history

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 310 pages, b&w illustrations. Few Americans, black or white, recognize the degree to which early African American history is a maritime history. W. Jeffrey Bolster shatters the myth that black seafaring in the age of sail was limited to the Middle Passage. Seafaring was one of the most significant occupations among both enslaved and free black men between 1740 and 1865. Tens of thousands of black seamen sailed on lofty clippers and modest coasters. They sailed in whalers, warships, and privateers. Some were slaves, forced to work at sea, but by 1800 most were free men, seeking liberty and economic opportunity aboard ship.Bolster brings an intimate understanding of the sea to this extraordinary chapter in the formation of black America. Because of their unusual mobility, sailors were the eyes and ears to worlds beyond the limited horizon of black communities ashore. Sometimes helping to smuggle slaves to freedom, they were more often a unique conduit for news and information of concern to blacks.But for all its opportunities, life at sea was difficult. Blacks actively contributed to the Atlantic maritime culture shared by all seamen, but were often outsiders within it. Capturing that tension, Black Jacks examines not only how common experiences drew black and white sailors together-even as deeply internalized prejudices drove them apart-but also how the meaning of race aboard ship changed with time. Bolster traces the story to the end of the Civil War, when emancipated blacks began to be systematically excluded from maritime work. Rescuing African American seamen from obscurity, this stirring account reveals the critical role sailors played in helping forge new identities for black people in America.

Hardcover. NY, The Literary Guild, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, Literary Guild edition, with the 1st Edition (stated) signatures from Harper. Bound in black cloth and pictorial boards. Illustrated in color and b&w by Mahlon Blaine.

Hardcover. Washington, DC, Associated Publishers, Revised Ed., 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 381 pages. Dark green cover with slight wear and white spotting to back. Slight soiling to edges. Binding cracked at page 45. Overall, a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown & Company, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light mauve cloth with white lettering on spine, 311 pages with index. B&w illustrations, maps. Spine with light fading, book is clean, tight copy. Stated First Edition.

Hardcover. Washington DC, National Portrait Gallery/Princeton University Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, Accompanied exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Illustrated. First major publication to focus on the development of silhouettes, gathers leading experts to shed light on the surprisingly complex historical, political, and social underpinnings of this ostensibly simple art form. This richly illustrated volume explores likenesses of everyone from presidents and celebrities to everyday citizens and enslaved people. Ultimately, the book reveals how silhouettes registered the paradoxes of the unstable young nation, roiling with tensions over slavery and political independence. Primarily tracing the rise of the silhouette in the decades leading up to the Civil War, Black Out also considers the ubiquity of the genre today, particularly in contemporary art. Historical research and four contemporary artists: Kara Walker, Kristi Malakoff, Kumi Yamashita, and Camille Utterback. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 3rd pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In a clear, straightforward style, Katz describes the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys (covering Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri) by African Americans seeking freedom, including biographical sketches of men and women who formed churches, started schools, or were politically active in their region. Some of these settlers were fugitive slaves; several set up stations on the Underground Railroad with the aid of the Quakers; others were farmers, poets, and soldiers. In several states, they helped form black regiments in the Civil War. Chronologically arranged, the book introduces many lesser-known personages not found in most collective biographies and places them in a broader context of U.S. history as a whole.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 3rd pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In a clear, straightforward style, Katz describes the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys (covering Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri) by African Americans seeking freedom, including biographical sketches of men and women who formed churches, started schools, or were politically active in their region. Some of these settlers were fugitive slaves; several set up stations on the Underground Railroad with the aid of the Quakers; others were farmers, poets, and soldiers. In several states, they helped form black regiments in the Civil War. Chronologically arranged, the book introduces many lesser-known personages not found in most collective biographies and places them in a broader context of U.S. history as a whole.

Hardcover. Boston, MA, Little, Brown, and Comany, 3rd printing, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 159 pages, b&w photos. Previous owner's bookplate on front end paper. Light edgewear, sun-fade and rubbing tom dust jacket. Internally very good.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 360 pages. Charles Clover, award-winning journalist and former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, here analyzes the idea of "Eurasianism," a theory of Russian national identity based on ethnicity and geography. Clover traces Eurasianism's origins in the writings of white Russian exiles in 1920s Europe, through Siberia's Gulag archipelago in the 1950s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and up to its steady infiltration of the governing elite around Vladimir Putin. This eye-opening analysis pieces together the evidence for Eurasianism's place at the heart of Kremlin thinking today and explores its impact on recent events, the annexation of Crimea, and the rise in Russia of anti-Western paranoia and imperialist rhetoric, as well as Putin's sometimes perplexing political actions and ambitions. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Edinburgh, A & C Black, reprint, 1872, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. One of many popular travel guide books published by Adam and Charles Black from 1839 to the 1910s, this series was the leading competitor to Baedeker's iconic guide books. Illustrated with maps and tables throughout, including three folding maps. Includes 112 pages of publisher's advertisements to the rear. In the original dark green cloth binding with a gilt design on front cover. One map has been neatly repaired with paper and paste due to a small closed tear. Front hinge with mild crack, signature opposite half-title page.

Hardcover. Edinburgh, A & C Black, reprint, 1874, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. One of many popular travel guide books published by Adam and Charles Black from 1839 to the 1910s, this series was the leading competitor to Baedeker's iconic guide books. Illustrated with maps and tables throughout including a fold-out map. This guide suggests potential routes and excursions for exploring this picturesque county. 74-page publisher's catalogue to the rear. In the publisher's original dark green cloth binding with a gilt decoration on the front cover. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1st US, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 319 pages. Hardcover. Previous owners bookplate on preliminary pages. 16 pages of black & white illustrations. Foxing to top edge. Dust jacket with chipping along edges.

Hardcover. W. Palm Beach FL, Streamline Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 463 pages, profusely illustrated with b&w photos. Radio has just celebrated its 75th anniversary and it's as vital and varied as ever. Rhoads, a zealous radio historian and archivist, has captured radio's exuberance and fluency in this marvelous collection of more than 900 photographs, many of which have never before been published. This collection of portraits, both posed and candid, of radio personalities is a veritable radio hall of fame, showcasing everyone from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. Rhoads begins with photographs chronicling the rise of the pioneering Pittsburgh station, KDKA, the first to achieve continuous broadcasting, then keeps pace with radio's rapid growth, offering rare documentation of every type of on-air performer, from men of the cloth delivering the first on-air services to vaudevillians, conductors, sportscasters, and dramatists, many of whom went on to achieve fame in Hollywood. Styles change, but the magic continues as radio continues to evolve in conjunction with its competitor, television. On-air performers gave way to disc jockeys and talk show hosts, but talents such as Garrison Keillor and various NPR contributors have helped keep imaginative radio alive and well.

Softcover. New York University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 349 pages. An in depth and scholarly report on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an essential actor on behalf of modern-day Kurds. The Kurds, who number some 28 million people in the Middle East, have no country they can call their own. Long ignored by the West, Kurds are now highly visible actors on the world's political stage. More than half live in Turkey, where the Kurdish struggle has gained new strength and attention since the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon Books, 6th pr., 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 724 pages. On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding guards and civilian employees hostage, the prisoners negotiated with officials for improved conditions during the four long days and nights that followed. On September 13, the state abruptly sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force. Their gunfire killed thirty-nine men hostages as well as prisoners and severely wounded more than one hundred others. In the ensuing hours, weeks, and months, troopers and officers brutally retaliated against the prisoners. And, ultimately, New York State authorities prosecuted only the prisoners, never once bringing charges against the officials involved in the retaking and its aftermath and neglecting to provide support to the survivors. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Public Affairs, 1st, 2010, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 376 pages, color & b/w illustrations. Blood, Iron and Gold reveals the huge impact of the railways as they spread rapidly across the world, linking cities that had hitherto been isolated, stimulating both economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, Christian Wolmar describes the vision and determination of the pioneers who developed railways that would one day span continents, as well as the labour of the navvies who built this global network. Wolmar shows how cultures were enriched - and destroyed - by the unrelenting construction and how they had a vital role in civil conflict, as well as in two world wars. Indeed, the global expansion of the railways was key to the spread of modernity and the making of the modern world.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 407 pages. This book delves beneath the chaos and brutality of the Norse world to discover a complex interplay of ordering and disordering impulses. Miller's unique and engaging readings of ancient Iceland's sagas and extensive legal code reconstruct and illuminate the society that produced them. People in the saga world negotiated a maze of violent possibility, with strategies that frequently put life and limb in the balance. But there was a paradox in striking the balance--one could not get even without going one better. Miller shows how blood vengeance, law, and peacemaking were inextricably bound together in the feuding process. This book offers fascinating insights into the politics of a stateless society, its methods of social control, and the role that a uniquely sophisticated and self-conscious law played in the construction of Icelandic society. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch Press, 1st US, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 327 pages, illustrations in color. Light shelf-wear and rubbing to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

New Heven, Dumont/Yale Univ. Press, 1st , 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color, black & white illustrations. 365 pages. Scholarly essays on the four artists.

Hardcover. New York, Fox Duffield & Co., 1st, 1904, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 350 pages, 13 pages of b&w photographs (12 African American portraits by A.L. Coburn). Textured blue cloth covers with dark blue lettering and ruled design. Some light soiling and wear to covers and spine. Internally clean, a few dog-eared pages.

Softcover. Oxford UK, James Currey, 1st pbk, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 214 pages. This book explores the style and values of youth gangs in the Soweto area from the 1930s until the 1976 student-led uprising. It also tells the story of how the ANC, PAC, and Black Consciousness movement tried, and ultimately failed, to draw the volatile gangs into disciplined political activity. Mild shelf wear, clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 141 pages. This volume contains the essential points of Jean Bodin's theory of sovereignty, a landmark in legal theory and royalist ideology. The four chapters presented form the core of Bodin's classic work, Six Livres de la Republique. Bodin was primarily responsible for introducing the seductive but erroneous notion that sovereignty is indivisible, that the entire power of the state had to be vested in a single individual or group. This thesis, combined with the prevailing crisis of authority during the French religious wars, led Bodin to a systematically absolutist interpretation of the French and other European monarchies. This is the first complete translation of this material into English since 1606, and is accompanied by a lucid introduction, chronology, and bibliography. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st pbk, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 430 pages, b&w illustrations. A legendary capital of the arts, Paris hosted some of the most legendary developments in world culture -- particularly at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the flowering of fauvism, cubism, dadaism, and surrealism. In Bohemian Paris, Dan Franck leads us on a vivid and magical tour of the Paris of 1900-1930, a hotbed of artistic creation where we encounter Apollinaire, Modigliani, Cocteau, Matisse, Picasso, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald, working, loving, and struggling to stay afloat. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 171 pages. Drawing on journal entries and grounded in fact, Charles Bohner's story re-creates the Lewis and Clark expedition from the experience of Hugh McNeal, one of the youngest members on the journey. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean copy.