New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, (1957) dj. Hardcover first edition - Originally published in 1942 under the title 'Minha Vida de Menina' this book is the diary kept by the author, Helena Morley, when she was between the ages of twelve and fifteen (1893-1895), and living in Diamantina, a small diamond mining town in southeastern Brazil. She describes her homework, her love of parades and dresses, her father who could scarcely make a living in the mines, and her most beloved grandmother. Pulitzer award-winning poet, Elizabeth Bishop began the translation as a 'labor of love' in 1952 shortly after arriving in Brazil, spending three years to the project as a way to master the Portuguese language and learn more about Brazilian culture. "The more I read the book the better I liked it. The scenes and events it described were odd, remote, and long ago, and yet fresh, sad, funny, and eternally true. The longer I stayed on in Brazil the more Brazilian the book seemed, yet much of it could have happened in any small provincial town or village, and at almost any period of historyat least before the arrival of the automobile and the moving-picture theatre."(Elizabeth Bishop) Includes a long introduction by Bishop, in which - among other things - she describes meeting then 76 year old Alice. Photographic endpapers. Rather hard to find in the first edition. xxxvii, 281 pp.

Washington, D.C.: Brassey's Inc, (2001) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A book by this maritime historian which "pays tribute to the Americans who challenged Cunard, the shipping company that held a monopoly on North Atlantic trade routes in the nineteenth century. In an era when civilisation first grappled with large-scale technology and creative industries promised a new standard of living, competition for control over maritime trade was fierce. Cornelius Vanderbilt and P. T. Barnum were among those who battled like mythical gods for control of their domains. These titans of the Atlantic left behind them a wreckage of human lives, lost ships, and squandered fortunes in their failed bids for supremacy of the seas. This book is a clear, succinct, lively, and sure-handed evocation of American maritime enterprise at its zenith." SIGNED on a preliminary page. Illustrated with photographs. Glossary of nautical terms, chronology, bibliography, index. xx, 280 pp. Map endpapers. ISBN: 1-574883836.

New York: Simon & Schuster, (2005) dj. Hardcover first edition - A love story inspired by historical characters and actual events, and based on family legends, privately held correspondence and diaries, a story of "the marriage between the wealthy Yankee military adventurer Philip Kearny and Southern belle Diana Bullitt set in the decades preceding the American Civil War. Diana is a courageous and compassionate Kentucky-born beauty (she shoots a stampeding buffalo one day and rescues an orphaned Pawnee Indian baby the next); Philip is a callous and self-involved soldier who's seen battle from Oregon to North Africa. His impulsive proposal to Diana sets the tone for a rocky marriage; early on the couple is tested by heartache (the death of their infant daughter Susan) and Philip's sexual indiscretions. But when Kearny loses an arm during combat in Mexico, his emotional instability and continued infidelity spell doom for the union. (Philip and Diana divorced in the late 1850s, a scandalous act in Victorian times)." (Publishers Weekly) Illustrated. Author's historical note. 369 pp. ISBN: 978-0743222822.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, (1979) dj. Hardcover first edition - A book which "provides the first detailed analysis of the changes that transformed one of the most important Mexican pueblos in the Southwest into a Chicano urban barrio.. . the author traces the major socio-economic, political, and racial factors that evolved during the post-Mexican War decades and that created a subordinate status for Mexican Americans in a burgeoning American city."(Western Historical Quarterly) "Los Angeles Chicanos emerge . . as internally diverse, active participants in the simultaneous struggles to maintain their socio-cultural fabric and to capture a part of the American Dream. The author effectively demonstrates that the Chicano decline occurred not because of cultural weaknesses but as the almost inevitable result of Anglo prejudice, numerical domination, and control of political and economic institutions." (American Historical Review) Illustrated with photographs, includes maps, charts, tables, bibliography, index.
xiv, 217 pp. ISBN: 0-520038169.

New York: Random House, (1991) dj. Hardcover first edition - Following the premise that someone removed appendages from Napoleon's corpse, this literary tour-de-force follows the errant body parts through Victorian London, to post-Civil War New York, to the Colorado territory, and back again - A "rowdy, wide-ranging, biting, and often bizarre story of post-Civil War America and the myth of Manifest Destiny. The dreams that drew people to the West were varied and often filled with romantic illusions: the chance for a better life, to make a fast buck, to escape civilization. The dreamers and schemers are all represented here, many based on real people. Protagonist Peter Doyle was a friend of Walt Whitman, who appears along with Horace Greeley, Nathan Meeker, and, even though she never left Amherst, Emily Dickinson." (Library Journal) Afterword. 417 pp. ISBN: 0-394582497.

New York: Simon & Schuster, (2011) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A sweeping account of the American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900. Among them were Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, and Charles Sumner, whose experience with black students at the Sorbonne, led to his becoming a powerful voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate. Others included James Fenimore Cooper and his friend Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James as well as Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was able to escape from the notoriety Uncle Toms Cabin had brought her, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, and more. SIGNED on the title page. Illustrqted with both color and black and white photographs and maps. Source notes, bibliography, index. 557 pp. Photographic endpapers. ISBN: 978-1416571766.

New York: Simon & Schuster, (2011) dj. Hardcover first edition - A sweeping account of the American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900. Among them were Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, and Charles Sumner, whose experience with black students at the Sorbonne, led to his becoming a powerful voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate. Others included James Fenimore Cooper and his friend Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James as well as Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was able to escape from the notoriety Uncle Toms Cabin had brought her, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, and more. Illustrated with both color and black and white photographs and maps. Source notes, bibliography, index. 557 pp. Photographic endpapers. ISBN: 978-1416571766.

New York: The Viking Press, (1986.). Hardcover first edition - His third and final volume on the study on science and the exploration of the American West that he began with his Pulitzer prize-winning 'Exploration and Empire' and continued in 'Army Exploration in the American West.' This volume has a wider focus, influenced in part by the United State's current global power - in this book, he covers over two centuries - from the 17th to the 19th - as he examines scientific development on an international scale, relating advances in Europe to the American scene, and showing how the explorations of Europeans affected the growth of the American West and the work of American scientists, explorers, and artists. Includes several 'portfolios' of art. Bibliographical notes, index. 524 pp. Map endpapers. ISBN: 0-670810681.

New York: The Viking Press, (1998.) dj. Hardcover first edition - Authors first book, a New Times Notable book of 1998, and the first of a popular and very entertaining series. The plot summary from the dustjacket flap only gives a hint of the pleasures to be found within: 'In the idyllic summer of 1896 in Portland, Maine, several people are embarking on adventure of a most audacious and entertaining nature. The lovely redheaded Cordelia Underwood finds, in the newly discovered sea chest of her late uncle, the deed to a large parcel of land. ... Cordelia and her family soon suspect that a mystery surrounds her land, that something on it might hold the key to a secret two centuries old. The large-hearted and wise Mister Walton, who never hears of an excursion he isn't eager to join, finds he attracts a trio of hapless friends, the exuberant founders of the Moosepath League. As these memorable and appealing chaacters wend their way up the coast of Maine into the northern wilds, they encounter old salts and bootleggers, tellers of tale tales, grande dames, and prospective beaus, they witness apparitions, meet opinionated relatives, search for Maude, the fugitive bear-and, of course, espy the moose that puts the moose the Moosepath League.' Author's note. 400 pp. Wraparound dustjacket illustration by David Beck. ISBN: 0-670-880973.