- Keyword = Biography - autobiography - memoirs
-
IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN: The Autobiography of Oscar Ameringer.
Edition: 3rd printing (same year as the first)
New York: Henry Holt, (1940). SIGNED hardcover - Autobiography of this German-American Socialist editor, author, and labor organizer from the late 1890s until his death in 1943. He was a self-taught musician, portrait painter, writer, and political organizer, known for his wit as a speaker and writer. Foreword by Carl Sandburg. Illustrated with a frontispiece portrait and photographs. SIGNED by Ameringer on a blank preliminary page. Index. xxvii, 476 pp.
Condition: Very good in rust-colored cloth with gilt lettering on spine (some fraying to cloth at top of spine, dulling of lettering), no dj.
Book ID: 87931More details Price: $25.00 -
BART. MEMOIRS OF FRANK H. BARTHOLOMEW. President of United Press, 1955-58; United Press International, 1958-62.
Edition: First printing.
Sonoma, CA: Vine Book Press, (1983) dj. Hardcover first edition - Bartholomew grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, and his careeer in journalism included covering the 1925 earthquake in Santa Barbara, but was most significant as a World War II correspondent in the Pacific. New Guinea, and Okinawa. Includes an account of the Battle of Okinawa, as well as personal reminiscences of his meetings with Winston S. Churchill and accounts of the 'fail safe' patrols of the post War era. Bartholomew was also the founder of the Buena Vista Vinyards winery. Illustrated with photographs. 231 pp.
Condition: Fine in fine dust jacket.
Book ID: 88187More details Price: $27.50 -
FRIENDS & FIDDLERS.
Edition: First edition.
Boston: Little Brown, 1935. Hardcover first edition - An account by this National Book Award-winning biographer of growing up in a family of amateur musicians. She herself was an active amateur chamber music player throughout her life and this book captures the joys and comedy of making music for the fun of it. Small format. 261 pp.
Condition: Very good in blue cloth with silver lettering on the spine and a small violin on the front cover (edgewear, corners very slightly bumped), no dust jacket.
Book ID: 87039More details Price: $18.50 -
RUINED TIME: The 1950s and the Beat.
Edition: First printing, a large trade paperback original.
Condition: Fine in illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 88693More details Price: $35.00 -
THE ANSWER TO "CLARA, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?"
Edition: First printing.
Condition: Very good in red cloth with gilt lettering (some dulling to the lettering on the spine). Tipped inside the front cover is a printed letter by the President of Alpha Phi, noting that this book was being given to the attendees of the 1958 convention). Quite scarce now in the original edition.
Book ID: 88585More details Price: $125.00 -
THE OTHER HALF: A Self-Portrait.
Edition: First US printing.
New York: Harper & Row, (1977) dj. Hardcover first edition - The second autobiography by this English art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. who is best known for the landmark television program "Civilizatipm." - "beginning with the hazardous evacuation of the National Gallery pictures to the safety of a slate quarry in Wales at the beginning of World War II and ending with a calm look at a lifetime of accomplishment". Illustrated with photographs. Index. 259 pp. ISBN: 006010774X.
Condition: Fine in burgundy cloth with gilt lettering on spine in a near fine dust jacket (price-clipped).
Book ID: 88909More details Price: $16.50 -
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE AS A WOMAN: The New York Years.
Edition: Advance Reading Copy (trade paperback format. )
New York: Viking, (2001). SIGNED first edition - A memoir by this influential poet which explores the first three decades of her life and chronicles the Beat years - including her relationships with Frank O'Hara, Audre Lorde, Franz Kline and others. SIGNED on the title page. An uncommon advance issue, and especially so signed. 422 pp.
Condition: Very near fine in glossy illustrated wrappers (slight bumping to corners).
Book ID: 88453More details Price: $150.00 -
FAMILY.
Edition: 1st trade paperback printing.
New York: Harper Collins, (1995). Using letters and other family documents, as well as interviews with living family members, Frazier reconstructs the history of his family during the 200 years they lived in America - including their role in the Civil War, the town in Ohio founded by an ancestor and more. Photographs, notes, 386 pages. ISBN: 0-060976772.
Condition: Very near fine (remainder line)
Book ID: 88431More details Price: $15.00 -
HOW I SHED MY SKIN: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood.
Edition: Advance Reading Copy (trade paperback format. )
Condition: Fine in illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 88104More details Price: $20.00 -
THE ZANZIBAR CHEST: A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands.
Edition: First printing.
Condition: Fine in a very near fine dust jacket (small spot delaminated on front cover of dj from sticker removal).
Book ID: 88385More details Price: $40.00 -
RESTLESS DAYS: A German Girl's Autobiography
Edition: First printing.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1935. Hardcover first edition - An autobiography of a young German girl, "reaching maturity after the war, deeply moving, grimly dramatic. The picture of wartime Germany, of children standing in line for food, stealing butter and vinegar from the pitiful family larder, wearing clothes made out of any available bit of material - this has never been told, in quite so direct and evidently authentic a way. Then comes the post-war fever of revolution, civil war, communism quickly crushed, the youth movement," (Kirkus) and finally the realization that she can never support Hitler, even as her family and most of her friends see him as the hero that Germany needs, and so it ends as she is leaving Germany. xi, 431 pp
Condition: Very good in original black cloth with the thin title strip around binding still intact (minor sunning to spine), no dust jacket.
Book ID: 88827More details Price: $85.00 -
A PITCHER'S STORY.
Edition: First printing.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967, dj. Hardcover first edition - "The greatest pitcher in the Major Leagues tells the inside story of his rise to the top." Autobiography from his birth in the Dominican Republic when Trujillo was dictator to his induction into his country's air force, as a baseball player to his discovery by major league baseball. Illustrated with black and white photographs. 215 pp.
Condition: Near fine in very good dust jacket (some discoloration to the gutters from binder's glue, minor wear to dj, toning to dj and folded slightly offcenter)
Book ID: 88855More details Price: $40.00 -
THE HONEY BUS: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees
Edition: Advance Reading Copy (trade paperback format. )
Toronto: Park Row Books, (2019). SIGNED first edition - A book which is part memoir, part beekeeping odyssey, the story of "a girl, her grandfather and one of natures most mysterious and beguiling creatures: the honeybee. Meredith May recalls the first time a honeybee crawled on her arm. She was five years old, her parents had recently split and suddenly she found herself in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric beekeeper who made honey in a rusty old military bus in the yard. . . The bees became a guiding force in May's life, teaching her about family and community, loyalty and survival and the unequivocal relationship between a mother and her child." SIGNED on the title page. 321 pp plus author's note.
Condition: Fine in illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 87465More details Price: $28.50 -
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BILLY McCUNE.
Edition: First printing.
San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, (1973) dj. Hardcover first edition - An indictment of our prison system - McCune, a "low IQ" man, was convicted of rape and sentenced to death although his sentence was eventually commuted (but not until after he mutilated himself), and even after the commutation he spent months in isolationm but despite this he continued to write his story. Illustrated with photographs by Lyon, who also wrote the introduction. Many of McCune's drawings were included in Lyon's 1971 book 'Conversations with the Dead." 154 pp. ISBN: 0-879320494.
Condition: Near fine in black cloth in a good only dust jacket with a large chip to the lower corner f the front cover.
Book ID: 88516More details Price: $21.50 -
PAPA WAS A FARMER.
Edition: First printing.
Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books in association with Taylor Publishing Co., Dallas, 1988. dj. Hardcover first edition - The story of an immigrant Jewish family's life in America's heartland. "With his wife and small daughter, Max Weisberg left Russia in 1904, went first to Cincinnati and eventually to a 60-acre farm in southern Ohio. The rural community, previously unfamiliar with European Jewish immigrants, accepted the family without prejudice. Weisberg's daughter 'Goldie' recalls her bucolic childhood with affection: the one-room schoolhouse, chores, adapting to local customs. . . an appealing piece of rural Americana. (Publishers Weekly) Illustrated with drawings by Marcia Erickson. 318 pp. ISBN: 0-912697954.
Condition: Fine in fine dust jacket.
Book ID: 88928More details Price: $23.50 -
BIG MITCH.
Edition: First printing.
San Francisco: By the author, (1936). Hardcover first edition - Autobiography, written and published when the author was a city councilman and police commissioner in Salinas, CA. Born in the Ozarks of Missouri, he led an adventurous life including time on the Mexican border, working in the California oil fields at McKittreck, and a short but successful period as a heavyweight boxer, while he was still working as an insurance salesman. At one point, he wound up on a Georgia chain gang for riding on a freight train - later he was the chief of police (and the only police officer) in McKittreck. INSCRIBED on the half title page and dated in 1937. 303 pp.
Condition: Good condition overall - spine slant and some sunning to the covers - but a tight and sturdy copy. No dust jacket.
Book ID: 87547More details Price: $27.50 -
BIG MITCH.
Edition: First printing.
San Francisco: By the author, (1936). Hardcover first edition - Autobiography, written and published when the author was a city councilman and police commissioner in Salinas, CA. Born in the Ozarks of Missouri, he led an adventurous life including time on the Mexican border, working in the California oil fields at McKittreck, and a short but successful period as a heavyweight boxer, while he was still working as an insurance salesman. At one point, he wound up on a Georgia chain gang for riding on a freight train - later he was the chief of police (and the only police officer) in McKittreck. INSCRIBED on the half title page. 303 pp.
Condition: Very good - some sunning to the covers, and slight spine slant - but a tight and sturdy copy. No dust jacket.
Book ID: 87334More details Price: $30.00 -
GLOW OF CANDLIGHT: The Story of Patricia Murphy.
Edition: Hardcover.
Condition: Near fine (over-opened before half title page) in a very good dust jacket with some small chips to ends of dj spine.
Book ID: 88294More details Price: $75.00 -
DISASTERAMA!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997.
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback original.
Condition: Fine in illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 87482More details Price: $30.00 -
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF SHELBY FOOTE AND WALKER PERCY.
Edition: First printing.
New York: W W Norton & Co / Center for Documentary Studies, (1998) dj. Hardcover first edition - Letters between these two Mississippi writers, friends since their teenage years, which began in the late 1940s and continued until Percy's death in 1990. "Jay Tolson has selected, edited, and annotated the letters of these two remarkable writers to shed light on their relationship and their literary careers." Illustrated with photographs, index. 310 pp. ISBN: 0-393317684.
Condition: Fine in fine dust jacket.
Book ID: 88430More details Price: $25.00 -
THE BEECHERS: An American Family in the Nineteenth Century.
Edition: First printing.
New York: Harper & Row, (1981) dj. Hardcover first edition - A "major biography of a fascinating, complex, and enormously influential family [which]covers an entire era of American history - the nineteenth century. Almost every member of the Beecher family, from the patriarch, Lyman (1772-1863), through his eleven surviving sons and daughters, became intimately involved in most of the major issues of their day: the liberalizing of early Puritanism, antislavery ferment, the Civil War, and Women's Rights." Among the notable members were Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Isabella Beecher Hooker. Illustrated with photographs. Notes and sources, selected bibliography, index. xvii, 653 pp. ISBN: 0-060148594.
Condition: Very good in very good dust jacket (price-clipped)
Book ID: 88469More details Price: $23.50 -
YES, CHEF: A Memoir.
Edition: 5th printing.
New York: Random House, (2012) dj. SIGNED hardcover - A book which was a James Beard Award Nominee and named one of the ten best books of The Year By Vogue. "It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmothers house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations." Boldly INSCRIBED on the front endpaper. 319 pp. ISBN: 978-0385342605.
Condition: Fine in fine dust jacket.
Book ID: 88464More details Price: $30.00 -
AMERICAN QUEEN: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague -- Civil War "Belle of the North" and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal,
Edition: Advance Reading Copy (trade paperback format. )
Condition: Very good in illustrated wrappers (crease to lower corner of front cover)
Book ID: 88084More details Price: $20.00 -
EMINENT VICTORIANS: The Illustrated Edition.
Edition: First thus.
London: Bloomsbury, (1988) dj. Hardcover first edition - An illustrated edition - in both full color and black and white - of Strachey's most famous and influential book, originally published in 1918, and one which revolutionized the writing of biography. His barbed prose removed these revered Victorians from their pedastals as he wrote about them with scepticism rather than reverence, selecting figures from Church, Medicine, Public School, and Empire, - that is, Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and General Gordon of Khartoum. Foreword by Frances Partridge. Large format. 192 pp. ISBN: 0-747502188.
Condition: Fine in a fine dust jacket (as new.)
Book ID: 88547More details Price: $25.00 -
COUNTRY DAYS.
Edition: First US printing.
New York: St Martin's, (1995) dj. Hardcover first edition - A collection of reminsences of mid-20th century Ireland, one which "takes her readers along the byways of Ireland and into the heart of the country. In stories by turn comic and poignant, she explores the character of family and friends, testing the bonds of concern and kindness which hold people together." 156 pp.
Condition: Very near fine in a like dustjacket.
Book ID: 88123More details Price: $16.50 -
FACES OF PHILIP: A memoir of Philip Toynbee.
Edition: First US printing.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984. dj. Hardcover first edition - An affectionate and entertaining account of this British novelist, poet and critic, a staunch anti-fascist, a Communist in the 1930s, who turned to religion at the end of his life, the son of the noted historian Arnold Toynbee - and a man whose life was a "web of contradictions." Based on both Mitford's own memories, and on his diary. Index. xiii, 175 pp. ISBN: 0-394532376.
Condition: Fine in fine dust jacket.
Book ID: 87213More details Price: $20.00 -
LOOK UP AND HOPE! The Motto of the Volunteer Prison League: The Life of Maud Ballington Booth.
Edition: First printing.
New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, (1961) dj. SIGNED photograph, hardcover first edition - A biography by a family friend of Maud Ballington Booth (1865-1948), a pioneering social worker and reformer, co-founder with her husband General Ballington Booth of the Volunteers of America. As the title indicates, this focuses on Booth's work for prison reform and to help former prisoners adjust to the world outside. Frontispiece portrait. Laid in is a small snapshot of a pile of these books, with a friendly typed note on the verso, and SIGNED by the author, Susan Welty. Sources, index. 284 pp.
Condition: Near fine in blue cloth in a good only dust jacket with some overall edgewear.
Book ID: 87604More details Price: $30.00