most sacred rituals of Islam, cloaking itself in their sanctity. Combs-Schilling breaks new ground in thinking about ritual. The author explores the consequences of the replication and reinforcement of Morocco's national ceremonies in villages and homes and the metaphorical equivalence thereby built. The author outlines how ritual metaphors simultaneously fuse the monarchy with the hallowed prophets of Islam and the mundane structures of family life.

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, SIGNED BY JOAN DIDION on front flyleaf. 108 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with some slight shelfwear. Corner fold on dust jacket front inside flap.Otherwise tight copy. Salvador is a 1983 book-length essay by Joan Didion on American involvement in El Salvador.