Arts
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1901. 1st edition; no dust jacket; ornately decorated gray-blue cloth with gilt lettering; illustrated end papers; 22 tipped-in color plates with tissue guards; half-title lightly foxed; first signature loose with some creasing to the pages; text clean. G
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never wrote a memoir, but she told her life story and revealed herself in intimate ways through the nearly 100 books she brought into print during the last two decades of her life as an editor at Viking and Doubleday. Based on archives and interviews with Jackie's authors, colleagues, and friends, "Reading Jackie" mines this significant period of her life to reveal both the serious and the mischievous woman underneath the glamorous public image.
Though Jackie had a reputation for avoiding publicity, she willingly courted controversy in her books. She was the first editor to commission a commercially-successful book telling the story of Thomas Jefferson's relationship with his female slave. Her publication of Gelsey Kirkland's attack on dance icon George Balanchine caused another storm. Jackie rarely spoke of her personal life, but many of her books ran parallel to, echoed, and emerged from her own experience. She was the editor behind bestsellers on the assassinations of Tsar Nicholas II and John Lennon, and in another book she paid tribute to the allure of Marilyn Monroe and Maria Callas. Her other projects take us into territory she knew well: journeys to Egypt and India, explorations of the mysteries of female beauty and media exploitation, into the minds of photographers, art historians, and the designers at Tiffany & Co.
Many Americans regarded Jackie as the paragon of grace, but few knew her as the woman sitting on her office floor laying out illustrations, or flying to California to persuade Michael Jackson to write his autobiography. "Reading Jackie" provides a compelling behind-the-scenes look at Jackie at work: how she commissioned books and nurtured authors, as well as how she helped to shape stories that spoke to her strongly. Jackie is remembered today for her marriages to JFK and to Aristotle Onassis, but her real legacy is the books that reveal the tastes, recollections, and passions of an independent woman.
1st edition. VG/VG
Real Art, volume 2, no. 2, 1992; editor: Malcom Gibson; published in Carlisle, Cumbria. Limited Edition of 300; this is no. 278/300. Features original art by Susan Plain, James Hall, Elspeth Law, Maddi Nicholson, Tim Wright, Andrew Law, Richard Hickman, Paul Scott, Malcom Gibson, Nigel Bents. Real art pieces pasted in; all pieces present; wraps; corners slightly bumped; very light wear to top edges; clean, bright. VG
Jan Sobota (1939-2012) was a master bookbinder and book artist. This publication is part of a series of annual publications of NOBS, the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society.
Akron: Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society, 1990. Introduction by Robert G. Cheshier. Signed limited edition, no. 138 of 150 copies. String bound; edges lightly toned. VG
Have you ever had a great idea for a book but then thought, "Nobody would ever read that"? Well . . . you're probably right. But you're not alone! Enter Rejected Books, a rollicking collection of the best book covers for books that were never meant to be. These awful pitches were turned down for any number of reasons: they're either too long, too sad, too raunchy, or just plain bad. The compilation of imagined book covers in Rejected Books will have you scratching your head and guffawing with every page turn. Though Pranks with Sausages and Holy Bible II don't actually exist, Rejected Books offers up a professionally produced series of photos imagining just what these wacky ideas (and plenty more) could look like. Rejected Books includes delightfully weird covers of imagined books like: - The Sculptors Who Couldn't Do Hands
- Cooking with Breast Milk
- Possessed Toys: A Buying Guide
- Unfortunate Gluing Accidents
- Camel Toes Through History
Enjoy the worst book pitches of all time and rest assured that anyone can have a future in publishing . . . even if your ideas are totally horrible.
Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach (July 22, 1876 – July 1, 1952) was an American collector, scholar, and seller of rare books and manuscripts. In London, where he frequently attended the auctions at Sotheby's, he was known as "The Terror of the Auction Room." In Paris, he was called “Le Napoléon des Livres”, which translates to “The Napoleon of Books." Many others referred to him as “Dr. R.”, a “Robber Baron” and “the Greatest Bookdealer in the World”. [Wikipedia]
Rosenbach is credited with popularizing the collecting of American literature at a time when only European literature was considered collectible. He also advanced the idea of book collecting as a means of investment and published several articles and books to increase interest in rare books and manuscripts. [Wikipedia]
This comprehensive biography, published in 1960 by World Publishing Company in Cleveland, is a must for anyone interested in rare books and book collecting. Edition limited to 250 copies, of which this is number 223; signed by authors, Edwin Wolf 2nd, and John F. Fleming. Gray slipcase; black cloth spine over dark red cloth with gilt lettering; binding tight; text pristine. VG/VG
Sylvia Beach was intimately acquainted with the expatriate and visiting writers of the Lost Generation, a label that she never accepted. Like moths of great promise, they were drawn to her well-lighted bookstore and warm hearth on the Left Bank. Shakespeare and Company evokes the zeitgeist of an era through its revealing glimpses of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Andre Gide, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, D. H. Lawrence, and others already famous or soon to be.
In his introduction to this new edition, James Laughlin recalls his friendship with Sylvia Beach. Like her bookstore, his publishing house, New Directions, is considered a cultural touchstone.
"As a bookseller, I loved Shelf Life for the chance to peer behind the curtain of Diwan, Nadia Wassef's Egyptian bookstore--the way that the personal is inextricable from the professional, the way that failure and success are often lovers, the relationship between neighborhoods and books and life. Nadia's story is for every business owner who has ever jumped without a net, and for every reader who has found solace in the aisles of a bookstore."
--Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here
--Jenny Lawson, author of Broken (in the best possible way)
The warm and winning story of opening a modern bookstore where there were none, Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller recounts Nadia Wassef's troubles and triumphs as a founder and manager of Cairo-based Diwan The streets of Cairo make strange music. The echoing calls to prayer; the raging insults hurled between drivers; the steady crescendo of horns honking; the shouts of street vendors; the television sets and radios blaring from every sidewalk. Nadia Wassef knows this song by heart. In 2002, with her sister, Hind, and their friend, Nihal, she founded Diwan, a fiercely independent bookstore. They were three young women with no business degrees, no formal training, and nothing to lose. At the time, nothing like Diwan existed in Egypt. Culture was languishing under government mismanagement, and books were considered a luxury, not a necessity. Ten years later, Diwan had become a rousing success, with ten locations, 150 employees, and a fervent fan base. Frank, fresh, and very funny, Nadia Wassef's memoir tells the story of this journey. Its eclectic cast of characters features Diwan's impassioned regulars, like the demanding Dr. Medhat; Samir, the driver with CEO aspirations; meditative and mythical Nihal; silent but deadly Hind; dictatorial and exacting Nadia, a self-proclaimed bitch to work with--and the many people, mostly men, who said Diwan would never work. Shelf Life is a portrait of a country hurtling toward revolution, a feminist rallying cry, and an unapologetic crash course in running a business under the law of entropy. Above all, it is a celebration of the power of words to bring us home.