essays

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy boards, 160 pages. SIGNED BY PARINI on the title page. A writer and critic looks back over his own decades of trials, errors, and triumphs, in an intimate memoir that brims with humor, encouragement, and hard-won wisdom about the teacher's craft. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Ticknor & Fields, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 285 pages. A collection of essays exploring the world takes readers from Bensonhurst, to Budapest, to Morocco, to the Roman flat of Gore Vidal, and introduces them to such figures as Oprah Winfrey and Mario Cuomo. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, Counterpoint, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 144 pages. Walter Murch first came across Curzio Malaparte's writings in a chance encounter in a French book about cosmology, where one of Malaparte's stories was retold to illustrate a point about conditions shortly after the creation of the universe. Murch was so taken by the strange, utterly captivating imagery he went to find the book from which the story was taken. The book was Kaputt, Malaparte's autobiographical novel about the frontlines of World War II. Curzio Malaparte, an Italian born with a German heritage, was a journalist, dramatic, novelist and diplomat. When he wrote a book attacking totalitarianism and Hitler's reign, Mussolini, in no position to support such a body of work, stripped him of his National Fascist Party membership and sent him to internal exile on the island of Lipari. In 1941, he was sent to cover the Eastern Front as a correspondent for Corriere della Sera, the Milano daily newspaper. His dispatches from the next three years would be largely suppressed by the Italian government, but reverberated among readers as painfully real depictions of a landscape at war.

Softcover. Totonto, University of Toronto Press, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 444 pages, b&w illustrations. Mild shelf wear, clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 562 pages with index. This volume is the first systematic presentation of the work of Albert Einstein, comprising fourteen essays by leading historians and philosophers of science that introduce readers to his work. Following an introduction that places Einstein's work in the context of his life and times, the book opens with essays on the papers of Einstein's 'miracle year', 1905, covering Brownian motion, light quanta, and special relativity, as well as his contributions to early quantum theory and the opposition to his light quantum hypothesis. Further essays relate Einstein's path to the general theory of relativity (1915) and the beginnings of two fields it spawned, relativistic cosmology and gravitational waves. Essays on Einstein's later years examine his unified field theory program and his critique of quantum mechanics. The closing essays explore the relation between Einstein's work and twentieth-century philosophy, as well as his political writings. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Austin TX, University of Texas Press, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn and chipped dust jacket. Foreword by George Orwell. Introduction by Christopher Fyfe. 241 pages. Reprints two books by Irish novelist Joyce Cary (1888-1957), "The Case for African Freedom" (1941) and "Britain and West Africa" (1946), and three shorter magazine pieces. Illustrated in black and white, with three maps of Africa. Cary was English novelist who served in the Nigerian political service.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK/NY, Cambridge University Press/Macmillan, 1st, 1942, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 241 pages, b&w frontis. Clean copy. Essays include: The Challenge of the Greek, Purpose in Classical Studies, The Greek Farmer, The Gastronomers, Homer and his Readers, Virgil & Erasmus etc.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1927, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 274 pages. Nine lectures. Contents: Introductory; What is Meant by Tradition; The Molpe; Drama; Metre; Poetic Diction; Unity and Organic Construction; The Heroic Age; Hamlet and Orestes; Poetry; Index. Clean copy. Top of cloth spine frayed. Remnants of dust jacket laid in.

Softcover. Sausalito CA, Point Inc , 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Paperback Magazine. Very Good+,144 pages. Contributors: Michael McClure, Gregory Corso, David Brower, David Meltzer; Peter Coyote, Wavy Gravy. 40 pages of strips by R. Crumb (Little Joe, Mr. Nostalgia, Modern Dance Workshop and The Final Solution). 8 pages by Dan O'Neill.

Hardcover. Chicago, Swallow Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, green pebbled cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 463 pages. Dust jacket worn, fading to spine with chunk gone from spine.Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare Head Press, Ltd. Ed., 1908, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Eight hardcover volumes. The complete set published in an edition of 1060 copies. This set bound in gray boards with green cloth spines. Black lettering to spines, title pages in red and black, untrimmed edges. Mild wear to boards, Vol. 6 with cracked hinges and some pencil marking, otherwise a clean set. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO SIZE AND WEIGHT, This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Hardcover. NY, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 204 pages. A collection of offbeat essays covering subjects like Santa Claus, Frankenstein's monster, Lot's wife, Albert Schweitzer and Herman Melville. Introduction by Buckminster Fuller. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gold lettering on spine, 272 pages. The nine essays compiled in this work deal with the nature of philosophical arguments and the degree to which they are linguistic; the possibility and status of private experience; the criteria of personal identity and the relation between mind and body; the interplay of the referential and descriptive functions of language; the criteria of truth; the interpretation of judgments of probability; the distinction between generalizations of law and generalizations of fact; and the status of judgments about the future and the question of free will and determinism. New theories are advanced and old theories are criticized. Bright, clean copy, lacks dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 327 pages. George Lichtheim (1912-1973) was a German-born intellectual whose works focused on the history and theory of socialism and Marxism. He defined himself as a socialist and stated in a 1964 letter to the New York Review of Books that "I am not a liberal and never have been. I find liberalism almost as boring as communism and have no wish to be drawn into an argument over which of these two antiquated creeds is less likely to advance us any further." His work appeared in the Palestine Post, Commentary, Partisan Review, Dissent, the New Leader, Encounter, the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Review of Books. Additionally, he translated Gershom Scholem's Main Currents in Jewish Mysticism. His death was by suicide. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, brown cloth stamped in gilt, 222 pages with line drawings by the author. In a very worn and chipped dust jacket. "Mr. Day here sets forth in his characteristic vein his observations about men and human nature and books--talks about Humpty-Dumpty, Prometheus, Shaw, Fabre and Noah--money, the nebular hypothesis, legs, cows and marriage. Also an attempt to describe our world to a fish." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, G. K. Hall & Co., reprint, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 413 pages. This incomparable collection of essays, manifestos, and illustrations was prepared by Robert Motherwell with the collaboration of some of the major Dada figures: Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, and Max Ernst among others. Here in their own words and art, the principals of the movement create a composite picture of Dada - its convictions, antics, and spirit. First published in 1951, this treasure trove remains, as Jack Flam states in his foreword to the second edition, "the most comprehensive and important anthology of Dada writings in any language, and a fascinating and very readable book." It contains every major text on the Dada movement, including retrospective studies, personal memoirs, and prime examples. The illustrations range from photos of participants, in characteristic Dadaist attitudes, to facsimiles of their productions. Embossed name stamp on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The Dancer Within is a collection of photographic portraits and short essays based on confessional interviews with forty dancers and entertainers, many of them world-famous. Well-known on the concert stage, on Broadway, in Hollywood musicals, and on television, the personalities featured in this book speak with extraordinary candor about all stages of the dancer's life-from their first dance class to their signature performances and their days of reflection on the artist's life. The Dancer Within reveals how these artists triumphed, but also how they overcame adversity, including self-doubt, injuries, and aging. Most of all, this book is about the courage, commitment, love, and passion of these performers in their quest for artistic excellence. The reader will quickly realize that "the dancer within" is a metaphor of the human spirit.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a soiled dust jacket, 256 pages, b&w woodcuts by Pauline Winchester Inman. Stories, articles and reminiscences selected from work by Maine writers published in DOWN EAST. Clean internally.

Hardcover. Duke University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 440 pages. Black cloth, no dust jacket. The Edge of Surrealism is an essential introduction to the writing of French social theorist Roger Caillois. Caillois was part of the Surrealist avant-garde and in the 1930s founded the College of Sociology with Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris. He spent his life exploring issues raised by this famous group and by Surrealism itself. Though his subjects were diverse, Caillois focused on concerns crucial to modern intellectual life, and his essays offer a unique perspective on many of twentieth-century France's most significant intellectual movements and figures. Including a masterful introductory essay by Claudine Frank situating his work in the context of his life and intellectual milieu, this anthology is the first comprehensive introduction to Caillois's work to appear in any language. These thirty-two essays with commentaries strike a balance between Caillois's political and theoretical writings and between his better known works, such as the popular essays on the praying mantis, myth, and mimicry, and his lesser-known pieces. Presenting several new pieces and drawing on interviews and unpublished correspondence, this book reveals Caillois's consistent effort to reconcile intellectual rigor and imaginative adventure. Perhaps most importantly, The Edge of Surrealism provides an overdue look at how Caillois's intellectual project intersected with the work of Georges Bataille and others including Breton, Bachelard, Benjamin, Lacan, and Levi-Strauss.

Hardcover. NY, Fleming H. Revell, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt on spine and front cover, 224 pages, top edge gilt. Vermonter Humphrey was known as a prolific writer of essays with regional, nature, travel, and religious themes. The pieces in this volume were originally published in various periodicals of the period. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 239 pages. The Harvard philosopher Donald C. Williams (1899-1983) was a key figure in the history of analytic philosophy. He played a crucial role in reviving metaphysics at a time when other philosophers ridiculed, criticized, and committed it to the flames. He constructed an explanatorily powerful and parsimonious ontology and cosmology founded on logic, science, and common sense. His most influential articles were on the metaphysics of properties ('The Elements of Being') and the meta-physics of time ('The Sea Fight Tomorrow', 'The Myth of Passage'). His ontology of abstract particulars or tropes and his four-dimensional manifold theory of time remain leading hypotheses in metaphysics. Because of his novel contributions and his defense of metaphysics he made a lasting impact on philosophers of the next generation who in turn believed in the substance of metaphysical inquiry. Name on front fly leaf, light pencil marking to first 30 pages. Otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, pages, profusely illustrated in color and b/w. Written by an international team of scientists, The Enchanted Loom offers a sweeping look at the history of neuroscience from the philosophy of Aristotle to the advent of Artificial Intelligence. This collection of accessible, intriguing essays is supplemented by over 350 spectacularillustrations, many in color, with thorough and informative captions written by the scientists themselves. The authors discuss Descartes's contributions to thought about the brain, alongside brilliant artistic studies of the central nervous system that he and masters like da Vinci executed. Theyshow how phrenology--the long discredited study of skull shape and mental faculties--actually represented a breakthrough in thinking about localized brain functions, and how the advent of the microscope and other equipment led to new discoveries. The contributors bring the story up to the present day, unfolding the emergence of the modern neurosciences, advances in molecular biology, and the debate over how infants learn language. In addition, the book offers a short history of computers and recent thought about whether the mind works like computer software. Noted contributors include; Larry Squire, writing on memory; Solomon Snyder, discussing psychopharmacology; and John Dowling on vision. Colorful, intelligent, informative, The Enchanted Loom offers an authoritative and enjoyable look at the history of a complex and fascinating science.

Softcover. NY, Continuum, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 559 pages. The Frankfurt School of philosophers, aestheticians, sociologists, and political scientists (including Theodore W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse) represents one of the most interesting and unique intellectual events of the twentieth century. Editors Arato and Gebhardt offer major introductions to the three sections that comprise the Reader, in which they seek to place to historical development of the School's thought and to demonstrate its complexity, while investigating its influence on various disciplines. Paul Piccone has written the General Introduction. Clean copy.

Softcover. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2nd pr., 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 440 pages, b&w illustrations. George Stocking has been widely recognized as the premier historian of anthropology ever since the publication of his first volume of essays, Race, Culture, and Evolution, in 1968. As editor of several publications, including the highly acclaimed History of Anthropology series, he has led the movement to establish the history of anthropology as a recognized research specialization. In addition to the study Victorian Anthropology, his work includes numerous essays covering a wide range of anthropological topics. The eight essays collected in The Ethnographer's Magic consider the emergence of anthropology since the late nineteenth century as an academic discipline grounded in systematic fieldwork. Clean copy.