Low Countries by Eugene Rachlis (16 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Strong Very Good with very light shelf edge and corner wear. Light spine ends wear. Interior is unmarked with clean white pages.

Hardcover/Light Scuffs. Condition: VG-. Probably 1st (NAP). Part of the Life World Library series An excellent cultural reference. Size: 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.

Hard Cover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Boards have light wear, Pages are clean, text has no markings, binding is sound. Size: 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.

Hard Cover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Boards have light wear, Pages are clean, text has no markings, binding is sound. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

Hardcover. Condition: Used - Good. No Jacket. No dust jacket on this edition, printing is directly on boards. Boards have shelf wear.

Oversize Hardcover in pictorial boards, no DJ as issued. Fine unmarked mint copy. Descriptive picture portrait of this region, part of multivolume set of world nations and regions. 8-1/2 x 11, 160 pp, index, appendix, b/w & color photos, maps, endpaper maps. Several dozen other volumes are available at lower individual cost if purchased as a set; please inquire.…

hard. Condition: See Pic.

Hardcover. Very Good with no dust jacket. Illustrated by Photographs B/w & Color (illustrator).

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. We have 75,000 books to choose from -- Ship within 24 hours -- Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Condition: Good. 1965. No Edition Remarks. 160 pages. No dust jacket. Pictorial cloth boards with lettering. Contains black and white and colour plates. Clean pages and plates with light tanning and mild foxing throughout. More pronounced to free endpapers and pastedowns. Binding remains firm. Boards have mild edge-wear with slight rubbing to surfaces and bumping to corners. Lettering is bright and clear. Minor tanning to spine and edges with crushing to spine ends. Visible wear marks to boards. …

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Later. Very good plus oversized Hardcover has no dust jacket spine lightly bumped.

Hardback. Condition: Good. The Low Countries - Life World Library (1965) by Eugene Rachlis ? Time-Life International ISBN: None Condition: Good The Low Countries, 1965. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg: three relatively modest pieces of Europe containing an unreasonable quantity of history, commerce, painting, canals, bicycles, beer, diplomacy and extremely determined attempts to prevent the North Sea from reclaiming the premises. Published by Time-Life International as part of its superb Life World Library series, Eugene Rachlis?s The Low Countries takes on the wonderfully ambitious task of explaining this compact but remarkably complicated corner of Europe in one generously illustrated volume. And "Low Countries" is not merely a poetic description. Large areas of the Netherlands really are low. Impressively low. Alarmingly low. In places, the sea is effectively upstairs. The Dutch response to this geographical inconvenience has historically been not to move somewhere higher, but to construct dikes, canals, pumping stations and enormous engineering works and inform the water that it will be staying over there. This arrangement has mostly worked. By 1965 the region was also undergoing one of the great transformations of post-war Europe. The destruction and austerity of the Second World War were receding, economies were expanding, living standards were rising and the countries of Western Europe were becoming increasingly economically interconnected. The modern European project was already taking shape. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had been pioneering regional cooperation through Benelux , and all three were founding members of the European Economic Community. This therefore captures the Low Countries at a fascinating moment: firmly modern, increasingly prosperous, yet still visibly connected to a much older Europe. And there is a lot of older Europe. For relatively small countries, Belgium and the Netherlands have spent an impressive amount of history appearing in everybody else?s history books. Spanish rule. Religious wars. Merchant empires. Napoleon. Two World Wars. Colonial adventures. Revolutions. Royal families. International treaties. And approximately six centuries during which various European powers seem to have looked at the region and thought, "We should probably march an army through there." Geographical position is not always an advantage. The Netherlands naturally supplies some of the most immediately recognisable imagery: canals, windmills, flat landscapes, bicycles and towns apparently constructed after somebody discovered bricks and became extremely enthusiastic about them. Amsterdam is particularly photogenic, although its modern reputation as an international centre of tourism, nightlife and stag weekends was not quite what a respectable Time-Life photographer in 1965 was generally attempting to document. Instead we get the older city: canals, merchants? houses, bridges, ports and the extraordinary legacy of the Dutch Golden Age. There is also Rotterdam, rebuilt dramatically after the devastation of the Second World War and developing into one of the world?s great ports. This is the Netherlands as a trading nation, something it has been remarkably good at for centuries. When your country contains few mountains, limited natural resources and quite a lot of water where the land ought to be, apparently the sensible response is to become extremely efficient and sell things to everybody else. Belgium presents another wonderfully complicated national story. Dutch-speaking Flanders. French-speaking Wallonia. Brussels sitting in the middle trying to keep everybody organised while simultaneously becoming one of the principal centres of European diplomacy. For a small country, Belgium has achieved the impressive feat of possessing several languages, multiple layers of government and enough institutional complexity to make outsiders wonder whether anyone actually knows who is responsible for collecting the bins. Yet Belgium also possesses magnificent medieval cities, extraordinary architecture, major industrial regions and an artistic heritage that would embarrass countries several times its size. Bruges and Ghent provide the medieval grandeur. Antwerp supplies trade, diamonds and one of Europe?s great ports. Brussels supplies government, international institutions and the alarming discovery that putting mayonnaise on chips is actually rather good. Then there is Luxembourg. Tiny Luxembourg. The country that tends to appear on maps only after you have zoomed in slightly. It would be very easy to overlook Luxembourg beside its larger neighbours, except Luxembourg has spent much of the modern era politely refusing to be overlooked. Strategically positioned, multilingual and increasingly important in European finance and institutions, it demonstrates that a country does not necessarily need large quantities of territory provided it knows what to do with the territory it has. In 1965, of course, all three countries still looked noticeably different from today. The cars were different. The clothes were different. The shops were different. Factories that were then thriving may now have disappeared. Ports have expanded enormously. Cities have changed. And many ordinary scenes photographed simply to illustrate contemporary life have since become historical records. That is one of the joys of books like this. A photographer carefully composes a picture of a cathedral. Sixty years later somebody ignores the cathedral completely and says: "LOOK AT THAT VOLVO." The editors could never know which details future readers would find interesting. A road sign. A tram. A petrol station. A shop window. A dockyard crane. A man delivering something on a bicycle while wearing clothing nobody would now voluntarily cycle in. Everything eventually becomes social history if you leave it alone long enough. The book also comes from the golden age of Time-Life confidence . No subject was too complicated. No country was. …

Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Dust Jacket. Life World Library; 10.8 X 8.5 X 0.5 inches; 160 pages; Illustrated Boards, Book Tight, Illustrated with Color Photographs & Illustrations, Text is clean no markings seen.

Hardback. Condition: Very Good. No Cover.

Time Life, 1965. A near fine copy only marked by light tanning to the front board.

Condition: BUONO USATO. Life World Library INGLESE Coperta cartonata, illustrata a colori al piatto anteriore, maggiormente imbrunita al dorso e con ordinari segni del tempo ai margini, alle punte e alle cuffie. Tagli regolari, pagine ben salde alla costa e con naturale leggera imbrunitura. Libro completamente fruibile, appartenente alla collana "Life World Library", realizzato da Eugene Rachlis e dai redattori di LIFE, con introduzione di Philip Young (Ex Ambasciatore degli Stati Uniti in Olanda), presenti numerosissime illustrazioni a colori e in nero nel testo, cartine a colori ai contropiatti e ai risguardi, numero pagine 1.…