Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 353 pages. This is the first book-length survey of the international illicit trade in antiquities, and of the worldwide destruction of what is left of our civilized past. Museums, dealers, tomb-robbers, police, and scholars form the cast of a story that moves from tropical jungles to Madison Avenue galleries, from a rifled temple to a collector's private museum. A centerpiece of the book is a detailed consideration of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's acquisition of the beautiful calyx krater by Euphronios, which the Italian authorities are claiming was taken illicitly from an Etruscan tomb in 1971. 24-page b/w photo section. Index. Extensive, 23 page Bibliography. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 218 pages, b&w illustrations. When gold rush fever gripped the globe in 1849, thousands of Chinese immigrants came through San Francisco on their way to seek their fortunes. They were called sojourners, for they never intended to stay. Polly, a young Chinese concubine, was brought by her owner to a remote mining camp in the highlands of Idaho. There he lost her in a poker game. Polly found her way with her new owner to an isolated ranch on the banks of the Salmon River in central Idaho. As the gold rush receded, it took with it the Chinese miners-or their bones, which were disinterred and shipped back to their homeland in accordance with Chinese custom. But it left behind Polly, who would make headlines. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st, 1869, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with beveled edges. Engraved frontispiece with tissue guard and profusely illustrated throughout with 163 wood-engravings. The author of several other scientific works here gives a description of the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the globe in both a popular and scientific way. He gives a succinct history of the several polar expeditions, American and European. Covers with edge wear and fraying to spine, gilt blindstamped scene of dog sled on front cover, gilt kayak scene and lettering on spine faded. Interior of book very good, no markings.
Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 290 pages. This study provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of the meaning of Locke's political thought. John Dunn restores Locke's ideas to their exact context, and so stresses the historical question of what Locke in the Two Treatises of Government was intending to claim. By adopting this approach, he reveals the predominantly theological character of all Locke's thinking about politics and provides a convincing analysis of the development of Locke's thought. In a polemical concluding section, John Dunn argues that liberal and Marxist interpretations of Locke's politics have failed to grasp his meaning. Locke emerges as not merely a contributor to the development of English constitutional thought, or as a reflector of socio-economic change in seventeenth-century England, but as essentially a Calvinist natural theologian. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Softcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & World, reprint, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 760 pages. This is a frank and insightful analysis of the political and economic influences in the United States during the Reconstruction Era, covering the years immediately after the Civil War and the death of Abraham Lincoln, and ending shortly before the Spanish-American War. Originally published in 1938. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a nice, unclipped dust jacket. 293 pages plus index. A survey of the dramatic evolution of the Democratic Party that led to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 355 pages. In this meticulously researched, unflinching, and reasoned study, National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer presents shocking revelations about the role played by the Vatican in the development of modern anti-Semitism. Working in long-sealed Vatican archives, Kertzer unearths startling evidence to undermine the Church's argument that it played no direct role in the spread of modern anti-Semitism. In doing so, he challenges the Vatican's recent official statement on the subject, We Remember. Kertzer tells an unsettling story that has stirred up controversy around the world and sheds a much-needed light on the past. Newspaper review laid in. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Pantheon Books, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 12th volume of the A.W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts. The Bollingen Series XXXV. Profusely illustrated with b/w plates. Arntzen calls this book `a good critical treatment of the development of the Renaissance portrait.' Light edgewear to dust jacket.
Softcover. London, Cambridge, University Press, reprint, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 514 pages. The Post-Darwinian Controversies offers an original interpretation of Protestant responses to Darwin after 1870, viewing them in a transatlantic perspective and as a constitutive part of the history of post-Darwinian evolutionary thought. The impact of evolutionary theory on the religious consciousness of the nineteenth century has commonly been seen in terms of a 'conflict' or 'warfare' between science and theology. Dr. Moore's account begins by discussing the polemical origins and baneful effects of the 'military metaphor', and this leads to a revised view of the controversies based on an analysis of the underlying intellectual struggle to come to terms with Darwin. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Boston, Shambhala, 1st, 1981, Softcover, 160 pages. The Power of Limits was inspired by those simple discoveries of harmony. The author went on to investigate and measure hundreds of patterns--ancient and modern, minute and vast. His discovery, vividly illustrated here, is that certain proportions occur over and over again in all these forms. Patterns are also repeated in how things grow and are made--by the dynamic union of opposites--as demonstrated by the spirals that move in opposite directions in the growth of a plant.
Softcover. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 358 pages with index. In The Power of the Purse, E. James Ferguson examines the intricate financial history of the American Revolution and the Confederation and connects it to political and constitutional developments in the period. Whether states or Congress should pay the debts of the Revolution and collect the taxes was a pivotal question whose solution would largely determine the country's progress toward national union. Ultimately, says Ferguson, the Revolutionary debt fulfilled an important purpose as a "bond of union." Ferguson's masterful analysis has become a classic among the literature on the American Revolution. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 240 pages, b&w illustrations, diagrams. The exploration and colonisation of the Pacific is a remarkable episode of human prehistory. Early sea-going explorers had no prior knowledge of Pacific geography, no documents to record their route, no metal, no instruments for measuring time and none for exploration. Forty years of modern archaeology, experimental voyages in rafts, and computer simulations of voyages have produced an enormous range of literature on this controversial and mysterious subject. This book represents a major advance in knowledge of the settlement of the Pacific by suggesting that exploration was rapid and purposeful, undertaken systematically, and that navigation methods progressively improved. Using an innovative model to establish a detailed theory of navigation, Geoffrey Irwin claims that rather than sailing randomly downwind in search of the unknown, Pacific Islanders expanded settlement by the cautious strategy of exploring upwind, so as to ease their safe return. The author has tested this hypothesis against the chronological data from archaeological investigation, with a computer simulation of demographic and exploration patterns and by sailing throughout the region himself. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Praeger Publishers, 1st US, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with light edgewear, faded spine. 276 pages, 81 photos, 27 drawings, 11 maps. Volume 65 in the series 'Ancient People and Places', edited by Glyn Daniel. Owner name inked on inside front cover, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 3rd pr., 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 369 pages. Evans "tells of his grandparents' debate to leave Lithuania for America, the first few years in the Baltimore slums, and their decision to gamble on the South. He writes about the family store, and describes his boyhood in Durham, in the North Carolina tobacco belt, where his father was mayor from 1950 to 1962 during the stormiest years of the Civil Rights era. " Also a history of earlier German & Sephardic Jewish communities in the South & the role of Southern Jews in the Civil War & Reconstruction. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf otherwise clean.
Softcover. NY, Citadel Press, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, b&w illustrations, 240 pages. More than 50 years after Timothy Leary encouraged an entire generation to "turn on, tune in, drop out," there's been a resurgence of scientific research and popular interest in the use of psychedelic drugs for everything from therapeutic treatments to productivity boosts. The Psychedelic Reader collects the writings of luminaries from the dawn of the psychedelic era. With words from Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Sir Julian Huxley, Ralph Metzner, and more, this powerful anthology presents the entire psychedelic spectrum with both the seriousness and open-mindedness it requires. Once an alternative doorway into radical culture, LSD is now being re-examined for its possible mental health benefits. Take a visionary trip back to where it all began in The Psychedelic Reader. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Gloucester MA, Peter Smith, reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, orange cloth covers, black lettering on spine, 337 pages. Name on front fly leaf otherwise tight and clean.
Softcover. UK, Penguin Books, reprint, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 317 pages. The roots of apartheid. The book relates the history of a small people, the Afrikaners, and their attempts to remake their particular world according to a rational plan from the radical Right. First published in 1975. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Little, Brown and Company, ARC, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, uncorrected proof. 364 pages. the untold, richly detailed story of the women of Walt Disney Studios, who shaped the iconic films that have enthralled generations For the first time, author Nathalia Holt recounts their dramatic stories, showing how these women infiltrated the all-male domain of Disney's story and animation departments and used early technologies to create the rich artwork and unforgettable story lines that have become part of the American canon. Over the decades - while battling sexism, domestic abuse, and workplace intimidation - these women also fought to transform the way female characters are depicted to young audiences.Based on extensive interviews and exclusive access to archival and personal documents. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Cleveland/NY, World Publishing Co., 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, red cloth covers with eagle logo on front cover, 319 pages, spectacular color illustrations by James Daugherty "The Rainbow Book of American History" is a storybook, written in a narrative format with the author telling his children the story of our country. The book covers the time period from Leif Erickson to the dropping of the atomic bomb of World War II. To enhance the text James Daughtery has created memorable illustrations which are gorgeous and enhance the text. Dust jacket has light chipping to edges, otherwise a clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Reading Lines, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 60 pages, illustrated in 2-colors. The history of the Reading Railroad. Mild crease to cover, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Garden City Books, BC Ed., 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Book Club edition, 191 pages. Bright, clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Garden City Books, BC Ed., 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Book Club edition, 222 pages. Bright, clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 369 pages. Vol. 1 ONLY of a six volume set. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 377 pages. Vol. 2 ONLY of a six volume set. Clean, bright copy, no markings.
Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 384 pages. Vol. 3 ONLY of a six volume set. Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 448 pages. Vol. 4 ONLY of a six volume set. Clean, bright copy, no markings.
Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 385 pages. Vol. 5 ONLY of a six volume set. Clean, bright copy, no markings.
Hardcover. Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co., reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, orange cloth with purple and gilt title block an front and spine. 421 pages. VOLUME 1 ONLY of a 7 volume set. Reprint of the 1897 edition. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1st, 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth stamped in red and gilt, 251 pages. Chapters include: Includes "'Sundry sorts of earthen ware,'" "On the trail of the tulip," "Spatter after its kind," and "The last of the old potters." Mild bumping to spine, otherwise a clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY , Norton, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with fading to spine, 253 pages. This series of sketches captures Stalin with irony, humor and pathos. The author calls his fictionalized version of Stalin "artistic documentation" in the spirit of reality based on research, personal experience and conversations with others. Yuri Krotkov, a Soviet Georgian, as was Stalin, was a prominent dramatist and screenwriter in the Soviet Union before his defection. As a member of the Russian intelligentsia, he was in the confidence of top-ranking Soviet and party officials in Moscow. Review slip laid in. Foxing to top edge otherwise clean copy.
Softcover. Jefferson NC, Mcfarland & Co , 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 174 pages. In early 1869, Harry Wright of the Cincinnati Base Ball Club made an announcement to the sporting press: the Red Stockings would be the first all-professional club in the history of the game. The outcry could be heard in nearly every town in which the sport was played. Wright, however, paid little heed to their protests and went about his business of signing players. By the start of the season he had inked ten players to contracts, with salaries ranging from $600 to $1,400 annually. By June of 1870, the Red Stockings had compiled a 90-game winning streak and were recognized as the finest team in the game. How the Red Stockings were formed, who the players were, and why things came to an end are all fully covered in this detailed history.
Hardcover. London, Edward Arnold, reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, maroon cloth with lightly worn dust jacket. St. Martin's Press the US distributor has put their sticker at the bottom of the spine on the jacket.
Softcover. Los Angeles, The Augustan Reprint Society , reprint, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 31 pages. A facsimile reprint of the 1650 pamphlet by Dury, laying out a plan for the organization of books and libraries. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brick-red cloth, 477 pages, b&w illustrations. Offers an illustrated history of sexual politics in ancient Athens. This work examines the ideology and practices that underlay the reign of the phallus. It demonstrates that classical Athens was more sexually polarized and repressive of women than any other culture in Western history. The phallus was pictured everywhere in ancient Athens: painted on vases, sculpted in marble, held aloft in gigantic form in public processions, and shown in stage comedies. This obsession with the phallus dominated almost every aspect of public life, influencing law, myth, and customs, affecting family life, the status of women, even foreign policy. This is the first book to draw together all the elements that made up the "reign of the phallus"--Men's blatant claim to general dominance, the myths of rape and conquest of women, and the reduction of sex to a game of dominance and submission, both of women by men and of men by men. In her elegant and lucid text Eva Keuls not only examines the ideology and practices that underlay the reign of the phallus, but also uncovers an intense counter-movement--the earliest expressions of feminism and antimilitarism. Clean, bright copy, lacks dust jacket.
Hardcover. San Marino CA, The Huntington Library, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, dark blue cloth in a lightly worn dust jacket, 264 pages. 'An expression of thanks from those he has benefited and contributing to our understanding of the colonial era which has been his lifetime interest."
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth covers with gilt lettering on spine. No dust jacket. Profusely illustrated throughout in black & white and color. 433 pages. This book examines the technical and aesthetic experimentation that went into printmaking, workshop practices, and the material and social contexts of print production, and it gives the fullest account ever written of the ways in which Renaissance prints were produced, distributed, and acquired. David Landau and Peter W. Parshall pose a range of practical questions about the production of prints. They investigate, for example, what materials were used, how they were acquired, and how a Renaissance printmaker's workshop operated. They explore the evidence that individual prints were beginning to be esteemed as works of art rather than as inexpensive substitutes for them, and the relationship between prints made to be collected and those of a more ephemeral nature intended for a wider audience. They discuss how prints were valued during the period, including the relative value of woodcuts to engravings, and engravings to etchings. And they investigate how prints evolved in relation to the pictorial arts of the Renaissance generally. Clean, bright copy. NOTE: DUE TO SIZE AND WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. Brooklyn NY, Zone Books, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 594 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the title page. In this long-awaited study, Claudio Lomnitz tells an unprecedented story about the experience and ideology of American and Mexican revolutionary collaborators of the Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon. Based on extensive research in American and Mexican archives, Lomnitz explores the rich, complicated, and virtually unknown lives of Magon and his comrades devoted to the "Mexican Cause." This anthropological history of anarchy, cooperation, and betrayal seeks to capture the experience and meaning of these dedicated militants who themselves struggled to understand their role and place at the margins of the Mexican Revolution. For them, the revolution was untranslatable, a pure but deaf subversion: "La revolucion es la revolucion." For Lomnitz, their experiences reveal the meaning of this phrase.
Hardcover. NY, Alliance Book Corporation, 14th pr., 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light putty cloth with red lettering on spine, 300 pages. Anti-Nazi book written by ex-Nazi. Translated from German by E.W. Dickes. Front fly leaf with top inch cut out, other wise clean, tight copy.
Softcover. New Brunswick NJ, Rutgers University Press, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 329 pages, b&w illustrations. Deals with activity during the American Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley which lies in north-eastern New Jersey and Rockland County, New York. The area, populated mainly by settlers of Dutch descent, lay between the British and the American lines, and suffered from marauders and plundering expeditions from both sides. Very light pencil marking to about 30 pages.
Softcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 205 pages. In 1774, Boston bookseller Henry Knox married Lucy Waldo Flucker, the daughter of a prominent Tory family. Although Lucy's father was the third-ranking colonial official in Massachusetts, the couple joined the American cause after the Battles of Lexington and Concord and fled British-occupied Boston. Knox became a soldier in the Continental Army, where he served until the war's end as Washington's artillery commander. While Henry is well known to historians, his private life and marriage to Lucy remain largely unexplored. Phillip Hamilton tells the fascinating story of the Knoxes' relationship amid the upheavals of war. Like John and Abigail Adams, the Knoxes were often separated by the revolution and spent much of their time writing to one another. They penned nearly 200 letters during the conflict, more than half of which are reproduced and annotated for this volume.This correspondence--one of the few collections of letters between revolutionary-era spouses that spans the entire war--provides a remarkable window into the couple's marriage. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 1248 pages, illustations. The political home of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the American Whig Party was involved at every level of American politics--local, state, and federal--in the years before the Civil War, and controlled the White House for eight of the twenty-twoyears that it existed. Now, in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael F. Holt gives us the only comprehensive history of the Whigs ever written--a monumental history covering in rich detail the American political landscape from the Age of Jackson to impending disunion.In Michael Holt's hands, the history of the Whig Party becomes a political history of the United States during the tumultuous Antebellum period. He offers a panoramic account of a time when a welter of parties (Whig, Democratic, Anti-Mason, Know Nothing, Free Soil, Republican) and manyextraordinary political statesmen (including Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, William Seward, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay) struggled to control the national agenda as the U.S. inched towards secession. It was an era when Americans were passionately involved in politics, whenlocal concerns drove national policy, and when momentous political events rocked the country, including the Nullification Controversy, the Panic of 1837, the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Holt captures all of this as he shows that, amid this contentiouspolitical activity, the Whig Party continuously strove to unite North and South, repeatedly trying to find a compromise position. Indeed, the Whig Party emerges as the nation's last great hope to prevent secession and civil war.
Softcover. NY, Harper Torchbooks, reprint, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 302 pages. This book presents the historical setting of the industrial revolution in a form suitable for the general reader. It seeks to explain why 18th-century England was the theatre of the great series of mechanical inventions that caused the revolution, and what were the great social changes that preceded, accompanied and followed it. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 3rd pr., 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 362 pages including index and bibliography. Map. Footnotes. Illustrations. This was the first comprehensive and thoroughly documented study of the political evolution of these two then emerging nations of tropical Africa. Basing his analysis on a variety of primary sources, including interviews with many leading figures, the author traces the origins of the full-fledged political parties in both Malawiand Zambia and describes the formation and development of the early Congresses which were to become the dominant movements during their struggles for independence.
Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, reprint, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Volume III in The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. 411 pages, illustrated with maps and b&w photos. Gilt on spine with light fading, lacks dust jacket, otherwise clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Random House , 2nd pr., 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 421 pages. Taylor offers a vivid account of the fledgling days of the National Basketball Association and the intense competition between two of its biggest early stars: Bill Russell (of the Boston Celtics) and Wilt Chamberlain (of the Philadelphia 76ers). While both players were dominant men who anchored their respective teams, their personalities differed greatly. The quiet, reflective Russell turned a serendipitous showing in front of a scout into a legendary career largely through willpower and hard work, while the outgoing Chamberlain was a much more naturally gifted athlete whose skills drew attention and offers while he was barely a teenager. Taylor highlights this distinction, asking, "[C]ould determination trump talent?" Along with examining the physical and psychological battles between the two, Taylor depicts the NBA's raucous nature in the 1950s and '60s, when fights between players were frequent, and the brash Celtics coach Red Auerbach was routinely pelted with rotten tomatoes, lit cigars and eggs. Looking at everything, from each player's private demons to the racially charged era in which they competed, Taylor's book is by turns an intimate profile and a spirited look at the foundation of modern professional basketball. Mild soiling to text block, no markings.
Hardcover. Indianapolis, Liberty Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. 293 pages. SIGNED BY CHAMBERLAIN on title page, also INSCRIBED by him on the front fly leaf. Capitalism is a system that can stand on its own attainments, says John Chamberlain, and he offers here a fast-paced, provocative look at the intellectual forces and practical accomplishments that have created American capitalism.In clear, unequivocal language he discusses the ideas responsible for our economic institutions, the originators of these ideas, and the times in which they first became important. The political theories of the men who hammered out the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence; the thinking of John Locke, James Madison, and Adam Smith; the deeds and discoveries of the James Watts, Eli Whitneys, and Henry Fords-all these diverse elements are shown to be part of the tradition of a free society in which American capitalism has grown and flourished. A unique blend of political and economic theory and the practical accomplishments of businessmen and innovators, The Roots of Capitalism provides valuable insights into the ideas underlying the free economy. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 2nd pr., 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 261 pages, previous owner's signature on front fly leaf. "Evil is the most serious of our moral problems. All over the world cruelty, greed, prejudice, and fanaticism ruin the lives of countless victims. Outrage provokes outrage. Millions nurture seething hatred of real or imagined enemies, revealing savage and destructive tendencies in human nature. Understanding this challenges our optimistic illusions about the effectiveness of reason and morality in bettering human lives. But abandoning these illusions is vitally important because they are obstacles to countering the threat of evil. The aim of this book is to explain why people act in these ways and what can be done about it." The first part of this book is a detailed discussion of six horrible cases of evil: the Albigensian Crusade of about 1210; Robespierre's Terror of 1793?94; Franz Stangl, who commanded a Nazi death camp in 1943?44; the 1969 murders committed by Charles Manson and his "family"; the "dirty war" conducted by the Argentinean military dictatorship of the late 1970s; and the activities of a psychopath named John Allen, who recorded reminiscences in 1975. John Kekes includes these examples not out of sensationalism, but rather to underline the need to hold vividly in our minds just what evil is. The second part shows why, in Kekes's view, explanations of evil inspired by Christianity and the Enlightenment fail to account for these cases and then provides an original explanation of evil in general and of these instances of it in particular.