Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994. First Edition. Hardcover. Described by its author as an "interpretive biography," Caponi's "Paul Bowles: Romantic Savage" aims "...to penetrate the underlying imaginative structures common to all and then to link them to a larger cultural context." In crafting the work, Caponi "...relied heavily on Bowles' autobiography, "Without Stopping," to a great extent. I have done so for two reasons: first, through family letters..... More

New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2008. First Printing. Hardcover. Signed by Bernard Cornwell. “The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.” Homer, The Odyssey. Bernard Cornwell is perhaps one of the most beloved and renowned historical fiction authors who ever put the pen to the page. With works such as: “The Sharpe Stories”, “Warlord Chronicles”, “The Grail Quest Novels”, “The Saxon Stories/The Last Kingdom”, and “The Starbuck Chronicles”..... More

New York, NY: The Penguin Press, 2004. First Edition. Hardcover. “[I]t is a relatively selective study, focusing on specific aspects of this extraordinary man’s life that reveal a Benjamin Franklin who is different in important ways from the Franklin of our inherited common understanding,” (preface). In the two-hundred-some years since Benjamin Franklin (1705-1790) died, he has been oversimplified in the minds of Americans, according to Gordon Wood (b. 1933). Many..... More

New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2011. First Edition. Hardcover. "As the war on terror enters its second decade, the United States military is engaged with militant Islamic fighters on multiple fronts around the world. But this is not the first time the United States has battled such determined foes. Little remembered today, the Moro War, lasting from 1902 to 1913 in the islands of the southern Philippines, saw American soldiers..... More

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

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

New York, NY: Little, Brown & Co., 2012. First Edition. Hardcover. "Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, "The Second World War" is the epic, authoritative work on the defining event of the twentieth century, taking us from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and from the first battle in August 1939 on the borders of Manchuria to V-J Day six years later. Antony Beevor's wide lens lets us see the..... More

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

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

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

New York, NY: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1998. First Edition, Fourth Printing. Hardcover. “How the [Grateful] Dead…survived to speak to successive generations is the subject of this intensely provocative and personal narrative. Social critic and biographer Carol Brightman, who was active in the political struggles of the era, presents a Whitmanesque tableau of America’s colliding countercultures. Here’s the Dead—with their original fondness for folk, bluegrass, and blues; their immersion in psychedelics;..... More

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

Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing/ The National Civil War Museum, 2012. First Edition. Hardcover. "An icon of the Civil War, Joshua L. Chamberlain lived a life of perseverance, tragedy and triumph. From the battle of Fredericksburg to the Confederacy's formal surrender at Appomattox, Chamberlain participated in many landmark events of the War Between the States. A volunteer in the Union Army, his rise in rank to brigadier general and Medal of..... More