London, England: Jonathan Cape, 1966. First Edition. Hardcover. "'A Mortal Flower,' Han Suyin's second volume on the China that evolved during the last fifty years, continues the story of an epoch as seen and experienced by herself and her family. The period covered by 'A Mortal Flower' is the decade from 1928 to 1938, when Chiang Kaishek (sic) rose to power and Mao Tsetung in his mountain fastness gathered the..... More
[Item #4903]
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. First Edition. Hardcover. "Claudius was proclaimed Emperor at Rome after the assassination of Caligula in A.D. 41, and his thirteen-year reign included some significant accomplishments. Claudius added Mauretania, Lycia, and Thrace to the Roman Empire and began the systematic conquest of Britain. He extended the rights of Roman citizenship to many provincials and opened the Senate to prominent men from the western provinces..... More
[Item #4235]
London, England: Routledge, 1999. First UK edition. Hardcover. "In AD 69 the Roman Empire seemed endangered by civil war and rebellion. The plebeian and uncharismatic Emperor Vespasian restored peace and confidence and ensured a smooth succession. His reputation in antiquity gained momentum in the medieval and modern era to present a universally acknowledged picture of an emperor who instigated economic advances and improved government which led to the 'Golden Age'..... More
[Item #4245]
Long Island City, NY: Osprey Publishing, 2010. First Edition. Hardcover. "The image of the Roman legionary is as familiar today as it was to the citizens- and enemies- of the vast Roman Empire two thousand years ago. This book goes beyond the stereotypes found in popular culture to examine the Roman Army from the first armed citizens of the early Republic through the glorious heights of the Imperial legions to..... More
[Item #4219]
New York, NY: Doubleday, 2003. First Edition, Second Printing. Hardcover. As the front flap of Anne Applebaum's (b. 1964) widely esteemed, exhaustively researched "Gulag: A History" appropriately notes, "The Gulag entered the world's historical consciousness in 1972 with the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's epic oral history of the Soviet camps, 'The Gulag Archipelago' [TMB Item #4741]. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, dozens of memoirs and new studies covering..... More
[Item #4818]
New York, NY: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/ Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc., 2011. First Edition. Hardcover. "This unprecedented volume considers the profound and enduring impact of Spain's history, art, and culture on one of the greatest designers of the twentieth century, the legendary Cristobal Balenciaga. Hailed as "fashion's Picasso" by Cecil Beaton, Balenciaga created a revolutionary oeuvre that transformed the way women dressed. From the opening of his Paris..... More
[Item #4816]
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014. First Edition. Hardcover. "After World War II, most scientists in Germany maintained that they had been apolitical or actively resisted the Nazi regime, but the true story is much more complicated. In 'Serving the Reich,' Philip Ball takes a fresh look at that controversial history, contrasting the career of Peter Debye, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, with those..... More
[Item #4946]
New York, NY: Viking Penguin/ Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998. First American Edition. Hardcover. "On August 23, 1942, (Adolf) Hitler's 16th Panzer Division halted on the banks of the Volga (River). To their right, the city of Stalingrad blazed from the first of General (Baron W.) von Richthofen's air raids, which ultimately killed 40,000 civilians. Many German soldiers thought the war against Russia was won. But in Stalin's namesake city on..... More
[Item #4860]
New York, NY: Viking Penguin/ Penguin Putnam Inc., 2002. First American Edition. Hardcover. "The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Frenzied by their terrible experiences with Wehrmacht and SS brutality, they wreaked havoc- tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred..... More
[Item #4899]
New York, NY: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009. First American Edition. Hardcover. "D-DAY: The Battle for Normandy is the first major account in more than twenty years to cover the invasion from June 6, 1944, up to the liberation of Paris on August 25. It is the first book to describe not only the experiences of the American, British, Canadian and German soldiers, but also the terrible suffering of the..... More
[Item #4929]
London, England: Viking/ Penguin Random House UK, 2015. First UK Edition. Hardcover. Signed by Antony Beevor. "On 16 December 1944, (Adolf) Hitler launched his 'last gamble' in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes. He believed he could split the allies by driving all the way to Antwerp, then force the Canadians and the British out of the war. Although his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and..... More
[Item #4810]
New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. First American Edition. Hardcover. "She has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia, which, while not inaccurate, fails to give Gertrude Bell her due. At one time she was the most powerful woman in the British Empire, a nation builder, the driving force behind the creation of Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, she turned her back on house..... More
[Item #4939]
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1935. First Edition. Hardcover. Signed by Henry Beston. "The author of The Outermost House, which...remains one of the most beautiful and popular accounts of an experience with nature, again writes of an adventure with the earth, this time with the herbs in his own garden. He lists and describes the various herbs and their culture and associates them with their ancient historical..... More
[Item #4505]
Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. First American Edition. Hardcover. "From January 1945, in the last months of the Third Reich, about 250,000 inmates of concentration camps perished on death marches and in countless incidents of mass slaughter. They were murdered with merciless brutality by their SS guards, by army and police units, and often by gangs of civilians as they passed through German and Austrian..... More
[Item #4871]
London, England: Geoffrey Cumberlege/ Oxford University Press, 1949. First Edition. Hardcover. "Marc Bloch, a world-renowned medieval historian who was read and valued by scholars far beyond the Sorbonne, of which he was a distinguished member, had many devoted friends in England. He fought in both World Wars, and in 1942, when fifty, became active in the French Resistance. Two years later he was caught by the Germans, tortured, and executed..... More
[Item #4880]
New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991. First Edition Thus. Hardcovers. "My hero is Man the Discoverer. The world we now view from the literate West- the vistas of time, the land and the seas, the heavenly bodies and our own bodies, the plants and animals, history and human societies past and present- had to be opened for us by countless Columbuses. In the deep recesses of the past..... More
[Item #4849]
New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013. First Edition. Hardcover. "Narrating over thirty centuries of "unconventional" military conflicts, best-selling author and military historian Max Boot has created a work that traces guerrilla warfare and terrorism from antiquity to the present. Challenging the conventional wisdom that irregular warfare is the historical exception, Boot demonstrates that loosely organized partisan or guerrilla warfare is the norm, and that it is the clash of..... More
[Item #4914]
New York, NY: Summit Books/ Simon & Schuster, 1980. First American Edition. Hardcover. "The Viceroy of Ouidah begins with the reunion of the numerous descendants of Francisco Felix da Silva- a poor white Brazilian who, Bruce Chatwin tells us, "was by the 1830s the richest man in West Africa....He died a ruined man."...The Viceroy of Ouidah tells...of the man who became the "best friend" of the King of Dahomey, was..... More
[Item #4628]
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: ECW Press, 1997. First Edition. Softcover. "The BUK book offers a unique look at a phenomenon: Charles Bukowski- BUK- the battered and scarred postal clerk, odd jobs man, and lowly factotum, became the best-known "underground" writer in the English language. Jean Genet called him "the best poet in America." His work- raw, crude, heartwarming, and hilarious- has inspired imitators, emulators, sycophants, and detractors. Until now, everything written..... More
[Item #4264]
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. First American Edition. Hardcover. "The following book is not a novel, but it is a work of fiction all the same--a fiction based on this author's visualization of Charlemagne. And even though the resulting image does, quite properly, adduce all the available evidence from the period in question, it is nonetheless subjectively formed and colored. It is impossible nowadays to fathom the depths of..... More
[Item #4894]
London, England: Jonathan Cape, 1980. First UK Edition. Hardcover. "In the early 1800s a Brazilian slave trader sailed to the West African Kingdom of Dahomey, entered into a bizarre history of relations with its monarchs, acquired wealth and a position of outlandish influence but died a poor man. Bruce Chatwin's research into this curious story was abruptly thwarted when, on his second trip to Dahomey (by then called Benin), he..... More
[Item #4601]
New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. First Edition. Hardcover. "Few personalities from classical antiquity are more familiar yet more poorly grasped than Cleopatra (69-30 B.C.), queen of Egypt. The subject of a vast repertory of post-antique popular culture, Cleopatra is generally thought of as an unfit ruler and wanton seductress--an image first created by Roman propaganda. In fact, she was an accomplished diplomat, administrator, naval commander, linguist (she was..... More
[Item #4933]
Washington DC: National Geographic Partners, LLC, 2016. First Edition. Hardcover. "Come with National Geographic on a fascinating journey through ancient Greece: the land of marathons and wrestling, debate and city-states, Plato, Socrates, and Alexander the Great. In this lavishly illustrated book, historian Diane Harris Cline creates a dynamic and engaging portrait of politics, social life, inventions, conquests, ideas, art, and more. These vivid pages are filled with amazing history, gripping..... More
[Item #4874]
London, England: Macmillan, 1968. First Edition. Hardcover. Published in 1968, Robert Conquest’s “The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties” was among the very first legitimate biographical undertakings to illustrate the depraved and truly horrifying “purges” put into action by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Works like Conquest’s “Great Terror” were necessary at the time of publication, and still are necessary now; too few know about the horrors of..... More
[Item #4901]
London, England: MQ Publications, 2005. First Edition. Hardcover. “The R. Crumb Handbook is a brand new take on the life, trials and ideas of one of the most influential cartoonists of the last 40 years. Wry, self-deprecating, and candid, this is an exceptionally revealing and unexpectedly moving visual biography. Crumb is thoughtful and enlightening, with insights into 20th century popular culture that are hilarious, challenging, and acidly satirical. He casts..... More
[Item #4257]