essays

Softcover. Germany, Steidl, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 224 pages. Softcover. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Adieu Saigon covers a varied range of imagery from Saigon, where Depardon photographed two wars and, on visits as recent as 2014, the unrecognizable, globalized city now called Ho Chi Minh. Depardon's work bears witness to a city in transition.

Softcover. Germany, Steidl, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 224 pages. Softcover. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Adieu Saigon covers a varied range of imagery from Saigon, where Depardon photographed two wars and, on visits as recent as 2014, the unrecognizable, globalized city now called Ho Chi Minh. Depardon's work bears witness to a city in transition.

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 Brunswick NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1st pbk., 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 372 pages. The first set of essays seeks to analyze the patriarchal discourses of a colonial society and includes an analysis of the shaping of Hindu-Aryan identity, the parameters of the discourse on widow-immolation, the "defeminization" of popular culture in nineteenth-century urban Calcutta, the nature of the reforms proposed by early women's journals in Hindi, and the implications of the nationalist movement and of Indo-Anglian literature on middle-class patriarchal norms. The second set of articles relates to women of the productive classes--the reconstitution of patriarchies in the agrarian transition in Haryana, in the Oudh peasant movement, in the armed peasant struggle in Telangana, and among the working class in Bengal. The contributors explore the interrelation of patriarchies with political economy, law, religion, and culture, and suggest a different history of "reform" movements, and of class and gender relations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY/London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 450 pages. The essays in Religion and Public Reasons seek to argue for, and illustrate, a central element of John Finnis' theory of natural law: that the main tenets of personal and political morality, and of a good legal order, are taught both by reason (arguments accessible to everyone) and byauthentic divine revelation (teachings accessible to all who have a reasonable faith in its witnesses). The author's main books each include arguments for rejecting atheism and agnosticism; several papers here take up these arguments and indicate ways in which they open onto the reasonable grounds for accepting that more about God's nature, and about the meaning of Creation (including ongoing naturalevolution), is disclosed by the revelation carried far forward among the Jewish people, and given definitive form by the Jews and Greeks who assembled in the universal Church, as witnesses of Christ, to carry forward that revelation into our present. Several papers argue that "public reason"properly includes such a religion, and that Humeian, Nietzschean, Deweyian, Rawlsian or other atheistically or deistic understandings of a reasonable secularism are badly mistaken. Many substantial papers record the author's position in controversies within Catholicism since the 1960's: on social justice, contraception and abortion; nuclear deterrence; Newman on conscience before pope; Maritain's hopes for a new Christendom and von Balthasar's for a hell empty of human persons; and on "proportionalism" and Lonerganian "historical consciousness" as moral-theological methods. Previously unpublished papers include several University and college sermons, and a substantial introduction.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 518 pages. This volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular texts. All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and redited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Modern Library, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. 344 pages. Food articles collected from Gourmet Magazine, dispatched from Paris over the last 60 years and published together in print for the first time. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Da Capo Press, Reprint, 1969, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None,

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 2nd Pr., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 251 pages, with her photo-illustrated dust jacket. Who speaks? Who is silent? Who is seen? Who is absent? These questions focus on how cultures are constructed through pictures and words, how we are seduced into a world of appearances: into a pose of who we are and aren't. On both an emotional and an economic level, images and texts have the power to make us rich or poor. In these essays and reviews, written over the last decade, Barbara Kruger addresses that power with intelligence and wit, in the hope of engaging both our criticality and our dreams of affirmation.Barbara Kruger is an artist whose pictures and words engage issues of power, sex, money, difference, and death. Her work has appeared throughout America, Europe, and Japan in galleries, newspapers, magazines, and museums and on billboards, matchbooks, TV programs, t-shirts, postcards, and shopping bags. She has written about television, film, and cultures for Artforum, Esquire, the New York Times, and the Village Voice.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 227 pages. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf, else a clean, tight copy. Naipaul presents here four essays about the "half-made" societies, those still suffering from the profound deprivations of colonialism and prey to corruption." He examines the role of Eva Peron as the catalyst for violence in Argentina, with its yearning for a European culture and the physical, historical, cultural reality of the land in which the native Indians were wiped out and the colonialists took over. He writes of the infamous Michael X in Trinidad whose pretensions to power and destiny led to the man's insanity and execution following two pointless murders. Shorter essays address nihilism in the Congo and Naipaul's take on Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness.

Hardcover. New York, Thames and Hudson, 3rd Revised, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 285 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Minor yellowing to dust jacket edges and spine. Previous owners inscription in pen to top edge of front flyleaf. An otherwise very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. 206 photographs, 16 in color. Follows the developments in the art and science of photography from the invention of the wet-collodion process through the evolution of dry plates.

Hardcover. Germany, Steidl, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Over 100 black and white photographs. Tight copy.

Hardcover. Germany, Steidl, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Over 100 black and white photographs. Tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Da Capo Press, Reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None,

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, reprint, 1918, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, gray/green cloth stamped with a black and white design. In a dust jacket with two chunks gone from spine. A naturalist ruminates on birds (mostly) and woodchucks in these essays on wildlife. B&w illustrations by R. Bruce Horsfall,Most of these pieces were previously published in magazines.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st US, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 142 pages. Humoroue instructions for the man living on his own. Cartoons by Quenin Blake. Book is clean, very good, dust jacket is worn, chipped.

Hardcover. Albany NY, Luther Tucker & Son, 1st, 1866, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, spine ends worn. 12mo; 338 pages. Brown cloth with gilt stamping, fading to spine, tiny holes to cloth along spine, illustrated with 400 engravings. Volume 4 only, covers 1864-5-6.Covers all aspects of agriculture and rural life. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf otherwise clean internally.

Softcover. NY, Fordham University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 476 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. This volume gathers groundbreaking critical essays on Sabato (Simon) Rodia's renowned Watts Towers (Los Angeles, California) from diverse disciplinary perspectives, extensively highlighting his migration context as never before, as well as the Towers in the context of human and community development within the 'Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, McClure Phillips and Co., 1st, 1901, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, decorated blue cloth, 389 pages. A collection of essays about maritime life. "Shakings are odds and ends of rope and canvas,accumulated during a voyage. They were formerly the perquisites of the Chief Mate". Spine decoration faded, front end papers foxed, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow & Co. , 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The movie critic for "Time" magazine explores the works and legacies of thirteen filmmaking giants, discussing how they shaped the industry and offering a revised perspective on The Hollywood Ten. Indexed. Essays on Marlon Brando, James Cagney,Harold Lloyd, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, others. 312 pages, indexed. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury Academic, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glazed pictorial boards, 362 pages. The essays collected in this volume were written to mark the centenary of the birth of Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the twentieth centurys most influential classical scholars. Between them, they explore the two major sides of his career: his groundbreaking scholarship on Greek language, literature and history, and the more public-facing roles he assumed in universities and at the British Academy which brought him into the national spotlight, not without some notoriety, in his later years.The contributors consider the various facets of Dover's life and work from a range of perspectives which reflect the burgeoning field of the history of scholarship. Some contributors were students and colleagues of Dovers at different stages of his career, while others are themselves leading experts in areas of Classics to which he devoted his energies. Chapters on his academic publications and on the controversies he faced in the public realm are not bland celebrations of his legacy but offer critical assessments of his motivations and achievements, cumulatively demonstrating that there is much to be learned not just about Dover himself but also about the fields he helped to shape. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 376 pages, index. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 4th pr., 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 82 pages, b&w illustrations. The collected writings of the "dean of the New York School of Abstract-Expressionist Painting." "The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature; translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive and every work of art should be alive." Thus Hans Hofmann wrote nearly half a century ago. He left the Old World, Germany, for the New, at the age of 50. In 1948, when the retrospective exhibition was held at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Hofmann was 68; he had been in the United States for 18 years, a citizen for seven years. Yet he was scarcely recognized in Europe or America as an artist of significance and had never had a full-scale retrospective exhibition of his work. Beginning with a group exhibition in Germany in 1909, he had been given 12 one-man shows and had been included in four group exhibitions before the exhibit at Andover. Subsequently, he was to have 33 one-man shows and to be in over 60 group exhibitions, including the 1960 Venice Biennale, in which he was one of the four artists chosen to represent America. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This book is a collection of reviews, essays, and personal opinions that Mr. Brustein wrote during 1959-1965. It is an excellent resource for directors wanting to tackle shows that premiered during this time period. It also demonstrates his uncanny ability to "critique" a dramatic work in the way that it should be, rather than merely stating a "review". Mr. Brusteins specificity for the English language and his committment to excellence in theatre, starting with the drama itself, is an intellectual oasis for those of us wanting to read scholarly criticism from a educated source. 322 pages. Clean copy.