Reflections on Mark Twain and American culture.

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Illinois

Lighting Out for the Territory

538ca798-dbde-45ea-ae83-bf244be5a697-0

United Nations collection of Art by Edward Marks, softcover in good condition 1961.

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A World of Art The UN Collection

Art book with ISBN0-86559139-3 Publushed by the Art Institute of Chicago. Slight yellowing on page edges.

Urban Impressionist

Gustave Caillebotte 

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Ex-Library copy with expected library markings in good condition.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

The Solzhenitsyn Files

Oscar Hijuelos

A Novel

Through four novels in the last decade, Oscar Hijuelos has produced a body of work that is without rival in contemporary literature, both in the lush, incantatory rhythms of his extraordinary prose and in his profound and heartfelt vision. In his transcendent new novel, Hijuelos tells the story of Lydia Espana, a beautiful and formerly prosperous émigré from pre-Castro Cuba, who becomes a cleaning lady in New York. Once the spoiled, pampered daughter of a small-town mayor and adored by men--a "queen of the Congo line"--she is forced because of a youthful sexual indiscretion to leave home and, in 1947, finds herself suddenly living the life of a working poor. In time she falls in love with Raul, a humble waiter. One night in a Manhattan ballroom, in the middle of a bolero, Raul purposes marriage, for Lydia is his "empress of the most beautiful and splendid season, which is love." A life of promise is disrupted when Raul falls ill and Lydia, finding employment as a domestic, becomes the head of the family. Striving to educate her town children, Rico and Alicia, in the style of the upper class, she must endure a lesson in humanity, cleaning the homes of New Yorkers much better off than herself. Among her employers is Mr. Osprey, a reserved and kindly lawyer, who eventuality takes an interest in her family's well-being and, during the turmoil of the 1960s, intervenes at a critical juncture in the life of her teenage son, Rico. Throughout this novel Lydia remains a sensual and powerful woman who meets the trails of a lonely life with humor and a gleam of triumph in her eye--a sense that she is someone special--an empress of fortitude, of dignity. Hijuelo's genius for evoking the heart and soul of his characters has never been more vivid, moving, and impassioned than in Empress of the Splendid Season. A master of eloquent detail, Hijuelos allows Lydia to open up, alive and vibrant on the page. No one writes better of love or the pulse of the city. And no one has better captured the complexity of what happens to generations of people who come to America: how assimilation ius at once the achievement of dreams and yet, sometimes, a loss of what has rooted us to the past. Lydia, I am to you, as a sparrow adoring the sky; Lydia, you are as the moon reflecting upon the water, which is my soul; Lydia, you are the queen of beauty, the Empress of my love, and you preside over the splendidness of my feelings for you, like the morning sun on the most glorious day of the most beautiful and splendid season, which is love... -- Raul Espana to his future wife on the night he proposed marriage, 1949, from Empress of the Splendid Season

The Empress of the Splendid Season

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Alejandro Portes

Rubén G. Rumbaut

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Portrait

This third edition of the widely acclaimed classic has been thoroughly expanded and updated to reflect current demographic, economic, and political realities. Drawing on recent census data and other primary sources, Portes and Rumbaut have infused the entire text with new information and added a vivid array of new vignettes and illustrations.

Recognized for its superb portrayal of immigration and immigrant lives in the United States, this book probes the dynamics of immigrant politics, examining questions of identity and loyalty among newcomers, and explores the psychological consequences of varying modes of migration and acculturation. The authors look at patterns of settlement in urban America, discuss the problems of English-language acquisition and bilingual education, explain how immigrants incorporate themselves into the American economy, and examine the trajectories of their children from adolescence to early adulthood. With a vital new chapter on religion--and fresh analyses of topics ranging from patterns of incarceration to the mobility of the second generation and the unintended consequences of public policies--this updated edition is indispensable for framing and informing issues that promise to be even more hotly and urgently contested as the subject moves to the center of national debate..

Immigrant America

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Margarita Engle

"A journey into the past reveals the terrifying truth that destroyed a family. A California farm wife leaves her husband and children to search for the truth about family members caught up in the turmoil of the Castro revolution. She encounters much more than she expected, as her family's tragedy becomes her own personal drama, cast in a modern mystery play of good versus evil, angels versus demons." "An account of the imprisonment of her great uncle Gabriel, once a Castro supporter, swept away by the so-called "Secret War" against the Cuban peasants early in the revolution, sets the mood for this lyrical novel told in the Latin American style of magical realism. The magic, but all too real paradox, is a Cuba where the splendor of natural beauty coexists with moral evil."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Singing to Cuba

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Herman. Melville

Elizabeth Hardwick

Rockwell Kent

Or, the Whale

Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick Illustrations by Rockwell Kent Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read First published in 1851, Herman Melville’s masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick’s words, “the greatest novel in American literature.” The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale remains a peerless adventure story but one full of mythic grandeur, poetic majesty, and symbolic power. Filtered through the consciousness of the novel’s narrator, Ishmael, Moby-Dick draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories, from the noble cannibal Queequeg to the natural history of whales, while reaching existential depths that excite debate and contemplation to this day.

Moby-Dick

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ANNA KARENINA

ABC, Hop on Pop, The Bear Scouts, The Foot Book, There's a Wocket in my Pocket. Book Club editions from the 60s and 70s with some wear. Couple have light stains in front covers. 

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Dr. Seuss vintage book lot

Hansteion Marianne

A very small coffee stain on one of the pages, please see photo. Other than that like new softcover. 

Pleasantly plump With whimsical irony and a style reminiscent of the old masters, Fernando Botero (b.1932) began painting caricatured animals and corpulent bodies with disproportionate heads at a time when his contemporaries were fervently rejecting figurative work in favor of abstraction. More recently he has expanded into sculpture, creating delightful large-scale bronze works portraying the same sorts of voluminous figures he so loved to paint. Like the writings of Gabriel García Márquez or the music of Astor Piazzola, Botero's work has come to represent modern Latin American culture. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Botero

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Uwe Scheid

Michael Koetzle

From Taschen 1000 nudes. For adults only. Art deco and vintage photos. 

Uwe Scheid Collection

Cette sélection de 1000 nus est un périple à travers le musée imaginaire de l'histoire de la photographie de nu, ou un voyage dans le temps, l'oeil rivé au trou de la serrure. Uwe Scheid est considéré comme en expert dans le domaine de la photographie érotiquee à travers les âges, et sa collection, réunie au fil du temps, est l'une des plus vastes et des plus importantes au monde.

1000 Nudes

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Charles M. Schulz

Bundle of Charles Schulz Peanuts comic paperbacks. Vintage from 60s & 70s. Minor edge wear.

America's most beloved comic strip, Peanuts, is now a major motion picture produced by Blue Sky Studios. Now you can collect the first ten original comic strip collections, published by Titan Comics! This collection of 248 daily Peanuts newspaper strips that appeared between 1955 -1957 features all your favourite characters, including Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Violet, Patty, Shermy, Lucy, Schroeder, Pig-Pen, Linus and Beethoven. This book is a facsimile edition of the fourth Peanuts collection originally published back in 1957 by the Clarke, Irwin & Company, Ltd of Toronto, Canada.

Good Ol' Charlie Brown

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The Umpire Strikes Back, vintage Hcdj. The DJ has seen better days but HC is good. 1982 publication. Expect some wear. 

The Umpire Strikes Back

John Calipari

Dick Weiss

The inspiring and motivational inside story of 1996 UMass Minutemen coach John Calipari details his winning philosophy, "Refuse to Lose," which led the team, for the first time in their history, to the Final Four and resulted in professional and personal victory.

Refuse to Lose

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Al Sarrantonio

Collection of suspense and horror stories. Hcdj in good condition. Minor wear on the dj. 

New Stories of Horror and Suspense

The weaving of fictional suspense and terror is as ancient as humankind itself. But where does this age-old tradition stand at the cusp of a new decade, a new century, a new millennium? This mammoth volume seeks to answer that question. Your hold in your hands the state of the art -- of fear.

To prepare this groundbreaking anthology, writer and editor Al Sarrantonio challenged a distinguished roster of authors to demonstrate with all-new stories the shape of horror/suspense literature as we enter the twenty-first century. As you will read the twenty-nine contributors responded by displaying the infinite variety which is the very hallmark of this field. Some of these stories will startle you or fill you with terror. Some will haunt you long after you finish reading them. There is even an eerily echoing chuckle or two found inside. But together, these weirdest of tales join to form a great literary mosaic, a vivid contemporary portrait of a genre which is proud, potent, and irresistible.

Not only is this the largest anthology of original horror/suspense fiction of all time -- not one story in 999 has ever been published before -- but it is also the finest. Here is a major publishing event with an attitude: to shake you up and scare you silly.

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Shelly Durrell

HCDJ in very good condition, pages are glossy thick paper. Movies, film, spirituality. 

Spiritual Lessons with Parzival, Gump, the Grail, Tao, and Star Wars

This is no ordinary self-help book. The magic of movies, novels, art, mythology, history, philosophy, and literature are brought together in the exploration of the legend of Parzival. It is the blueprint of the heros life-the one we were all meant to strive for. Includes Parzival summaries, journal exercises, bibliography, filmography/synopses, and index.

Healing the Fisher King

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Don Norman

Author of the Design of Everyday Things

Donald A. Norman, a popular design consultant to car manufacturers, computer companies, and other industrial and design outfits, has seen the future and is worried. In this long-awaited follow-up to The Design of Everyday Things, he points out what's going wrong with the wave of products just coming on the market and some that are on drawing boards everywhere-from “smart” cars and homes that seek to anticipate a user's every need, to the latest automatic navigational systems. Norman builds on this critique to offer a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrow's thinking machines. This is a consumer-oriented look at the perils and promise of the smart objects of the future, and a cautionary tale for designers of these objects-many of which are already in use or development.

The Design of Future Things

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Madeleine L'Engle

A Wrinkle in Time

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John Rowe

The Jungle Book

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Christopher de Bellaigue

Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup

On August 19, 1953, the American and British intelligence agencies launched a desperate coup in Iran against a cussed, bedridden seventy-two-year-old man. His name was Muhammad Mossadegh, and his crimes had been to flirt with communism and to nationalize his country's oil industry, which for forty years had been in British hands. To Winston Churchill, the Iranian prime minister was a lunatic, determined to humiliate Britain. To President Dwight Eisenhower, he was delivering Iran to the Soviets. Mossadegh must go. And so he did, in one of the most dramatic episodes in modern Middle Eastern history. But the countries that overthrew him would, in time, deeply regret their decision. Mossadegh was one of the first liberals of the Middle East, a man whose conception of liberty was as sophisticated as any in Europe or America. He wanted friendship with the West—but not slavish dependence. He would not compromise on Iran's right to control its own destiny. The West therefore sided against him and in favor of his great foe, Shah Muhammad-Reza Pahlavi. Who was this political guerrilla of noble blood, who was so adored in the Middle East and so reviled in the West? Schooled in Europe of the Belle Epoque, Mossadegh was pitted against dictatorship at home, a struggle that almost cost him his life and had tragic consequences for his family. By the time of the Shah's accession in 1941, Mossadegh had become the nation's conscience, and he spent the rest of his life in conflict with a monarch whose despotic regime was eventually toppled in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Here, for the first time, is the political and personal life of a remarkable patriot, written by our foremost observer of Iran. Drawing on sources in Tehran and the West, Christopher de Bellaigue reveals a man who not only embodied his nation's struggle for freedom but also was one of the great eccentrics of modern times—and uncovers the coup that undid him. Above all, the life of Muhammad Mossadegh serves as a warning to today's occupants of the White House and Downing Street as they commit to further intervention in a volatile and unpredictable region.

Patriot of Persia

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Gene R. Garthwaite

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

The Persians is a succinct narrative of Iranian history from the time of Cyrus the Great in 560BC to the present day. A succinct narrative of Iranian history from the time of Cyrus the Great in 560BC to the present day. Traces events from the rise of the Persian empire, through competition with Rome and conquest by the Arabs, through to the re-establishment of a Persian state in the sixteenth century, and finally the Islamic Revoltuion on 1979 and the establishment of the current Islamic Republic. Uses the most recent scholarship to examine Iran's political, social and cultural history. Focuses on rulership as a central theme in Iranian identity. Also shows how land, language and literature relate to Iranian identity.

The Persians

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Hans Bernd Gisevius

An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler

When on July 20, 1944, a bomb-boldly placed inside Hitler's headquarters by Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg- exploded without killing the Führer, the subsequent coup d'état against the Third Reich collapsed. The conspirators were summarily shot or condemned in show trials and sadistically hanged. One of the few survivors of the conspiracy was Hans Bernd Gisevius, who had used his positions in the Gestapo and the Abwehr (military intelligence) to further the anti-Nazi plot. Valkyrie, an abridgment of Gisevius's classic insider's account To the Bitter End, is an intimate memoir as riveting as it is exceptional.

Valkyrie

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Charles R. Geisst

A History

In this wide-ranging volume, a financial historian updates the first history of Wall Street, recounting the speculative fever of the 1990s and the scandals at Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, and Conseco. 27 halftones.

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Shelley Fisher Fishkin