Art Spiegelman

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Minnesota

My Father Bleeds History

Maus I: a Survivor's Tale

89ebc7c3-da56-47ed-8d1f-0fa793ea195c-1

Elena Ferrante

Ann Goldstein

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Missouri

A Writer's Journey

The reclusive Italian author presents a collection of occasional writings, interviews, and letters, addressing such subjects as her choice to remain anonymous, her literary inspirations, Italian politics and culture, and the role of the writer in modern society.

Frantumaglia

cb7e9948-8062-4765-857d-d58c96761f5e-1

Oversized Hardcover (4 to 6 lbs)

New York

-- The most beautiful and most important castles and palaces in one volume
-- More than 400 pages with 240 color illustrations
-- Background information, historical facts and entertaining anecdotes
-- High quality photographs
-- An indispensable reference book for all architecture and history lovers

Castles and Palaces of Europe

86690f80-2062-4b6f-94e2-6b231c9b9a26-1

Jen Malone

Indiana

Not all those who wander are lost, but Aubree Sadler most definitely is on this novel’s whirlwind trip through Europe. A romantic and charming YA debut perfect for fans of Stephanie Perkins and Jenny Han. Aubree can’t think of a better place to be than in perfectly boring Ohio, and she’s ready for a relaxing summer. But when her older sister, Elizabeth, gets into real trouble, Aubree is talked into taking over Elizabeth’s summer job, leading a group of senior citizens on a bus tour through Europe. Aubree doesn’t even make it to the first stop in Amsterdam before their perfect plan unravels, leaving her with no phone, no carefully prepared binder full of helpful facts, and an unexpected guest: the tour company owner’s son, Sam. Considering she’s pretending to be Elizabeth, she absolutely shouldn’t fall for him, but she can’t help it, especially with the most romantic European cities as the backdrop for their love story. But her relationship with Sam is threatening to ruin her relationship with her sister, and she feels like she’s letting both of them down. Aubree knows this trip may show her who she really is—she just hopes she likes where she ends up.

Wanderlost

34096d89-3c63-4db4-a732-019730b54324-1

Rick Steves

Book is in great shape!  No tears, markings, or creases. 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Alaska

The Travel Skills Handbook

You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when traveling through Europe. With Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door, you'll learn how to:
 * Plan your itinerary and maximize your time
 * Pack light and right
 * Find good-value hotels and restaurants
 * Travel smoothly by train, bus, car, and plane
 * Avoid crowds and tourist scams
 * Hurdle the language barrier
 * Understand cultural differences and connect with locals
 * Save money while enjoying the trip of a lifetime
 * Travel safely and hygienically in the wake of Covid-19

After 40+ years of exploring Europe, Rick considers this travel skills handbook his life's work, and with his expert introductions to the top destinations in Europe, choosing your next trip will be easy and stress-free. Using the travel skills in this book, you'll experience the culture like a local, spend less money, and have more fun.

Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door

05a59cf1-32fa-4f67-88ca-17e9dc0bb8e1-1

Luke Harding

Massachusetts

The Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival

New York Times bestselling author of Collusion and The Snowden Files Luke Harding's personal, frontline reporting on Russia's harrowing invasion of Ukraine, the biggest news event of the year and an inflection point in international politics

"An excellent, moving account of an ongoing tragedy." --Anne Applebaum, New York Times bestselling author of Twilight of Democracy

In a damning, inspiring, and breathtaking narrative of what is likely to be a turning point for Europe--and the world--Guardian correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Luke Harding reports firsthand on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When, just before dawn on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a series of brutal attacks, Harding was there, on the ground in Kyiv. But this senseless violence was met with astounding resilience--from, among others, the country's embattled president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy--and the courage of a people preparedi to risk everything to preserve their nation's freedom.

Here are piercing portraits of the leaders on both sides of this monumental struggle, a haunting depiction of the atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere, and an intimate glimpse into the ordinary lives being impacted by the biggest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. Harding captures this crucial moment in history with candor, insight, and an unwavering focus on the human stories that lie at its heart.

Invasion

ad371d65-d207-411a-a6e8-27acb1472e08-1

Catherine Mangan

Illinois

SIGNED COPY

Sparkling sea, sun, delicious food and Aperol Spritz - escape to Italy with the perfect summer romance . . . Niamh Kelly's life hasn't turned out quite as she'd expected. She's thirty-three, still living at home and was recently dumped . . . by her boss. So when her sister invites her to tag along on a work trip to the sun-drenched Italian coast, Niamh jumps at the chance, eager to escape into a world of sparkling prosecco, delicious food, and breath-taking beaches. Upon her arrival, Niamh immediately falls in love with the beautiful Italian town they're staying in and realises she never wants to leave, deciding instead to stay and open up a quaint coffee shop nestled in charming old town streets - even if she has no idea what she's doing. But when a family tragedy and a tricky tourist season threaten her new business, Niamh isn't so sure she can stick it out. With help from her new-found Italian friends - and the possibility of romance on the horizon - can she make her new life in the sun a success? A glorious and uplifting escapist novel set against the stunning backdrop of the Italian coast. The perfect holiday read for fans of Rosanna Ley, Jo Thomas and Karen Swan Early readers LOVE The Italian Escape: 'This book is the perfect escape. Curl up and enjoy' 'Beautifully written . . . I just wanted the experience to go on for longer' 'I really enjoyed this book . . . recommended holiday reading'

The Italian Escape

75016186-83ae-4fa7-9501-ebcecad3116d-1

#fiction #love #romance #hardcover #Europe #Canada #short stories #sensuous #emotional 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Florida

and other stories

The American lover

e20347c2-b6ca-4215-af95-55615b931aa0-1

Nina Willner

Michigan

A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family—of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Forty Autumns makes visceral the pain and longing of one family forced to live apart in a world divided by two. At twenty, Hanna escaped from East to West Germany. But the price of freedom—leaving behind her parents, eight siblings, and family home—was heartbreaking. Uprooted, Hanna eventually moved to America, where she settled down with her husband and had children of her own. Growing up near Washington, D.C., Hanna’s daughter, Nina Willner became the first female Army Intelligence Officer to lead sensitive intelligence operations in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Though only a few miles separated American Nina and her German relatives—grandmother Oma, Aunt Heidi, and cousin, Cordula, a member of the East German Olympic training team—a bitter political war kept them apart. In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family’s story—five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. She takes us deep into the tumultuous and terrifying world of East Germany under Communist rule, revealing both the cruel reality her relatives endured and her own experiences as an intelligence officer, running secret operations behind the Berlin Wall that put her life at risk. A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation, and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love—of five women whose spirits could not be broken, and who fought to preserve what matters most: family. Forty Autumns is illustrated with dozens of black-and-white and color photographs.

Forty Autumns

96e29d4a-eb2d-4f54-b960-715d6b45c66f-1

Great condition, slight wear and tear, no major damage or discoloration, from a non smoking home

California

Double Life

The Invisible Detective

Tracy Chevalier

I'd say good condition with the exception of a bit of age/yellowing of paper. See pics please...corner crinkle and marker spot on back cover.

The New York Times bestselling novel by the author of A Single Thread and At the Edge of the Orchard Translated into thirty-nine languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film, starring Scarlett Johanson and Colin Firth Tracy Chevalier transports readers to a bygone time and place in this richly-imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings. History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius . . . even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

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Ian McEwan

A Novel

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ • From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Vogue • The New Yorker “Masterful.... McEwan is a storyteller at the peak of his powers…. One of the joys of the novel is the way it weaves history into Roland’s biography…. The pleasure in reading this novel is letting it wash over you.” —Associated Press When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life. Haunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means—music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past? Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.

Lessons

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The cover isn’t crisp but the inside is!

Utah

#paperback #literarycriticism #nonfiction #europe 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Historians and cultural critics face special challenges when treating the nonhuman natural world in the medieval and early modern periods. Their most daunting problem is that in both the visual and written records of the time, nature seems to be both everywhere and nowhere. In the broadest sense, nature was everywhere, for it was vital to human survival. Agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine, and the patterns of human settlement all have their basis in natural settings. Humans also marked personal, community, and seasonal events by natural occurrences and built their cultural explanations around the workings of nature, which formed the unspoken backdrop for every historical event and document of the time.

Yet in spite of the ubiquity of nature's continual presence in the physical surroundings and the artistic and literary cultures of these periods, overt discussion of nature is often hard to find. Until the sixteenth century, responses to nature were quite often recorded only in the course of investigating other subjects. In a very real sense, nature went without saying.

As a result, modern scholars analyzing the concept of nature in the history of medieval and early modern Europe must often work in deeply interdisciplinary ways. This challenge is deftly handled by the contributors to Engaging with Nature, whose essays provide insights into such topics as concepts of animal/human relationships; environmental and ecological history; medieval hunting; early modern collections of natural objects; the relationship of religion and nature; the rise of science; and the artistic representations of exotic plants and animals produced by Europeans encountering the New World.

Engaging with Nature

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#history #ww1 #global #armistice #revolution #modernity #culture #europe #america

The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age

The story of the aftermath of World War I, a transformative time when a new world seemed possible--told from the vantage of people, famous and ordinary, who lived through the turmoil

November 1918. The Great War has left Europe in ruins, but with the end of hostilities, a radical new start seems not only possible, but essential, even unavoidable. Unorthodox ideas light up the age: new politics, new societies, new art and culture, new thinking. The struggle to determine the future has begun.

Sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, is translating sorrow and loss into art. Captain Harry Truman is running a men's haberdashery in Kansas City, hardly expecting he will soon go bankrupt--and then become president of the United States. Moina Michael is about to invent the "remembrance poppy," a symbol of sacrifice that will stand for generations to come. Meanwhile Virginia Woolf is questioning whether that sacrifice was worth it, and George Grosz is so revolted by the violence on the streets of Berlin that he decides everything is meaningless. For rulers and revolutionaries, a world of power and privilege is dying--while for others, a dream of overthrowing democracy is being born.

With novelistic virtuosity, Daniel Schönpflug describes this watershed time as it was experienced on the ground--open-ended, unfathomable, its outcome unclear. Combining a multitude of acutely observed details, Schönpflug shows us a world suspended between enthusiasm and disappointment, in which the window of opportunity was suddenly open, only to quickly close shut again.

A World on Edge

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#travel #europe #guidebook #estonia #latvia #lithuania never opened, some minor shelf wear (corners, cover are slightly impacted) 

Montana

Lonely Planet’s Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania (6th Edition)

Peter Heather

Book is slight bowed. See photos. Actual photos

A New History of Rome and the Barbarians

The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart. He shows first how the Huns overturned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers, to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees. The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in 378, and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in Gaul and Spain, before conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the Western Empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453 ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse, culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada: the west's last chance for survival. Peter Heather convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.

The Fall of the Roman Empire A New History of Rome and the Barbarians by Peter H

0ecacf33-f956-4ab0-a2b3-07b1575b868c-0

Norman Eisen

Europe's Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House

A sweeping yet intimate narrative about the last hundred years of turbulent European history, as seen through one of Mitteleuropa's greatest houses--and the lives of its occupants
 
When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador's residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence's forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past.
 
From that discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had called this palace home. Their story is Europe's, and The Last Palace chronicles the upheavals that transformed the continent over the past century. There was the optimistic Jewish financial baron, Otto Petschek, who built the palace after World War I as a statement of his faith in democracy, only to have that faith shattered; Rudolf Toussaint, the cultured, compromised German general who occupied the palace during World War II, ultimately putting his life at risk to save the house and Prague itself from destruction; Laurence Steinhardt, the first postwar US ambassador whose quixotic struggle to keep the palace out of Communist hands was paired with his pitched efforts to rescue the country from Soviet domination; and Shirley Temple Black, an eyewitness to the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring by Soviet tanks, who determined to return to Prague and help end totalitarianism--and did just that as US ambassador in 1989.
 
Weaving in the life of Eisen's own mother to demonstrate how those without power and privilege moved through history, The Last Palace tells the dramatic and surprisingly cyclical tale of the triumph of liberal democracy.

The Last Palace

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Norman Davies

1996 Oxford University Press. Excellent condition. New dj cover.
 

Arizona

A History

"In the beginning," writes Norman Davies, "there was no Europe. All there was, for five million years, was a long, sinuous peninsula with no name, set like the figurehead of a ship on the prow of the world's largest land mass. To the west lay the ocean which no one had crossed. To the south lay two enclosed and interlinked seas, sprinkled with islands, inlets, and peninsulas of their own. To the north lay the great polar icecap, expanding and contracting across the ages like some monstrous, freezing jellyfish. To the east lay the land-bridge to the rest of the world, whence all peoples and all civilizations were to come." So begins Davies's magisterial Europe, a master work of history that stretches from the Ice Age to the Atomic Age, as it tells the story of Europe, East and West, from prehistory to the present day.
Davies's absorbing narrative captures the full drama of European history, on a sweeping canvas filled with fascinating detail, analysis, and anecdotes. It is a glorious chronicle packed with momentous events: the rise and fall of Rome, the sweeping invasions of Alaric (leader of the Vandals) and Atilla (leader of the Huns), the Norman conquests of Sicily and England, the Papal struggles for power, the Crusades, the Black Death, the sack of Constantinople, the growth of cities such as Venice, Ghent, London, and Paris, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, Europe's rise to become the powerhouse of the world, and its eclipse in our own century, following two devastating World Wars. Davies omits nothing. We read not only of the great figures and events of European history--battles, usurpations, tyrants, and saints--but of philosophers, scientists, writers, and artists; the great explorations; the stateless nation and the
nation-state. Minority communities, from heretics and lepers to Jews, Romanies, and Muslims, have not been forgotten in this vast tapestry. And Davies has also added 299 "time-capsules," small, self-contained sections that focus intensely on an aspect of an age, to attain a greater sense of immediacy, a sharper picture of life as it was--articles that range from "Erotic Graffiti at Pompeii," to "Stradivarius," to "Psychoanalyzing Hitler." And there are also twelve "snapshots"--fascinating glimpses of moments frozen in time, such as "Knossos 1628 BC," or "Constantinople AD 230," or "Nuremberg 1945." And finally, the book features over one hundred superbly detailed maps and diagrams, and seventy-two black-and-white plates.
Never before has such an ambitious history of Europe been attempted. In range and ambition, originality of structure and glittering style, Norman Davies's Europe represents one of the most important and illuminating histories to be published in recent years.


Europe

0c96e5db-effa-45c1-bc7d-a7aa2eb88167-1

Henry A. Kamen

Clean, tight binding, no writing or underlining

A Historical Revision

Thirty-five years ago, Kamen wrote a study of the Inquisition that received high praise. This present work, based on over 30 years of new research, is not simply a complete revision of the earlier book. Innovative in its presentation, point of view, information, and themes, it will revolutionize further study in the field.

The Spanish Inquisition

161074b5-96e4-4de5-a16d-ba4a27c4e706-1

Pennsylvania

Shaping the Great City Modern Architecture in Central Europe 1890-1937

R. M. Ballantyne

North Carolina

An Algerine Tale

To say that Mrs Langley was dumbfounded is but a feeble way of expressing the state of her mind. Although a lady of great moral courage, and accustomed from infancy to self-control, she felt, on first beholding her timid little daughter, strongly disposed to seize Fatma by the hair of the head, and use her as a bludgeon wherewith to fell her Algerine mother; but, remembering the dignity of her position as, in some sort, a reflected representative of the British Empire in these parts, and also recalling to mind the aptitude of Algerine gentlemen to tie up in sacks and drown obstreperous Algerine ladies, she restrained herself, bit her lips, and said nothing.

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Art Spiegelman

Maus I: a Survivor's Tale

Elena Ferrante; Ann Goldstein

Frantumaglia

Florian Monheim; Ulrike Schober

Castles and Palaces of Europe

Jen Malone

Wanderlost

Rick Steves

Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door

Luke Harding

Invasion

Catherine Mangan

The Italian Escape

Rose Tremain

The American lover

Nina Willner

Forty Autumns

Justin Richards

The Invisible Detective

Tracy Chevalier

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Ian McEwan

Lessons

Nina Willner

Forty Autumns

Barbara A. Hanawalt (Editor); Lisa J. Kiser (Editor)

Engaging with Nature

Art Spiegelman

Maus I: a Survivor's Tale

Daniel Schonpflug

A World on Edge

Brandon Presser, Mark Baker, Peter Dragicevich, Simon Richmond, Andy Symington

Lonely Planet’s Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania (6th Edition)

Peter Heather

The Fall of the Roman Empire A New History of Rome and the Barbarians by Peter H

Norman Eisen

The Last Palace

Norman Eisen

The Last Palace

Norman Davies

Europe

Henry A. Kamen

The Spanish Inquisition

Eve Blau & Monika Platzer

Shaping the Great City Modern Architecture in Central Europe 1890-1937

R. M. Ballantyne

The Pirate City