alfred a knopf borzoi books random house inc new york (67 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. Stated First Edition. SUPERB: VG-NEAR FINE Stated First Edition hardcover (March 1973) First Printing: VG-NEAR FINE handsomely-designed unclipped mylar-protected jacket w/ VG edges & corners & showing orig. $15.00 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, FINE imperial-purple linen-over-boards cover w/ sharp AS-NEW edges & corners showing only slightest incidence of micro-chipping & tears & Macaulay ELEGANTLY stamped purple-on-purple at top of front panel & titles handsomely gold-stamped on spine, AS-NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & crimson-gold-checked linen bands at spine caps, VG-NEAR FINE unmarked text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges w/ top edge stained in faded-rose & w/ cut-page-style "deckel" side-edging w/ side & bottom edges showing only slightest incidence of age-dust-rusting, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers MARRED only by the signature of the orig. owner w/ date neatly scripted at top-center inside-front right end-paper, PRISITNE interior SUPERBLY printed in Linotype-Baskerville on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50 x 9.56" x 1.96", 1.26 kg, xvi+502+xxxvi (554) * Illustrated * ABOUT THE BOOK: From Clapham to Cambridge to the House of Commons to Calcutta & back to England, Macaulay is seen not only as a man of extraordinary intellect & vision in search of himself but as the product of a family, a class, a time, & a place. The man & his works are made immediate & are fully understood in this SUPERB full-scale portrait. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A long-time student of history & a prolific & distinguished editor & writer, John Clive taught for many years at Harvard as Professor of History & Literature. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL (or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee) & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to all international destinations at our posted rates.

Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. Visual Key by Susan Rayfield (illustrator). 1st Edition. NEAR FINE to FINE First Edition (Orig. July 26, 1977) Seventeenth Printing (October 1988), EXCELLENT British-green field-durable vinyl cover w/ gloss-laminated illustrated title wrap in EXCELLENT condition, UNBLEMISHED cream-white card-stock end-papers, AS-NEW perfect binding w/ tightly gathered sheets, VERY-GOOD text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut edges BUT w/ moderate shelf-soiling to bottom edge, PRISTINE interior w/ 262 gloss-laminated plates displaying 584 living birds captured in BRILLIANT full-color field-photography (456 Eastern breeding males plus 128 seasonal males, females, & immatures) * 498 pages of text presented w/ handsome clarity on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper + 262 gloss-laminated plates (760 pp).

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. Richly illustrated throughout in color & b-w (illustrator). 1st Edition. INSPIRING: EASY-TO-USE: ECLECTIC: ENTICING: DELICIOUS: HEALTHY: COMPREHENSIVE: BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED,: SUPREMELY USEFUL: SUPERBLY WELL-INFORMED: GIFT-QUALITY: AS-NEW Stated First Edition (Orig. 2002) First Printing, EXCELLENT virtually AS-NEW gloss-laminated color-illustrated jacket w/ subtle imperfection barely visible along 2.0" of the top front edge & w/ inside flyleaf corners neatly clipped, IMMACULATE smooth-cut text-block exterior, IMPECCABLE rust-red card-stock end-papers, SUPERB gloss-laminated color-illustrated cover, NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & crimson-gold bands at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on SUPERB gloss-laminated paper * 7.50" x 9.36" x 1.04", 1.92 kg, xxxviii+325 (363) pp * With 58 photographs in full color * ABOUT THE BOOK: Two of America's most popular authorities on healthy eating & cooking join forces in this INSPIRING, EASY-TO-USE cookbook. This is not a diet book. It is a lively guide to healthy cooking, day-by-day, packed w/ essential information &, above all, filled w/ ENTICING food. Andrew Weil, M.D. (author of the best-selling "Eating Well for Optimum Health") brings to this perfect collaboration a COMPREHENSIVE philosophy of nutrition grounded in science. Rosie Daley (acclaimed for her best-seller, "In the Kitchen with Rosie") brings to it her innovative & highly flavorful spa cuisine. The recipes are ECLECTIC, drawing from the HEALTHY & DELICIOUS cooking of the Middle East, the Mediterranean, & Asia, among other cuisines. For starters, you might try Grilled Satay or a Miso Pâté; for soup, often a meal in itself, a hearty Mixed-Bean Minestrone Stew or a Roasted Winter Squash & Apple Soup w/ Cilantro Walnut Pesto; a special entrée could be the Savory Roasted Cornish Hens w/ Roasted Garlic or Baked Spicy Tofu w/ Bean Thread Noodles, Corn, & Mango; for a simple supper, Turkey Burgers or Portobello Burgers; & for the occasional indulgence, a dessert of Almond Fruit Tart or Peach & Blueberry Cobbler. Andy & Rosie do not always agree. When Rosie calls for chicken, Andy offers a tofu alternative; she likes the flavor of coconut milk, whereas he prefers ground nut milk; when she makes a pastry w/ butter, he suggests using Spectrum Spread. There are no hard-and-fast rules. Lifelong health begins in the kitchen, so this is a lifestyle book as well as a cookbook. In it you will learn from Dr. Weil: (a) how to make use of nutritional information in everyday cooking, (b) what is organic, & how to buy organic foods, (c) the importance of reading labels and what to look for, (d) sensible advice about eggs, milk, cheese, salt, spicy foods, wine, coffee, & (e) the facts about sugar and artificial sweeteners . . . And from Rosie: (a) how to get kids involved, from skinning almonds to layering lasagna, (b) ways to have fun in the kitchen, creating scallion firecrackers & radish rosettes, (c) low-fat & nondairy alternatives for those with special concerns, & (d) smart menu planning, letting the seasons be your guide . . . And lots more. This revolutionary book will change forever the way you cook for yourself and your family. * HIGH PRAISE: "We warm recommends this BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED, SUPREMELY USEFUL & SUPERBLY WELL-INFORMED guide to delicious meals for a happy & healthy life." * SHIPPING: We custom wrap & label & securely package this superb book for FREE shipment within the United States via USPS Media MaiL (or via USPS Priority Mail for a nominal $10.00 charge) and at our posted rates to international destinations via USPS First Class Airmail (recommended) or USPS Priority Airmail.

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st American Edition. SUPERB: TOUR DE FORCE: INVALUABLE: ASTONISHING VIEW OF THE WHOLE OF POETRY IN ENGLISH: A dazzling account of the entire history of poetry in the English language (from the 14th century to the present) by one of the most intelligent & passionate critics in the field * First American Edition (Orig. October 1999), 1st Printing, AS-NEW unclipped mylar-protected jacket w/ EXCELLENT sharp AS-NEW edges & corners & showing $35.00 orig. pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, VERY GOOD text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & w/ cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, strikingly handsome AS-NEW cover w/ chocolate paper wrapping spine & extending 1.24" onto front & back panels elegantly covered in spinach-green paper w/ titles handsomely gilt-stamped on spine, AS-NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & green-brown-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, IMPECCABLE cream-lime end-papers on heavy stock, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in modern Caslon on SUPERB unblemished silk-finish paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 2.26", 1.56 kg, xii+975 (987) pp. * Setting out to write his own homage to Samuel Johnson's legendary "Lives of the English Poets" of more than 200 years ago, Michael Schmidt introduces us to the world tradition of poets who have written in English. From the rustic rhythms of "Piers Plowman" to today's post-modernists, from 15th-century Scotland to the contemporary Caribbean, Schmidt explores the lives & creations of more than 300 poets, discussing their best (& sometimes worst) poems, their triumphs & tragedies, their individual genius. Here is the shared universe & work of so many great poets, including Chaucer, Donne, Blake, Behn, Burns, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickinson, Rossetti, Yeats, Stevens, Lowell, Bishop, Ginsberg, Rich & Heaney, to name but a few. Schmidt also embraces the extraordinary poetry now emerging from Australia, New Zealand, India & other countries, & shows how these varied landscapes & cultures make their contributions to our common language. Tracing the themes & achievements of each poet's work, Schmidt demonstrates w/ wit & erudition how poets overshadow & inspire one another across the centuries. En route, he champions some unjustly neglected voices & outlines the ways in which history & politics intervene to shape (or sometimes misshape) the poetic imagination. W/ infectious enthusiasm & avoiding all fashionable jargon, Schmidt speaks without apology for a common language: the language of poetry, which unites people across continents & across the ages. For anyone who has ever been moved by a poem, this is a rich & important book. * HIGH CRITICAL PRAISE: "In addition to giving the analytical part of the reader's brain a good workout, as he parses everyone from Spenser to Ashbery to Walcott, Schmidt offers up plenty of idiosyncratic opinion that will alternately raise hackles or set heads nodding in vigorous agreement. This may not be the most objective treatment of poetry to come down the pike, but it is an invaluable (& deeply entertaining) reference. -Margaret Prior * "'Lives of the Poets', written w/ great verve & candor, erudition & insight, is a tour de force, an astonishing view of the whole of poetry in English, a superb read." -Mark Strand, Pulitzer prize-winning author of "Blizzard of One" * "The descriptions of the achievement & significance of a poet's work are masterly exercises of cogency & compression, & their excellence has an excellent effect: one goes away & reads the poetry." -TLS * MICHAEL SCHMIDT was born in 1947 in Mexico where he grew up. He studied at Harvard & Oxford & is now director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. He edits the magazine 'PN Review', which he established in 1972, & is founder & editorial director of Carcanet Press, which publishes poetry & fiction. His books include two novels, collections of poetry, works of criticism, & several important anthologies. He has translated Nahuatl (Aztec) poetry, & poems & essays by Octavio Paz.

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st American Edition. MASTERPIECE: CLASSIC: PANORAMIC: FASCINATING: SWEEPING: UNCONVENTIONAL: INSIGHTFUL: STIMULATING: ENLIGHTENING: AWESOME: TOUR DE FORCE: NEAR FINE Stated First American Edition, FINE mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners BUT w/ neatly price-clipped top-left front flyleaf corner, new cover w/ dark brown linen wrapping spine & extending 1.50" onto front & back panels covered in superb brown laid-paper w/ titles elegantly gold-stamped on spine & author's initials JK gilt-stamped at center-top of front panel, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page style "deckle" side-edging, AS-NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & brown & white cloth bands at spine-caps, IMPECCABLE end-papers on heavy cream-white paper BUT MARRED w/ the neat removal of front-right (blank) end-paper, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * ILLUSTRATIONS: 10 maps & 24 pp. of choice b-w illustrations reproduced on excellent gloss-laminated paper in two 12-pp. inserts between pp. 144-145 & 272-273 * CONTENTS: Illustrations (ix), Acknowledgments (xi), Introduction (xiii), Conclusion (386), References (393), Select Bibliography (411), Index (418) * 6.25" x 9.50" x 1.36", 0.88 kg, xvi+432 (448) pp. * ABOUT THE BOOK: PANORAMIC & full of FASCINATING & UNCONVENTIONAL INSIGHTS, 'A History of Warfare' is based on the author's 30 years of researching, teaching about & commenting upon military affairs. It also draws upon a lifetime of exploring many of the world's major battlefields, as well as friendships w/ soldiers of many different armies. This is John Keegan's MASTERPIECE. It is destined to become a CLASSIC on one of the most troubling subjects in human experience. * HIGHEST PRAISE: "Perhaps the most remarkable study of warfare that has yet been written. John Keegan is at once the most remarkable & the most original of living historians." - Michael Howard, NYTBR -- "A masterpiece . . . This is one of those rare books which could still be required reading in its field a hundred years from now." -New Yorker -- "'A History of Warfare' is an intellectual tour de force . . . It is impossible in a brief review to convey [its] awesome sweep or the breadth & depth of argumentation . . . consistently stimulating & enlightening." - Clay Blair, Washington Post Book World * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st American Edition. BRILLIANT, CLASSIC As-new hardcover, stated First American Edition (orig. 1988) 1st printing, apart from slightest traces of shelf-dust soiling to top edge immaculate text-block exterior w smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style (deckle) side-edging, exceptionally handsome cover w/ maroon silk-finish linen wrapping spine & extending 1.40" onto front & back panels covered in rich-teal paper w/ author's initials PC copper-stamped at bottom right of front panel & titles & Knopf logo handsomely copper-stamped on spine, immaculate end-papers on heavy cream-white paper, as-new sewn binding w/ tight signatures & pale yellow cloth bands at spine-caps, pristine interior printed w/ handsome clarity in digitized Bembo on excellent unblemished paper * 5.86" x 8.62" x 1.36", 0.70 kg, xxv+384 (409) pp. * 2 illus. inserts on gloss-laminated paper: between pp. 130 & p. 131 (10 illus: 1 oil painting, 7 early b-w line-maps, 2 engravings) & between pp. 258 & 259 (12 illus: 1 plan of early central Melbourne showing property allotments & land sales, 2 engravings, 4 photographs, 5 b-w maps) * CONTENTS: List of Illus. (ix), Acknowledgments (xi), Introduction: A Cake of Portable Soap (xiii), Text (1), Notes (353), Index (377) *This trail-blazing re-evaluation of the origins of Australia is a work of powerful imagination. Oxford-educated Paul Carter takes insights from many disciplines (philosophy, city planning, sociology, linguistics, psychoanalysis & art history) & brings them to bear in a deeply original way on the subjects of travel, exploration & settlement. Australian history is a history of traveling, Carter makes clear, &, as in America, the European newcomers were forever on the move. As they traveled, they wrote about what they saw, for before they cold truly call the land their own, they had to symbolize & name it, give it recognizable features & frame its horizons, make it habitable by equipping it w/ a history. Drawing on reports & diaries, Cater shows how the first explorers & colonists gave Australia "a local habitation& a name." He reads their narratives & maps, not for the usual historical or geographical data, but for the drama they record: writing & traveling are analogous activities, he suggests; escaping convicts, pioneers, & wandering aborigines emerge as creatures of their own authentic histories, translating strange, unknown spaces into a network of familiar landscapes they call home. * "Dazzlingly original, one of the great books about traveling & a landmark in the true discovery of Australia. It deals w/ what belongs deeply to 'culture': the means by which we open new spaces & make of them areas of knowledge where language & event can find room. The writing has a lyrical passion in argument that I found irresistible. I couldn't put it down." - David Malouf * SHIPPING: We custom wrap & label & securely package this superb book for shipment via USPS Media Mail at no charge (or via USPS Priority Mail for a nominal $10.00 charge) within the United States or at our posted rates to international destinations via USPS First Class Airmail (recommended) or USPS Priority Airmail.

Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Paperback Edition. POETIC PERFECTION: ESSENTIAL: NEAR FINE: First Paperback Edition (orig. July 17, 1995), 3rd Printing (October 1997), NEAR FINE gloss-laminated cover w/ AS-NEW edges & corners, but showing a few slightest cosmetic imperfections on rear panel, AS-NEW uncreased binding, IMMACULATE smooth-cut text block exterior, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed w/ SUPERB clarity on EXCELLENT unblemished acid-free archival paper * 6.12" x 9.24" x 1.06", 0.56 kg, x+338 (348) pp. * This varied & far-reaching volume contains a substantial selection from the work of one of our most distinguished poets. From his first book, "A Crackling of Thorns", chosen by W.H. Auden as the 1958 volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, to "Harp Lake" (1988), "Selected Poetry" provides an overview of the brilliant career in poetry celebrated by John Hollander's appointment as a MacArthur Fellow. It includes work from 11 volumes, almost all out of print, & is published simultaneously w/ a new collection, "Tesserae and Other Poems". Harold Boom has said of Hollander's last book, "It confirms his authentic eminence, comparable in my judgment to Merrill, Ashberry, Ammons & only a few others in his generation of American poets." * CRITICAL PRAISE: "Perfection is a rare accomplishment, particularly in American poetry, & the perfection of much of Hollander's work makes it essential reading for anyone who genuinely cares for the craft of poetry. But in our fallen world we seem fated to value power of perfection, & John Hollander's poetry has shown a visionary power just often enough to secure him a place as one of the major figures of our moment." -Vernon Shetley, The New Republic * JOHN HOLLANDER: A preeminent American poet, John Hollander composed more than 16 volumes of poetry, published 8 volumes of literary criticism, & edited more than 20 anthologies, including "The Oxford Anthology of English Literature." His many honors include the Bollingen Prize, the Levinson Prize, & a MacArthur Fellowship (1990). His first poetry collection, "A Crackling of Thorns", was chosen by W.H. Auden as the 1958 volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Professor Hollander studied at Columbia & Indiana Universities & was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University. He taught at Connecticut College, & was a professor of English at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY. He served as A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English at Yale University, where he was later named Sterling Professor of English & retired as Sterling Professor of English Emeritus. He died in August 2013.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. MASTERPIECE: NEGLECTED SPLENDOR: FINE First Edition hardcover (Orig. January 1988) Third printing (March 1988): NEW "art-deco" styled gloss-laminated mylar-protected jacket w/ celebrated photo of Oscar Wilde on the front panel & w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $24.95 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf BUT w/ interior flyleaf corners neatly & uniformly clipped c. 0.5" on the diagonal, EXCELLENT smooth-cut text-block exterior w/ slightest shelf-dust soiling & faintest spotting apparent on the top edge only, NEW library-durable lavender-brown linen-over boards cover ornamented on front panel & spine w/ titles silver-stamped & black-stamped "art deco" design motif, IMMACULATE cream-white card-stock end-papers, NEW perfect binding w/ tight signatures & blue-white-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior printed w/ handsome clarity on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.26" x 9.52" x 1.76", 1.22 kg, xviii+680 (698) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: 'How ridiculous of you to suppose that anyone, least of all my dear mother, would christen me "plain Oscar",' he once replied to someone who so supposed. 'I started as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.' Indeed nothing about Oscar Wilde was "plain". And in this most pyrotechnic, enchanting, and extravagantly outrageous of 19th-century literary men, Richard Ellmann, one of the great biographers of our time, found his most compelling protagonist. Ellmann devoted his last 20 years to "Oscar Wilde", and it will stand, like his universally admired "James Joyce", as the DEFINITIVE life. The book's emotional resonance, its riches of authentic color & conversation, & the subtlety of its critical illuminations give dazzling life to this portrait of the complex man, the charmer, the great playwright, the daring champion of the primacy of art. And always we sense how he was doomed by the very nature of his powerful intellect, & by that Wildean playfulness that so easily became teasing, to goad the forces of convention into a lethal attack on him at the very moment when he was in most command of is art &--w/ the triumph of "The Importance of Being Earnest"--of his audience. Wilde moved among the great & notorious of his day, & the narrative rings w/ their voices & his own--heard in brilliant discourse, in passion, in conflict, in scintillating thrust & riposte. Drawing on a wealth of documentation, much of it tapped for the first time, & discovering in "Salome", "The Picture of Dorian Gray", "The Importance of Being Earnest", & other works new aspects of their author--Ellmann reveals a Wilde greater & more moving than his legend has allowed, a Wilde who is the 1880s & 1890s incarnate & even today challenges our assumptions w/ his provocative intelligence. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: RICHARD ELLMANN, during a long & distinguished career, won international recognition as scholar, teacher of English literature, critic, & biographer. His magisterial life of James Joyce is wide acclaimed as the greatest literary biography of the 20th century. Ellmann was born in Highland Park, Michigan, in 1918. He studied at Yale & at Trinity College, in Dublin. He taught at Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, Emory, the University of Chicago, Indiana University, & Oxford, where he was Goldsmiths' Professor of English literature & Fellow of New College. His "James Joyce" (National Book Award, 1959) was preceded by "Yeats: The Man & the Masks" & "The Identity of Yeats" & was followed by--among other greatly praised books two volumes of Joyce letters, "Eminent Domian", & "Four Dubliners". Ellmann died in May 1987, in Oxford, soon after completing "Oscar Wilde" to which he had devoted some decades of study, research & writing. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this great book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or via USPS PRIORITY MAIL (for an additional fee) & to international destinations via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Debra Lill (Front-of-Jacket Photo); Carol Devine Carson (Jacket Design) (illustrator). 3rd Printing, February 1990. 433 pp. Solidly bound copy with minimal to moderate external wear and clean text. Dj shows moderate cuts and tears around edges. Previous owner's name inside first free front-end page.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. SUPERB: BRILLIANT: COMPELLING: EXQUISITE: COLLECTIBLE: FINE First Edition hardcover (Orig. October 6, 1997), 24th Printing (June 1998), FINE price-clipped mylar-protected first-state jacket, AS-NEW cover w/ rich burgundy-brown library-durable fabric wrapping spine & extending 1.50" onto front & back panels beautifully covered in cream rag-paper w/ AS-NEW edges & corners & w/ Japanese characters copper-stamped at top right of front panel & titles copper-stamped on spine, IMMACULATE text block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page style deckle side-edging, AS-NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & burgundy cloth banding at spine-caps, IMPECCABLE cream-white laid-paper end-papers, PRISTINE interior printed w/ ELEGANT clarity in Fairfield on SUPERB unblemished paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.46", 0.82 kg, 434 pp. * ABOUT THE BOOK: An alluring tour de force: a brilliant debut novel told w/ seamless authenticity & exquisite lyricism as the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Speaking to us w/ the wisdom of age & in a voice at once haunting & startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. In "Memoirs of a Geisha", we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; & where love, always elusive, is scorned as illusion. Sayuri's story begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old w/ unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home & sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. Through her eyes, we see the decadent heart of Gion (the geisha district of Kyoto) w/ its marvelous teahouses & theaters, narrow back alleys, ornate temples, & artists' streets. And we witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance & music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup & hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing w/ a jealous rival for men's solicitude & the money that goes with it. But as World War II erupts & the geisha houses are forced to close, Sayuri, w/ little money & even less food, must reinvent herself all over again to find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms. "Memoirs of a Geisha" is a book of nuances & vivid metaphor, of memorable characters rendered w/ humor & pathos. And though the story is rich w/ detail & a vast knowledge of history, it is the transparent, seductive voice of Sayuri that the reader remembers through the medium of this dazzling literary achievement of empathy & grace by an extraordinary writer. HIGHEST PRAISE: "Astonishing, a breathtaking performance. By the time you realize the extent of [the geisha's] professional skill, you are seduced as completely as any of her clients, hungry for her story." -Janice Nimura, Washington Post. "'Memoirs of a Geisha' evokes all the delicate steel of Kyoto's geisha culture w/ such uncanny fidelity that, after you've finished, you feel as if you've entered not just another world, but an extraordinary & foreign heart." -Pico Iyer. "Captivating. Exquisitely crafted. A page-turner w/ powerful resonance for any time or culture." -David Weigand, San Francisco Chronicle * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ARTHUR GOLDEN was educated at Harvard College, where he received a degree in art history, specializing in Japanese art. In 1980 he earned an MA in Japanese history from Columbia University, where he also learned Mandarin Chinese. After a summer at Beijing University and work in Tokyo, he returned to the United States and earned an MA in English from Boston University. Married w/ two children, Golden currently lives in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & to international destinations via efficient USPS FIRST CLASS MAIL at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. GROUNDBREAKING: RIGOROUSLY RESEARCHED: ELOQUENT: EYE-OPENING: NEW Stated First Edition hardcover (Orig. September 2018) First Printing: NEW unclipped mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp new edges & corners showing orig. $30.00 price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, NEW cover w/ royal-lavender library-durable fabric wrapping spine & extending 1.36" onto front & back panels handsomely covered in lemon rag paper w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & w/ titles & design elements handsomely gilt-stamped on spine, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & gold silk bands at spine-caps, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Schneidler typeface on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.50", 0.80 kg, xiv+352 (366) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: Drawing on previously unpublished sources, this GROUNDBREAKING biography of Robert Schumann sheds new light on the great composer's life & work. W/ the RIGOROUS RESEARCH of a scholar & the ELOQUENT prose of a novelist, Judith Chernaik takes us into Schumann?s 19th-century Romantic milieu, where he wore many "masks" that gave voice to each corner of his soul. The son of a book publisher, he infused his pieces w/ literary ideas. He was passionately original but worshiped the past: Bach & Beethoven, Shakespeare & Byron. He believed in artistic freedom but struggled with constraints of form. His courtship & marriage to the brilliant pianist Clara Wieck (against her father's wishes) is one of the great musical love stories of all time. Chernaik freshly explores his troubled relations w/ fellow composers Mendelssohn & Chopin, & the full medical diary (long withheld) from the Endenich asylum where he spent his final years enables her to look anew at the mystery of his early death. By turns tragic & transcendent, Schumann shows how this extraordinary artist turned his tumultuous life into music that speaks directly (& timelessly) to the heart. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JUDITH CHERNAIK was born & grew up in Brooklyn. She graduated from Cornell University & received a Ph.D. from Yale University. She has taught at Columbia, Tufts, & Queen Mary College in London. Her books include "The Lyrics of Shelley" & 4 novels. She has also written a play, & most recently has published essays on Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Mendelssohn, & Chopin in the British academic journal The Musical Times. She & her husband, Warren Chernaik, have been living in London for the last 40 years, where she founded Poems on the Underground, which under various names, has since spread all over the world. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. Benita Eisler's Byron is a masterful portrait of the poet who dazzled an era & prefigured the modern age of celebrity: an absorbing, illuminating, & wonderfully entertaining account of Lord Byron's spectacular life, monumental work, & lasting heroic legacy. Drawing on previously unavailable material -(including family papers only recently brought to light)- Eisler offers us a more complex vision of Byron than any we've had before: a man who rose from the depths of poverty & the humiliation of childhood lameness to a pinnacle of success & fame unlike anything the world had ever seen, & whose bravura identity as renegade aristocrat, political revolutionary, mythic lover, & Romanticism's galvanizing hero & antihero was surpassed in brilliance only by his poetic genius. W/ grace, erudition, & insight, Eisler captures the passions & obsessions that consumed Byron, the fierce devotions & the outsized ego that fired his work, & the despair & self-loathing that plagued his short life. Eisler gives us a richly detailed drama of a childhood of abandonment & shame; of Byron's early days at Harrow & Cambridge; of his humiliating entry into the House of Lords at 18; of his adventures in the East, where he consorted w/ pashas & prostitutes; of his relationships w/ his contemporaries, among them the 24-year-old Shelley & his wife, Mary; of the instant celebrity that attended the publication of the first cantos of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"; & of the almost vengeful determination w/ which Byron recast himself as the elegant figure that glided through Regency drawing rooms, plotted w/ Italian Carbonari, loved men & women, & drew sensation to him like a cloak until his death, alone & in exile, at the age of 36. Here also are the first in-depth portraits of the women -(and men)- Byron loved: his guilty relations w/ John Edleston, a young Cambridge chorister; his tempestuous affair w/ Lady Caroline Lamb, who was driven to madness by her love for him; his catastrophic marriage to the lovely Annabella Milbanke; his passionate incestuous relationship w/ his half sister, Augusta, & the tormented menage a trois they shared w/ his young wife; & the gentler love of his later life, Teresa Guiccioli, whom he abandoned for his life's last adventure in Missolonghi. Throughout, Eisler offers incisive analysis of Byron's poetry in the context of his extraordinary life -(as hero & martyr, aristocratic aesthete & dandy, transgressive rebel fueled by forbidden substances & exiled for forbidden passions)- examining in detail the stanzas that inspired his own & succeeding generations as no other writer has since Shakespeare. A magnificent record of a towering figure, sure to stand as the definitive biography for years to come. HIGH CRITICAL PRAISE: "Quite simply the best life of Byron we have." -David Crane, Literary Review . . . "Benita Eisler's biography of Byron is a fascinating portrait, filled w/ vivid details, of a dramatic life & her incisive analysis of his work reminds us of his greatness as a poet." -Robert A. Caro.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. First American Edition. MASTERFUL: DAZZLING: MOVING: PLAYFUL: RADIANT: PRECISE: WITTY: PROVOCATIVE: NEW First American Edition hardcover (Orig. September 2007) First Printing: NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $27.95 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, NEW binding w/ tight signatures, PRISTINE interior printed in Times New Roman w/ handsome clarity on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.36" x 9.50" x 1.48", 0.82 kg, xii+434 (446) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: Orhan Pamuk's first book since winning the Nobel Prize, "Other Colors" is a DAZZLING collection of essays on his life, his city, his work, & the example of other writers. Over the last 3 decades, Pamuk has written--in addition to his stories & novels--scores of pieces--personal, critical, & meditative--the finest of which he has brilliantly woven together here. He opens a window on his private life, from his boyhood dislike of school to his daughter's precocious melancholy, from his successful struggle to quit smoking to his anxiety at the prospect of testifying against some clumsy muggers who fell upon him during a visit to New York City. From ordinary obligations such as applying for a passport or sharing a holiday meal w/ relatives, he takes extraordinary flights of imagination; in extreme moments, such as the terrifying days following a cataclysmic earthquake in Istanbul, he lays bare our most basic hopes & fears. Again & again Pamuk declares his faith in fiction, engaging the work of such predecessors as Laurence Sterne & Fyodor Dostoyevsky, sharing fragments from his notebooks, & commenting on his own novels. He contemplates his mysterious compulsion to sit alone at a desk & dream, always returning to the rich deliverance that is reading & writing. By turns WITTY, MOVING, PLAYFUL, & PROVOCATIVE, "Other Colors" glows with the energy of a master at work and gives us the world through his eyes, assigning every RADIANT theme and shifting mood its PRECISE shade in the spectrum of significance. * ABOUT ORHAN PAMUK: ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel "My Name Is Red" won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. "PAMUK has made his native city an indispensable literary territory, equal to Dostoyevsky's St. Petersburg, Joyce's Dublin, or Proust's Paris--a place where readers from all corners of the world can live another life, just as credible as their own." -from the Nobel Presentation Speech. * HIGH PRAISE FOR ORPAN PAMUK: "Essential reading for our times: In Turkey, Pamuk is the equivalent of a rock star, guru, diagnostic specialist, & potential pundit. The Turkish public reads his novels as if taking its own pulse. -Margaret Atwood, NYTBR. "Pamuk in his dispassionate intelligence & arabesques of introspection suggests Proust." -John Updike, The New Yorker. "Pamuk's is an astonishing achievement." -TLS (London) * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this excellent book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or via USPS PRIORITY MAIL (for a nominal additional fee) & to all international destinations at our posted rates via efficient USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. INDISPENSABLE: MASTERPIECE: COLLECTIBLE: NEW: Stated First Edition hardcover (orig. April 6, 2010), NEW unclipped mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & w/ orig. $29.95 price top right inside front flyleaf, NEW cover w/ steel-blue linen wrapping spine & extending 1.38" onto front & back panels covered in handsome crimson paper w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & titles & Knopf logo handsomely silver-stamped on spine, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style deckle side-edging, NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & blue-white-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, IMPECCABLE unblemished b-w illus. card-stock end-paper double-spread formats (front) an encounter between police & Civil Rights protesters led by Martin Luther King & John Lewis & (back) inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on the West Portico of the U.S. Capitol, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Janson on SUPERB unblemished paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.12", 1.12 kg, x+656 (668) pp. * Prologue: The Joshua Generation (3), Parts I-V (29-580), Epilogue (581), Debts & Sources (587), Notes (593), Bibliography (617), Index (625) * No story has been more central to America's history this century than the rise of Barack Obama & until now no journalist or historian has written a book that fully investigates the circumstances & experiences of Obama's life or explores the ambition behind his rise. Those familiar w/ Obama's own best-selling memoir or his campaign speeches know the touchstones & details that he chooses to emphasize, but now, from a writer whose gift for illuminating the historical significance of unfolding events is without peer, we have a portrait at once masterly & fresh, nuanced & unexpected, of a young man in search of himself & of a rising politician determined to become the 1st African-American president. "The Bridge" offers the most complete account yet of Obama's tragic father, a brilliant economist who abandoned his family & ended his life as a beaten man; of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who had a child as a teenager & then built her career as an anthropologist living & studying in Indonesia; & of the succession of elite institutions that first exposed Obama to the social tensions & intellectual currents that would force him to imagine & fashion an identity for himself. Through extensive on-the-record interviews w/ friends & teachers, mentors & disparagers, family members & Obama himself, David Remnick allows us to see how a rootless, unaccomplished & confused young man created himself first as a community organizer in Chicago, an experience that not only shaped his urge to work in politics but gave him a home & community & that propelled him to Harvard Law School where his sense of a greater mission emerged. Deftly setting Obama's political career against the galvanizing intersection of race & politics in Chicago's history, Remnick shows us how that city's complex racial legacy would make Obama's forays into politics a source of controversy & bare-knuckle tactics: his clashes w/ older black politicians in the Illinois State Senate, his disastrous decision to challenge the former Black Panther Bobby Rush for Congress in 2000, the sex scandals that would decimate his more experienced opponents in the 2004 Senate race, & the story (from both sides) of his confrontation w/ his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. By looking at Obama's political rise through the prism of our racial history, Remnick gives us the conflicting agendas of black politicians: the dilemmas of men like Jesse Jackson, John Lewis & Joseph Lowery, heroes of the civil rights movement, who are forced to reassess old loyalties & understand the priorities of a new generation of African-American leaders. "The Bridge" revisits the American drama of race from slavery to civil rights, & makes clear how Obama's quest is not just his own but is emblematic of a nation where destiny is defined by individuals keen to imagine a different future.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. UNFORGETTABLE: EMOTIONALLY RESONANT: GLORIOUS: POWERFUL: ENGROSSING: A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CLASSIC: COLLECTIBLE: * National Best Seller, Named a Best Book of the Year by The NYT, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Vogue, The Atlantic, & Newsday * "A novel of head-snapping ambition & heart-stopping power: a novel that attests to its young author's boundless & unflagging talents.? -Michiko Kakutani, NYT * NEW Stated First Edition hardcover (Orig. October 2015) First Printing, NEW unclipped mylar-protected handsomely color-illustrated dust-jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $30.00 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, IMMACULATE smooth-cut text-block exterior, NEW black buckram cover ornamented w/ triple-star-burst-firework image crimson-engraved on front panel w/ NEW edges & corners & titles ELEGANTLY & BOLDLY gold-stamped on spine, IMPECCABLE jet-black card-stock end-papers, NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & crimson-black-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior printed w/ BEAUTIFUL clarity in Janson on SUPERB silk-finish unblemished archival paper * 6.24" x 9.36" x 1.76", 1.38 kg, 453 pp. * New York City, 1976. Meet Regan & William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city?s great fortunes; Keith & Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie & Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown?s punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter & his idealistic neighbor, & the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do w/ a shooting in Central Park on New Year?s Eve. The mystery, as it reverberates through families, friendships, & the corridors of power, will open up even the loneliest-seeming corners of the crowded city. And when the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of these lives will be changed forever. 'City on Fire' is an unforgettable novel about love & betrayal & forgiveness, about art & truth & rock 'n' roll: about what people need from each other in order to live . . . & about what makes the living worth doing in the first place. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: GARTH RISK HALLBERG was born in Louisiana & grew up in North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Best New American Voices, 2008, &, most frequently, The Millions; a novella, "A Field Guide to the North American Family"', was published in 2007. He lives in New York City w/ his wife & children. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this excellent book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or via USPS PRIORITY MAIL (for a nominal additional fee) & to all international destinations at our posted rates via efficient USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Stated First Edition. GRIPPING: DRAMATIC: COMPELLING: NEW Stated First Edition (Orig. May 2015) First Printing: NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, NEW cover w/ deep-purple library-durable paper wrapping spine & extending 1.50 onto front & back panels covered in clay-red paper & w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & titles elegantly gilt-stamped on spine, IMPECCABLE text-block exterior w/ smooth cut top & bottom edges & w/ cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMMACULATE white card-stock end-papers, NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Calson on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50" x 9.36" x 1.36", 0.68 kg, xx+290 (310) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: From Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Joseph J. Ellis, the unexpected story of why the 13 colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew. We all know the famous opening phrase of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this Continent a new Nation." The truth is different. In 1776, 13 American colonies declared themselves independent states that only temporarily joined forces in order to defeat the British. Once victorious, they planned to go their separate ways. The triumph of the American Revolution was neither an ideological nor a political guarantee that the colonies would relinquish their independence & accept the creation of a federal government w/ power over their autonomy as states. "The Quartet" is the story of this second American founding & of the men most responsible: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, & James Madison. These men, w/ the help of Robert Morris & Gouverneur Morris, shaped the contours of American history by diagnosing the systemic dysfunctions created by the Articles of Confederation, manipulating the political process to force the calling of the Constitutional Convention, conspiring to set the agenda in Philadelphia, orchestrating the debate in the state ratifying conventions, &, finally, drafting the Bill of Rights to assure state compliance w/ the constitutional settlement. Ellis has given us a gripping & dramatic portrait of one of the most crucial & misconstrued periods in American history: the years between the end of the Revolution & the formation of the federal government. "The Quartet" unmasks a myth & in its place presents an even more compelling truth, one that lies at the heart of understanding the creation of the United States of America. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JOSEPH J. ELLIS is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Founding Brothers". His portrait of Thomas Jefferson, "American Sphinx", won the National Book Award. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, w/ his wife, Ellen, his youngest son, three dogs, and a cat. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. From the acclaimed author of A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates comes the unforgettable life of John Cheever (1912?1982), a man who spent much of his career impersonating a perfect suburban gentleman, the better to become one of the foremost chroniclers of postwar America. "I was born into no true class," Cheever mused in his journal, "and it was my decision, early in life, to insinuate myself into the middle class, like a spy, so that I would have an advantageous position of attack, but I seem now and then to have forgotten my mission and to have taken my disguises too seriously." Written with unprecedented access to essential sources?including Cheever?s massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published?Blake Bailey?s biography reveals the troubled but strangely lovable man behind the disguises, an artist who delighted in the everyday radiance of the world while yearning, above all, "to be illustrious." Cheever?s was a soul in conflict: he was a proud Yankee who flaunted his lineage while deploring the provincialism of his Quincy, Massachusetts, family circle; a high-school dropout who published his first story at eighteen; a pioneer of suburban realist fiction who continually pushed the boundaries of realism; a dire alcoholic who recovered to write the great novel Falconer; a secret bisexual who struggled with his longings and his fierce homophobia in a revolving door of self-loathing and hedonism. We see a man who concealed his anxieties behind the mask of a genial Westchester squire?a paterfamilias in Brooks Brothers clothes whose world was peopled by legendary writers and beautiful women (Malcolm Cowley, Saul Bellow, William Maxwell, Hope Lange, and John Updike, among them); whose groundbreaking work landed him on the covers of Time and Newsweek; a man whose demons and desperation were never quite vanquished by the joy he found in his work. Blake Bailey has written a luminous biography, a revelation of a writer of timeless fiction and of the man behind the page. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 32 pp of illustrations in two 16-pp gloss-laminated inserts (after pp 148 & 340) (illustrator). Stated First Edition. COMPERHENSIVE: PERSONAL: BRILLIANT: ENGAGING: REVEALING: AS-NEW Stated First Edition hardcover (Orig. November 2011) First Printing: AS-NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners BUT neatly price-clipped orig. at top-inside-front-flyleaf, IMMACULATE text block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & w/ cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, NEW perfect binding w/ gray cloth bands at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper. * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.62", 1.0 kg, 512 pp. * ABOUT THE BOOK From Robert Hughes, one of the greatest art & cultural critics of our time, comes a sprawling, comprehensive, & deeply personal history of Rome?as city, as empire, &, crucially, as an origin of Western art & civilization, two subjects about which Hughes has spent his life writing & thinking. Starting on a personal note, Hughes takes us to the Rome he first encountered as a hungry 21-year-old fresh from Australia in 1959. From that exhilarating portrait, he takes us back more than 2,000 yrs to the city's foundation, one mired in mythologies & superstitions that would inform Rome's development for centuries. From the beginning, Rome was a hotbed of power, overweening ambition, desire, political genius, & corruption. Hughes details the turbulent years that saw the formation of empire & the establishment of the socio-political system, along the way providing colorful portraits of all the major figures, both political (Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Caligula) & cultural (Cicero, Martial, Virgil), to name just a few. For almost 1,000 years, Rome would remain the most politically important, richest, & largest city in the Western world. From the formation of empire, Hughes moves on to the rise of early Christianity, his own antipathy toward religion providing rich & lively context for the brutality of the early Church, & eventually the Crusades. The brutality had the desired effect?the Church consolidated & outlasted the power of empire, & Rome would be the capital of the Papal States until its annexation into the newly united kingdom of Italy in 1870. As one would expect, Hughes lavishes plenty of critical attention on the Renaissance, providing a full survey of the architecture, painting, & sculpture that blossomed in Rome over the course of the 14th through the 16th centuries, & shedding new light on old masters in the process. Having established itself as the artistic & spiritual center of the world, Rome in the 17th, 18th, & 19th centuries saw artists (&, eventually, wealthy tourists) from all over Europe converging on the bustling city, even while it was caught up in the nationalistic turmoils of the Italian independence struggle & war against France. Hughes keeps the momentum going right into the 20th century, when Rome witnessed the rise & fall of Italian Fascism & Mussolini, & took on yet another identity in the postwar years as the fashionable city of "La Dolce Vita." This is the Rome Hughes himself first encountered, & it's one he contends, perhaps controversially, has been lost in the half century since, as the cult of mass tourism has slowly ruined the dazzling city he loved so much. Equal parts idolizing, blasphemous, outraged, & awestruck, "Rome" is a portrait of the Eternal City as only Robert Hughes could paint it. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Hughes was born in Australia in 1938. Since 1970 he has lived & worked in the United States, where until 2001 he was chief art critic for Time. His books include "The Shock of the New", "The Fatal Shore", "Nothing If Not Critical", "Barcelona", "Goya", & "Things I Didn't Know". He is the recipient of numerous awards & prizes for his work. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & to international destinations via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Stated First American Edition. SUPERB: BOLD: ENTHRALLING: VIVID: WONDROUS: SHIMMERING: BEAUTIFUL: TENDER: BREATHLESSLY IMAGINATIVE: DEVASTATING: SHATTERING: UNFORGETTABLE: LUMINOUS: MAGNIFICENT: VIVID: NEW Stated First Edition hardcover (Orig. July 21, 2020) Third Printing (July 2020): NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $26.95 pub. price at top-inside-front-flyleaf, NEW cover w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & ocher-gold library-durable fabric wrapping spine & extending 1.50" onto front & back panels covered in EXCELLENT rich-oxblood-brown paper, IMMACULATE smooth-cut text block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, NEW perfect binding (BUT w/ slightly creased spine) & w/ pale-yellow cloth bands at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper. * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.14", 0.66 kg, x+310 (320) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old, & the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. A young Latin tutor--penniless & bullied by a violent father--falls in love w/ a extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family's land w/ a falcon on her glove & is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants & potions better than she does people. Once she settles w/ her husband n Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother & a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever. A LUMINOUS portrait of a marriage, a SHATTERING evocation of a family ravaged by grief & loss, & a TENDER & UNFORGETTABLE reimagining of a young boy whose life has been all but forgotten, & whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time, 'Hamnet 'is impossible to put down--a MAGNIFICENT leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists. * HIGHEST PRAISE: "A thing of SMIMMERING wonder."" -David Mitchell "'Hamnet is a BEAUTIFUL read, a DEVASTATING one, intricate & BREATHTAKINGLY IMAGINATIVE. It will stay w/ me for a long time." -Rachel Joyce "Grief & loss so finely written I could hardly bear to read it." -Sarah Moss "The story of Hamnet Shakespeare has been waiting in the shadows for more than 400 years. Maggie O'Farrell brings it dazzlingly, devastatingly into the light." -Kamila Shamsie "A BOLD undertaking, BEAUTIFULLY IMAGINED & written." -Claire Tomalin "The raw physical life of O'Farrell's Renaissance England is ENTHRALLING. But the beating heat of this book is Hamnet's mother--an indelible, dauntless woman. What a sensual, full-throated love song to the lost child." -Amity Gaige "The world of this novel is so VIVID I could nearly smell the grass in the fields.One of the best novels I've ever read." -Mary Beth Keane * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in Northern Ireland in 1972, Maggie O'Farrell grew up in Wales & Scotland & now lives in Edinburgh. She is the author of "The Hand That First Held Mine" (Winner of the Costa Novel Award); "Instructions for a Heatwave"; "This Must Be the Place; ''I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death", & "The Marriage Portrait, A Novel". * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. POETIC PERFECTION: ESSENTIAL: NEAR FINE to FINE: Stated First Edition (April 1993) 1st Printing, NEAR FINE to FINE unclipped gloss-laminated mylar-protected jacket w/ FINE virtually AS-NEW edges & corners, AS-NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & w/ yellow-white-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, EXCELLENT smooth-cut text block exterior w/ top edge stained spinach-yellow & w/ side & bottom edges showing only slightest faint rust-spotting, EXCELLENT cream-white front & back card-stock end-papers w/ front showing slightest faint incidence of rust-spotting, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed w/ SUPERB clarity on EXCELLENT unblemished acid-free archival paper * 6.12" x 9.24" x 1.06", 0.71 kg, x+338 (348) pp. * This varied & far-reaching volume contains a substantial selection from the work of one of our most distinguished poets. From his first book, "A Crackling of Thorns", chosen by W.H. Auden as the 1958 volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, to "Harp Lake" (1988), "Selected Poetry" provides an overview of the brilliant career in poetry celebrated by John Hollander's appointment as a MacArthur Fellow. It includes work from 11 volumes, almost all out of print, & is published simultaneously w/ a new collection, "Tesserae and Other Poems". Harold Boom has said of Hollander's last book, "It confirms his authentic eminence, comparable in my judgment to Merrill, Ashberry, Ammons & only a few others in his generation of American poets." * CRITICAL PRAISE: "Perfection is a rare accomplishment, particularly in American poetry, & the perfection of much of Hollander's work makes it essential reading for anyone who genuinely cares for the craft of poetry. But in our fallen world we seem fated to value power of perfection, & John Hollander's poetry has shown a visionary power just often enough to secure him a place as one of the major figures of our moment." -Vernon Shetley, The New Republic * JOHN HOLLANDER: A preeminent American poet, John Hollander composed more than 16 volumes of poetry, published 8 volumes of literary criticism, & edited more than 20 anthologies, including "The Oxford Anthology of English Literature." His many honors include the Bollingen Prize, the Levinson Prize, & a MacArthur Fellowship (1990). His first poetry collection, "A Crackling of Thorns", was chosen by W.H. Auden as the 1958 volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Professor Hollander studied at Columbia & Indiana Universities & was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University. He taught at Connecticut College, & was a professor of English at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY. He served as A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English at Yale University, where he was later named Sterling Professor of English & retired as Sterling Professor of English Emeritus. He died in August 2013.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. INDISPENSIBLE: PERSONAL: LASTING: DARINGLY ORIGINAL: LUCID: LUMINOUS: CONTROVERSIAL: INWARD: ELEGIAC: MEDITATIVE: MOVING: YES, FILLED WITH LOVE, SPIRITUAL: NEW Stated First Edition hardcover (Orig. April 2019) First Printing: NEW handsomely-designed mylar-protected color jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $35.00 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, NEW library-durable blue woven paper-over-boards cover w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & titles ELEGANTLY gilt-stamped on spine, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, NEW hybrid sewn-perfect binding w/ tight signatures-sheets & crimson cloth bands at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior printed in Janson w/ ELEGANT clarity on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper. * 6.36" x 9.50" x 1.74", 0.94 kg, x+508 (528) pp. * ABOUT THE BOOK: In arguably his most personal & lasting book, America's most daringly original & controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors-- texts he has known by heart since childhood. Gone are the polemics. Here, instead, in a memoir of sorts--an inward journey from childhood to 90--Bloom argues elegiacally w/ nobody but Bloom, interested only in the influence of the mind upon itself when it absorbs the highest & most enduring imaginative literature. He offers more than 80 meditations on poems & prose that have haunted him since childhood & which he has possessed by memory: from the Psalms & Ecclesiastes to Shakespeare & Dr. Johnson; Spenser & Milton to Wordsworth & Keats; Whitman & Browning to Joyce & Proust; Tolstoy & Yeats to Delmore Schwartz & Amy Clampitt; Blake to Wallace Stevens--& so much more. And though he has written before about some of these authors, these exegeses, written in the winter of his life, are movingly informed by "the freshness of last things." As Bloom writes movingly: "One of my concerns throughout 'Possessed by Memory' is w/ the beloved dead. Most of my good friends in my generation have departed. Their voices are still in my ears. I find that they are woven into what I read. I listen not only for their voices but also for the voice I heard before the world was made. My other concern is religious, in the widest sense. For me poetry & spirituality fuse as a single entity. All my long life I have sought to isolate poetic knowledge. This also involves a knowledge of God & gods. I see imaginative literature as a kind of theurgy in which the divine is summoned, maintained, & augmented." * ABOUT HAROLD BLOOM: HAROLD BLOOM was until his decease a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University & a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than 40 books include "The Anxiety of Influence", "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human", "The Western Canon", "The American Religion", and "The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime". He was a MacArthur Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, & the recipient of many awards & honorary degrees, including the American Academy of Arts & Letters' Gold Medal for Belles Lettres & Criticism, the Catalonia International Prize, & Mexico's Alfonso Reyes International Prize. He lived in New Haven. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this splendid book w/ our greatest elegance & care for FREE shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL within the U.S. w/ shipment via USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below cost fee & shipment to international destinations via USPS FIRST CLASS AIRMAIL at our posted below-cost rates.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. DELIGHTFUL: SUPERBLY-RESEARCHED: ELEGANT: REVELATORY: VIVID: NEW Stated First American Edition hardcover (Orig. April 2006) First Printing, NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $29.95 pub. price at top-inside-front-flyleaf, IMMACULATE text block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & w/ cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, NEW binding w/ tan-gold-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Sabon on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.60", 0.98 kg, x+484 (494) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: In Victorian England there was only one fail-safe authority on matters ranging from fashion to puddings to scullery maids: Beeton?s Book of Household Management. In this DELIGHTFUL, SUPERBLY RESEARCHED biography, award-winning historian Kathryn Hughes pulls back the lace curtains to reveal the woman behind the book--Mrs. Beeton, the first domestic diva of the modern age--& explores the life of the book itself. Isabella Beeton was a 21-one-year-old newlywed w/ only 6 months? experience running her own home when--coaxed by her husband, a struggling publisher--she began to compile her book of recipes & domestic advice. The aspiring mother hardly suspected that her name would become synonymous w/ housewifery for generations. Nor would the women who turned to the book for guidance ever have guessed that its author lived in a simple house in the suburbs w/ a single maid-of-all-work instead of presiding over a well-run estate. Isabella would die at 28, shortly after the book's publication, never knowing the extent of her legacy. As her survivors faced bankruptcy, sexual scandal & a bitter family feud that lasted more than a century, Mrs. Beeton?s book became an institution. For an exploding population of the newly affluent, it prescribed not only how to cook & clean but ways to cope w/ the social flux of the emerging consumer culture: how to plan a party for 10, whip up a hair pomade or calculate how much money was needed to permit the hiring of a footman. In the 20th century, Mrs. Beeton would be accused of plagiarism, blamed for the dire state of British cookery & used to market everything from biscuits to meat pies. This ELEGANT, REVELATORY portrait of a lady journalist, as she lived & as she existed in the minds of her readers, is also a VIVID picture of Victorian home life & its attendant anxieties, nostalgia & aspirations--not so different from those felt in America today. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kathryn Hughes is the author of "George Eliot: The Last Victorian", which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, and "The Victorian Governess", which remains the standard text on the subject. Educated at Oxford University, she holds a Ph.D. in Victorian studies & now teaches biographical studies at the University of East Anglia. She is a Guardian book critic. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & to international destinations via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Stated First Edition. BEGUILING: MYSTERY: ROMANCE: TRADITION: MODERNITY: NEW Stated First Edition hardcover (Orig. August 2017) First Printing: NEW unclipped mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing Orig. $26.95 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, NEW binding w/ tight signatures, PRISTINE interior printed in Minion w/ handsome clarity on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 5.86" x 8.50" x 1.00", 0.46 kg, viii+260 (268) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: A BEGUILING mystery tale of family & romance, of east & west, tradition & modernity, by one of the great storytellers of our time: From the Nobel Prize winner & best-selling author of "Snow" & "My Name Is Red', a fable of fathers & sons & the desires that come between them. On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well-digger & his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating w/o luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before--not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other & exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world. But in the nearby town, where they buy provisions & take their evening break, the boy will find an irresistible diversion. The "Red-Haired Woman", an alluring member of a traveling theater company, catches his eye & seems as fascinated by him as he is by her. The young man's wildest dream will be realized, but, when in his distraction a horrible accident befalls the well-digger, the boy will flee, returning to Istanbul. Only years later will he discover whether he was in fact responsible for his master's death & who the redheaded enchantress was. * ABOUT ORHAN PAMUK: ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel "My Name Is Red" won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. "PAMUK has made his native city an indispensable literary territory, equal to Dostoyevsky's St. Petersburg, Joyce's Dublin, or Proust's Paris--a place where readers from all corners of the world can live another life, just as credible as their own." -from the Nobel Presentation Speech * HIGH PRAISE FOR ORPAN PAMUK: "Essential reading for our times: In Turkey, Pamuk is the equivalent of a rock star, guru, diagnostic specialist, & potential pundit. The Turkish public reads his novels as if taking its own pulse. -Margaret Atwood, NYTBR. "Pamuk in his dispassionate intelligence & arabesques of introspection suggests Proust." -John Updike, The New Yorker. "Pamuk's is an astonishing achievement." -TLS (London) * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this excellent book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or via USPS PRIORITY MAIL (for a nominal additional fee) & to all international destinations at our posted rates via efficient USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. AMBITIOUS: EXPLOSIVE: STUNNING: BLISTERING: FIERCE: EPIC: PURE UNADULTERATED NOIR: GROUND ZERO: THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE: NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. 2001) First Printing : NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. 2007) First Printing: NEW handsomely-designed mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $25.95 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, NEW cover w/ rich-brown woven-fabric wrapping spine & extending 1.26" onto front & back panels handsomely covered in burgundy paper with author's initials "JE" stamp-engraved at top-center of front panel, NEW perfect binding w/ tight signatures & burgundy-gold-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Cheltenham on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.48" x 9.50" x1.62", 1.14 kg, 672 pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, American Tabloid, James Ellroy's high-velocity best-selling novels have redefined noir for our age, propelling us within inches of the dark realities of America's recent history. Here in his ambitious & explosive novel 'The Cold Six Thousand', he puts the whole of the 1960s under his blistering lens. The result is a work of fierce, epic fiction, a speed-ball through one of the most tumultuous times in all of American history. It begins in Dallas: November 22, 1963. The heart of the American Dream detonated. Wayne Tedrow Jr., a young Vegas cop, arrives with a loathsome job to do. He's got $6,000 in cash & no idea that he is about to plunge into the cover-up conspiracy already brewing around Kennedy's assassination, no idea that this will mark the beginning of a hellish five-year ride through the private underbelly of public policy. Ellroy's furiously paced narrative tracks Tedrow's ride: Dallas back to Vegas, with the Mob and Howard Hughes, south w/ the Klan & J. Edgar Hoover, shipping out to Vietnam & returning home, the bearer of white powder, plotting new deaths as 1968 approaches. Tedrow stands witness, as the icons of an iconic era mingle with cops, killers, hoods, & provocateurs. His story is ground zero in Ellroy's stunning vision: historical confluence as American Nightmare. * HIGH PRAISE: "One of the great American writers of our time." -Los Angeles Times Book Review "James Ellroy is a master . . . using a stripped, spare noir style that hits like a cleaver but is honed like a scalpel." -Chicago Tribune "Nobody in his generation matches the breadth and depth of James Ellroy's way with noir." -Detroit News * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels--The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, & White Jazz--were international best-sellers. His novel American Tabloid was Time magazine's Best Book (fiction) of 1995; his memoir, My Dark Places, was a 'Time' Best book of the Year and a NYT Notable book for 1996. He lives in Kansas City. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st American Edition. DELICATE: SUBTLE: ABSORBING: ASTONISHING: AS-NEW: First American Edition (Orig. November 1992) First Printing, AS-NEW handsomely illus. mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp AS-NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $30.00 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf. VG text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging w/ slightest top-edge dusting-spotting, AS-NEW cover w/ army-gray linen wrapping spine & extending 2.0" onto front & back panels covered in pale-lemon laid paper & w/ "DIDEROT" gold-stamped at top-center of front panel & titles gold-stamped on spine, AS-NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & w/ crimson linen bands at spine-caps, IMPECCABLE cream-white end-papers, PRISTINE interior printed w/ handsome clarity on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.75", 1.01 kg, xiv+524 (538) pp. * Illustrated * ABOUT THE BOOK: Denis Diderot (1712-1784) was one of the most dazzling & attractive figures of the French Enlightenment. Known principally as the chief editor of the "Encyclopedie", the great "bible" of the age, he was an incomparable polymath (a dramatist, novelist, speculative philosopher, the founder of modern art criticism, & tireless correspondent. And his works, all of them informed by an uncannily modern sensibility, have influenced a staggering array of writers --from Goethe & Schiller to Balzac, Stendhal, Heine, Marx, Freud, & Kafka. In this masterful biography, P.N. Furbank provides a probing yet sympathetic account of Diderot's life & a brilliant analysis of his work, drawing intriguing connections between many previously disjointed notions about the man & his achievement. The son of a cutler (though a hopeless craftsman himself), Denis Diderot rose, after an interestingly complicated youth, to become an intimate of all the eminent intellectuals of the enlightenment. A close friend of Rousseau, Grimm, & of d'Alembert, & a familiar figure in the literary salons of Paris, he also met & corresponded w/ David Hume, David Garrick, & Lawrence Sterne. The support of yet one more remarkable acquaintance, Catherine the Great, led to what is perhaps the most amazing episode in this astonishing life; at the age of 60, he traveled to St. Petersburg &, in debate w/ the Empress, drew up plans for the conversion of Russia into an ideal republic. A deeply subversive genius, Diderot spent much of his working life under the threat of exile. Consequently his daring & inventive novels did not begin to reach the public until a decade after his death, & in the case of his inexhaustibly strange masterpiece, "Rameau's Nephew", not until two decades or more. These and others of his most original compositions (also unpublished in his lifetime) reveal aspects of Diderot virtually unknown to his contemporaries and often misunderstood today. Furbank's absorbing book meticulously draws the various strands together as it brings to life its astounding subject. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: P.N. Furbank was born in Surrey in 1920 & has worked as an academic, in publishing & as a freelance writer & critic. In 1986 he was appointed Visiting Professor in Literature at the Open University. His publications include "Samuel Butler" (1835-1902), "Italo Svevo: The Man and the Writer", "Reflections on the Word 'Image'", "E.M. Forster: A Life", "Unholy Pleasure: The Idea of Social Class" & (with W.R. Owens) "The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe". * HIGH PRAISE: "A delicate & subtle portrait of the great 18th-century encyclopaedist & Enlightenment 'philopsophe'. Furbank recovers for us the passionate sceptic & atheist as well as the humane intellectual & emotional innovator of his time, who might readily have been one of our century's moderns." -Leon Edel * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE securely wraps & packages this book w/ greatest care for prompt secure FREE shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL to all domestic destinations w/ USPS PRIORITY MAIL (domestic) & USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL available at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. BREATHTAKING: UNFORGETTABLE: MESMERIZING: Stated First Edition hardcover (Orig. May 4, 2021) Fifth Printing (August 2021): NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $28.95 pub. price at top-inside-front-flyleaf, IMMACULATE smooth-cut text block exterior, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, NEW perfect binding w/ bright-orange cloth bands at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper. * 6.24" x 9.50" x 1.46", 0.92 kg, 594 pp. * HIGHEST PRAISE: "BREATHTAKING, UNFORGETTABLE . . . the destinies of every one of these people intersect in ways that reverberate through a hundred years of story. Whether Shipstead is creating scenes in the Prohibition-era American West, in wartime London, or on a Hollywood movie set, her research is as invisible as it should be, allowing a fully immersive experience. Ingeniously structured and so damn entertaining, this novel is as ambitious as its heroines--but it never falls from the sky." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review) * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD is the New York Times best-selling author of the novels "Astonish Me" & "Seating Arrangements" & the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize & the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, & the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. SUPERB: ENDURINGLY VALUABLE: IMMENSELY ENTERTAINING: FINE virtually AS-NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. September 21, 1983) Fourth Printing (November 1983): FINE mylar-protected jacket illustrated w/ a SUPERB front panel portrait of John Updike "hugging the shore" & w/ EXCELLENT edges & corners but neatly price-clipped on the diagonal at top-right inside-front flyleaf, FINE pale-blue linen-over-boards cover w/ EXCELLENT edges & corners & titles ELEGANTLY gold-&-silver-stamped on spine, IMMACULATE unblemished text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top-&-bottom edges & cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE pure-white card-stock end-papers, FINE virtually AS-NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & ivory linen banding at spine-caps, PRISTINE interior printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 5.76" x 8.50" x 2.12", 1.26 kg, xx+922 (942) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: "Writing criticism is to writing fiction & poetry as 'hugging the shore' is to sailing in the open sea," John Updike writes in his foreword to this collection of mostly literary considerations. Since 1960 the novelist & poet began reviewing books for The New Yorker in 1960. His reviews appearing in the magazine during the1960s make up the bulk of this volume. When "Picked-Up Pieces", his last such round-up, was published, Joyce Carol Oates called it an irresistibly readable collection of reviews, critical & autobiographical essays & interviews & John Cheever spoke of Updike's extraordinary radiance. Even his fellow critics have been encouraging: George Steiner wrote of Updike's unforgiving yet strangely solicitous, almost tender intelligence; Richard Locke chimed that there was an immensely attractive, nonacademic attentiveness to his reviews ; & James Atlas complimented the article on Melville included here as the sort of ambitious scholarly reappraisal not seen in this country since the death of Edmund Wilson. Wilson, indeed, is one of the authors 'Hugging the Shore' treats w/ especial attentiveness & affection; others are Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, Muriel Spark, Anne Tyler, Italo Calvino, Henry Green, Robert Pinget, L.E. Sissman, R.K. Narayan, & Roland Barthes. Fond applause is also bestowed on movie actresses Louise Brooks & Doris Day & golfers Sam Snead & Arnold Palmer. As a literary critic Mr. Updike ranges through not only American & European fiction but also African & Oriental authors & studies in art, anthropology, & theology. The voyage ends in the snug harbor of the author's comments upon his own works & begins somewhere near deep water, w/ a flotilla of imaginary interviews, short fiction, humorous pieces, & essays. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania, & attended Harvard College & the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Arts in Oxford, England. In the mid-1950s he was a staff member of The New Yorker & in the years following appeared regularly on its pages as book critic & reviewer. He is the author of dozens of books, including 10 novels. His novel "Rabbit is Rich" won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the American Book Award for Fiction, & the National Book Critics Circle Award. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL (or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee) & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to international destinations at our posted rates.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Stated First Edition. BRILLIANT: DEFINITIVE: ENCHANTING: MASTERFUL: INCREDIBLE: FANTASTIC: SUMPTUOUS: ILLUMINATING: AUTHORITATIVE: NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. October 2007) First Printing: NEW beautifully-illus. unclipped gloss-laminated jacket showing orig. $28.95 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, NEW cover w/ clay-rose library-durable linen wrapping spine & extending 1.36" over front & back panels covered in ocher-gold paper, IMMACULATE text block exterior w/ cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE cream-white card-stock end-papers, PRISTINE interior printed w/ handsome clarity on EXCELLENT paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.36", 0.82 kg, xiv+432 pp * 24 gloss-laminated pp full color illus., 3 Maps * ABOUT THE BOOK: As the most celebrated European to explore Asia, Marco Polo was the original global traveler & the earliest bridge between East & West. A universal icon of adventure & discovery, he has inspired 6 centuries of popular fascination & spurious mythology. Here, from the acclaimed author of "Over the Edge of the World: Magellan?s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe", is the first fully AUTHORITATIVE biography of one of the most ENCHANTING figures in world history. In this MASTERFUL work, Marco Polo's INCREDIBLE odyssey along the Silk Road & through all the FANTASTIC circumstances of his life?is chronicled in SUMPTUOUS & ILLUMINATING detail. We meet him as a callow young man, the scion of a wealthy Venetian merchant family, only 17 when he sets out in 1271 w/ his father & uncle on their journey to Asia. We see him gain the confidence of Kublai Khan, the world?s most feared & powerful leader, & watch him become a trusted diplomat & intelligence agent in the ruler's inner circle. We are privy to his far-flung adventures on behalf of the Khan, living among the Mongols & other tribes, & traveling to magical cities, some far advanced over the West. We learn the customs of the Khan's court, both erotic & mercantile, & Polo's uncanny ability to adapt to them. We follow him on his journey back to Venice, laden w/ riches, the latest inventions, & 24 years' worth of extraordinary tales & we see his collaboration w/ the famed writer Rustichello of Pisa, who immediately saw in Polo the story of a lifetime; enlivened by his genius for observation, Polo's tales needed little embellishment. Recorded by Rustichello as the 2 languished as prisoners of war in a Genoese jail, the 'Travels' would explode the notion of non-Europeans as untutored savages & stand as the definitive description of China until the 19th century. Drawing on orig. sources in more than half a dozen languages & on his own travels along Polo's route in China & Mongolia, Bergreen explores the lingering controversies surrounding Polo's legend, settling age-old questions & testing others for significance. Synthesizing history, biography, & travelogue, this is the timely chronicle of a man who extended the boundaries of human knowledge & imagination. Destined to be the DEFINITIVE account of its subject for decades to come, Marco Polo takes us on a journey to the limits of history, & beyond. * HIGHEST PRAISE: "At last! Marco Polo comes to life. Laurence Bergreen has created a triumph of fascinations, a classic portrait that now surely can never be bettered." -Simon Winchester, author of "The Map That Changed the World". * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Laurence Bergreen is the prize-winning author of "Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe", "James Agee: A Life", "Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life", "Capone: The Man & the Era" & "As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin", ea. the definitive work on its subject. A graduate of Harvard University, he lives in NYC. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee w/ INTERNATIONAL RATES on request.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Stated First Edition. ABOUT THE BOOK: This legendary novel has been the source of much anxiety and contention for Nabokov's fans - and family. The late Vladimir Nabokov requested that this unfinished work be destroyed, but his son, Dmitri, did not oblige, although neither did he allow the work to be published - until now. "The Original of Laura" is about a wonderfully large man called Philip Wild, married to a very promiscuous woman, and whose meditations concern the nature of death. The novel was complete in Nabokov's mind, though he died before he could translate his vision on to paper. It is hard, however, to imagine any scholars, Nabokov enthusiasts or literature lovers being disappointed by even these fragments. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & to international destinations via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL at our quoted below cost rates.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Illustrated w/ 24 pages of photographs (illustrator). Stated First Edition. BRILLIANT: RIVITING: MASTERFUL: DRAMATIC: NEW: Stated First Edition hardcover (Orig. 2005) First Printing: NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners w/ orig. $26.95 pub. price at top right inside front flyleaf, NEW cover w/ library-durable black linen wrapping spine & extending 1.50" onto front & back panels handsomely-covered in sky-blue paper, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/ smooth-cut top & bottom edges & cut-page-style side-edging, NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures & pale-blue-&-white-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, IMPECCABLE white card-stock end-papers, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Elektra on EXCELLENT archival paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.52", 0.92 kg, 423 pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: Nothing in the annals of sports has aroused more passion than the heavyweight fights in New York in 1936 & 1938 between Joe Louis & Max Schmeling: bouts that symbolized & galvanized the hopes, hatreds, & fears of a world moving toward total war. David Margolick takes us into the careers of both men. We see Louis in his boyhood & amateur days in Detroit & Chicago, & the blossoming of his boxing genius. We see him, already a near-mythical figure, taking New York by storm in the 1930s, fighting before record crowds, the savior of a sport that had fallen into decline & a long sought after symbol of redemption for black America after the scandalous reign of Jack Johnson two decades earlier. And we witness how w/ talent, a gentle personality, & shrewd management, Louis managed to trump the brutal racism directed at him & came to dominate what had been primarily a white man?s sport, becoming a hero of unprecedented power & influence in black America. Schmeling, we learn, was a kind of chameleon, a cultural icon in Weimar Germany who seamlessly, disconcertingly, maintained his privileged status after the Nazi takeover. He pulled off a remarkable feat, relying on a Jewish manager & a Jewish promoter in New York while being extolled at home as a model of "racial superiority". Margolick meticulously examines all the complex ties that developed between Schmeling & the Nazis, shattering the myth that they frowned upon him before he upset Louis in 1936?he was a ten-to-one underdog?& ostracized him after losing to Louis two years later. We see the extraordinary buildup to the 1938 rematch--the worsening international tensions seemingly raising the stakes--in which Louis would need only 124 seconds to defeat Schmeling, while radio allowed the whole world to listen. Margolick vividly captures the outpouring of emotion that the 2 fighters aroused--in the white South, in the black & Jewish communities in the United States, in Germany, everywhere--& makes clear the cultural & social divisions the two men came to represent as the threat posed by the Nazis became increasingly clear, & as America began to feel the effects of a nascent civil rights movement. Schmeling?s postwar success in business & Louis's sad decline add a poignant coda. A book at once about sports & about a pivotal moment in 20th-century history, "Beyond Glory" pulses with energy from first to last. * HIGHEST PRAISE: "In this RIVETING book, David Margolick has done a MASTERFUL job of combining a VIVID description of two truly DRAMATIC events--the Joe Lewis-Max Schelling matches--w/ an overview of the world in which they occurred: in this case, a world rushing to war." -Robert A. Caro * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: DAVID MARGOLICK is a longtime contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he writes about culture, the media, & politics. He served as national legal affairs editor at The NYT, where he wrote the weekly "At the Bar" column for 7 years. He is the author most recently of "Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song". This is his 4th book. He lives in New York City. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps & packages this fine book w/ our greatest care for FREE shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL within the United States & its territories or via USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below cost fee.