Hardcover. London, Grant Richards, 1st, 1909, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in white, 294 pages, illustrated with 32 b&w photos. Back hinge partially cracked, otherwise clean. Light fraying to spine cloth at top.
Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY OTTO on the title page. This captivating novel opens in 1917 as Cymbeline Kelley surveys the charred remains of her photography studio, destroyed in a fire started by a woman hired to help take care of the house while Cymbeline pursued her photography career. This tension-- between wanting and needing to be two places at once; between domestic duty and ambition; between public and private life; between what's seen and what's hidden from view--echoes in the stories of the other seven women in the book. Among them: Amadora Allesbury, who creates a world of color and whimsy in an attempt to recapture the joy lost to WWI; Clara Argento, who finds her voice working alongside socialist revolutionaries in Mexico; Lenny Van Pelt, a gorgeous model who feels more comfortable photographing the deserted towns of the French countryside after WWII than she does at a couture fashion shoot; and Miri Marx, who has traveled the world taking pictures, but also loves her quiet life as a wife and mother in her New York apartment. Crisscrossing the world and a century, Eight Girls Taking Pictures is an affecting meditation on the conflicts women face and the choices they make. These memorable characters seek extraordinary lives through their work, yet they also find meaning and reward in the ordinary tasks of motherhood, marriage, and domesticity. Most of all, this novel is a vivid portrait of women in love--in love with men, other women, children, their careers, beauty, and freedom.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 269 pages. Photos by Norton Brown, Chase's husband. Map of Africa on end pages. An amusing and informative account of their photo-safari in East Africa. Contains meetings with Louis Leakey, Joy Adamson, and Tom Mboya. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York , Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1890, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 490 pages, green cloth covers with black and gilt decoration. Two gravure frontispieces (of author and Henry Stanley), 21 full-page plates plus text illustrations. Folding map and facsimile of letter in envelope in rear. There is a small chunk of cloth gone from top of spine and some scuffing of cloth on spine and rear cover, otherwise very good.
Hardcover. San Diego, CA, Advanced Marketing Services, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 816 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Large heavy volume. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. Seattle, WA, University of Washington Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 224 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. A tight copy. Contemporary portraits of key personalities aboard the ship, scale models and plans of the ship itself, scientific instruments taken on the voyage, commemorative medals and sketches, the objects (over 140) featured in this book tell the story of the Endeavour voyage and its impact ahead of the 250th anniversary in 2018 of the launch of this seminal mission. Artwork made both during and after the voyage will be seen alongside actual specimens. By comparing the voyage originals with the often stylized engravings later produced in London for the official account, Endeavouring Banks investigates how knowledge gained on the mission was gathered, revised, and later received in Europe. Items that had been separated in some cases for more than two centuries are brought together to reveal their fascinating history not only during but since that mission. Original voyage specimens are featured together with illustrations and descriptions of them, showing a rich diversity of newly discovered species and how Banks organized this material, planning but ultimately failing to publish it. In fact, many of the objects in the book have never been published before.
Hardcover. New York, George Routledge and Sons, Reprint, NA, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 314 pages. Hardcover. No publishers date - circa 1880's - inscription on front endpaper dated Christmas 1886. Gray green cloth with decoration on spine and cover in black. Spine title on gilt background. Features 126 black & white illustrations by Riou. Tanning to preliminary, and rear pages. Spine slightly cocked. Clean, unmarked text.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth stamped in gilt, 3 colors. Beautiful gilt and sihouette vignette of the London skyline. 80 black and white drawings by Joseph Pennell. Top edge gilt. A collection of periodical pieces written over a span of thirty years by James, all about his travels in England. Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. London, Batsford, 2nd Ed., 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 120 pages. Color frontis., many b&w photos and sketches. Bookplate on inside front cover, small note on half-title page, otherwise clean. A wonderful study of the historical small village house.
Hardcover. Little Rock AK, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 358 pages. For those who care about literature or simply love a good laugh (or both), Charles Portis has long been one of America's most admired novelists. His 1968 novel True Grit is fixed in the contemporary canon, and four more have been hailed as comic masterpieces. Now, for the first time, his other writings--journalism, travel stories, short fiction, memoir, and even a play--have been brought together in Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany, his first new book in more than twenty years. All the familiar Portis elements are here: picaresque adventures, deadpan humor, an expert eye for detail and keen ear for the spoken word, and encounters with oddball characters both real and imagined. The collection encompasses the breadth of his fifty-year writing career, from his gripping reportage of the civil rights movement for the New York Herald Tribune to a comic short story about the demise of journalism in the 21st century. New to even the most ardent fan is his three-act play, Delray's New Moon, performed onstage in 1996 and published here for the first time.
Softcover. Cloud Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 526 pages. Based on nearly 40 hours of interviews, Escaping from Reality Without Really Trying is the memoir of a 61-year-old, life-long merchant seaman re-counting his fantastic, hilarious, and politically incorrect exploits. He's a sailor-scholar and an individualist anarchist; he's read Voltaire and The Egyptian Book of the Dead. He admits to working at his hobby, sailing, to keep up his real occupation, drinking.He's lived 40 years of adventures around the world, including an incursion into Cambodia during the Vietnam War; a prison break from a Ceylon jail; a dockside fistfight in the Philippines in 1977; a 2-week stowaway run on a British merchant ship sailing around South Africa; meeting Omar Sharif in Aqaba, Jordan; an around-the-world trip (with Greg Cousins, the third mate on the Exxon Valdez, and we learn what really happened!) that ends in Alang, India and the beaching of the ship to be cut up for scrap metal; seeing the rise and fall of communism and capitalism in Africa and the newly independent states after the Soviet Union's collapse and division; and an ammunition delivery to Kuwait on the eve of the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq.
Hardcover. NY, D. Appleton & Company, 1st, 1852, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with black title to front board and to spine. 261 pages, publisher's ads. Contains of an early review of Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as accounts of travels to the Nubian Desert and Arctic, a history of Spanish literature, and literary essays and reviews of works by Dickens, Tennyson, Thackeray, and Hawthorne. Mild foxing, some light chipping and wear to spine.
Softcover. Princeton, NJ, Markus Weiner Publishers, 1st English Translation, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 327 pages. Softcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Decorated wrapper, excellent. Pages clean and bright. Binding good. Like new copy. This fascinating study of eunuchs guides readers as they travel through various lands and periods, familiarizing themselves with the duties and responsibilities, the unspeakable torments, and the passions and joys of these individuals.
Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 236 pages. A butler school in Houston, a livestock auction in Little Rock, a home for "frozen guys" in California, JFK's humidor in Manhattan--all are jumping off points for Friedman's baleful and sharply satirical scrutiny of American life and behavior in the second half of the twentieth century. Travel with Friedman from Harlem to Hollywood, from Port-au-Prince to Etta's Eat Shop in Chicago. In these pieces, which were published in literary and mass-circulation magazines from the 1960s to the 1990s, you'll meet such luminaries as Castro and Clinton, Natalie Wood and Clint Eastwood, and even Friedman's friends Irwin Shaw, Nelson Algren, and Mario Puzo. Friedman is a master of the essay, whether the subject is crime reporting ("Lessons of the Street"), Hollywood shenanigans ("My Life among the Stars"), or his outrageous adventures as the editor of pulp magazines (the classic "Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos"). We could sing his praises as a journalist, humorist, and social critic. But, as Buckley tells us, being Bruce Jay Friedman is enough. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Blackie & Son Limited, reprint, nd, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon leather stamped with an ornate gilt design. Two titles from the publisher's "Beautiful England" series, here rebound in a single volume. Each 64 pages with 12 color plates by E.W. Haslehurst. Decorative endpapers. ribbon marker. Bookplate on a blank prelim page, spine leather faded to brown, but gilt decorations and lettering are bright. Two related photographic cards laid in.
Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages, color illustrations. Introduction by Paul Theroux. This album of over 200 century-old postcards takes the reader on a magical journey across the world in five travelogues, depicting the Orient, the Arab lands, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. These haunting postcards and the people they depict strike us with a special force today, vividly expressing a deep-seated connection with the land and customs that gave them their identities. Clean, bright copy in a dust jacket.
Hardcover. Paris, Editions Place de Victoires, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 599 pages. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. This vivid photo-essay on the great adventure of discovery and exploration 1860-1930 is drawn from the collection of The Royal Geographical Society in London. It begins with Stanley and Livingstone in Africa and proceeds through Asia and Oceania, the Americas, and the Middle East. The work of twenty-three intrepid photographers are included.
Softcover. Malden, NA, Wiley-Blackwell, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 272 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear.
Hardcover. London, Andrew Dakers Limited, 1st, 1954, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers with uneven sun-fade, 221 pages. Endpaper maps & 60 photographic illustrations. Travels in the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi with excellent illustrations of the people, activities, artifacts, and description of the tribes, animals and natural resources.
New York, Aperture, Rep., 1998 , Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 162 pages, many B&W & sepia period photographs of China, its people and culture. Very richly illustrated, captions, chronology, list pioneer phiotographers, sources, general bibliography, acknowledgements. Photographs from the archives of Arnold Arboretum - Harvard University.
Hardcover. New York, Aperture, reprint, 1998 , Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 162 pages, many B&W & sepia period photographs of China, its people and culture. Very richly illustrated, captions, chronology, list pioneer photographers, sources, general bibliography, acknowledgments. Photographs from the archives of Arnold Arboretum - Harvard University.
Hardcover. New York, Spiegel & Grau, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 420 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.