New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1943. Hardcover first edition - Herbert's first book, a classic of Australian literature, based in part on his experiences as Protector of Aborigines in Darwin, and winner of the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for Australia's Best Novel of 1939. An account of life on the northern frontier of Australia over a period of 25 years from the first World War to the beginning of the second. While the synopsis describes this as a "story built around the efforts of a halfcaste, the son of a white man and a bush woman, to win a place for himself. It is intensely interesting, bursting with life, tough, full of humor and violence, and provides as authentic a picture of Australian frontier life as has ever been made available" Carl Van Doren in his introduction comments that the question of the mixed race descendants is handled by Herbert with "a fiery sense of the injustice and inhumanity with which these innocents victims are treated." vii, 649 pp. Map endpapers. Laid in is a newspaper article from 1985 with an account of the friendship between a young former bank teller and Herbert after the death of his wife.

New York: Atria (Simon & Schuster), (2023). SIGNED first edition - "An exhaustive case study of policing in this Bay Area city - 'More has been done to try to reform the Oakland Police Department than any other police force in the United States,' but the main parallel seems to be: True reform is nearly impossible. By zooming in geographically, but also stretching out their timeline the town had a racist mayor who unleashed police officers against Chinese immigrants back in 1879 the authors conjure a sense of chronic tragedy. A culture of corruption and violence keeps flourishing despite repeated good faith efforts to stop the bad apples, who continue to show up, generation after generation, to spoil the barrel." The crimes of the officers involved were only exposed because of a young rookie (who left the force) and all of them were acquitted at trial - although over the years Oakland paid millions of dollars to settle police brutality cases. SIGNED on the half title page by Darwin BondGraham. Extensive notes. 445 pp.

New York: Putnam, (2017). First edition - The first novel by this author born in South Africa but living in Canada, set in Apartheid-era South Africa - "Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a ten-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. . . the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robins parents are left dead and Beautys daughter goes missing.. . a beautifully rendered look at loss, racism, and the creation of family." 415 pp.

Chicago: T. Dennison and Company (c. 1922). One of numerous publications by Denison in their 'Blackface' series. Minstrel shows were a form of entertainment in which performers portrayed Black individuals in a stereotypical manner, such as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and "happy-go-lucky". Although professional shows were on the decline by the time this was published, the number of amateur show books peaked in the 1920s and 1930s; they were written to enable amateurs to put on a professional seeming and popular show - either in blackface, whiteface or a combination. The "first part" of these 3 part shows consisted of the entire troupe dancing on stage and exchanging wisecracks and singing songs. The professional minstrel shows were aimed at mostly a working class audience, but amateur shows were primarily middle class (including on college campuses). Professor Susan Smulyan calls them "a particularly shameful form of minstrelsy Ð that form an important link in American history by connecting the 19th century professional minstrel shows with the late 20th century use of racist stereotypes in various entertainment formats." 32 pp.

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (2022) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - Written for older children and young adults this is a "portrait of a pugnacious civil rights advocate who also happened to be a great athlete. . . putting on unflinching display the ugliness Robinson faced, Williams and Long chronicle his spectacular athletic achievements from elementary school to the major leagues - but look beyond them to portray him as a 'relentless and uncompromising Black freedom fighter' who 'used his racial pride to fuel his lifelong passion for justice.' . On-field photos, family snapshots, pictures of marching protesters, and news clippings accompany side-boxed comments on historical context and questions for readers to ponder." (Kirkus) SIGNED on the title page by both authors. Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Books of the Year, School Library Journal Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and more. Timeline, notes, index. 228 pp. ISBN: 978-0374389956.

Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, (1986) dj. Hardcover first edition - A revised edition of Vliet's second novel with the original title he wanted - a revision he was working on even as he was battling cancer. Includes a new introduction by his wife, Ann Vliet, describing the difficulties he had in getting this published, and an afterword by Tom Pilkington. The hero of this historical Western, set in southwest Texas in the 1880s runs stolen cattle, kills a man, and survives plenty of natural perils, including cholera and a tornado, in quest of a beautiful woman - much like traditional formula Westerns. But there is also an inner search: "The man Claiborne Sandelin kills is a stranger, and . . not until the end of the novel do we begin to understand why Claiborne killed the man. He killed the man for sociological reasons: the stranger was a Meskin and Claiborne hates Mexicans; the stranger was rich and Claiborne is literally a poor white. But the real reason . . is much deeper; it is nothing less than a recognition of the strangers solitude, the fundamental aloneness that Claiborne is existentially sad about, seeing it in himself, in others, seeing it as the only truth beneath the appearance of everything. Claiborne eventually comes to terms with the murder, forgives himself, and understands the consoling paradox that all things are bound together by solitude and the sentence of death. . Most of the book is taken up with his search for the granddaughter of the man he killed and, conversely, with her search for the murderer. Vliets shift in point-of-view, from third-person focus on Claiborne to the woman Soledad, produces some of his best prose and creates a compelling psychological mystery." (Don Graham, Western American Literature of the original edition) With this revised edition, Vliet has succeeded in writing a great Western novel, comparable to the best of Cormac McCarthy. A title in the Texas Tradition Series. 270 pp. ISBN: 0-875650635.

Beverly Hills, CA: Bronzeville Books, (2000) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - The second book featuring Elliot Caprice, set in 1950s Chicago area. Caprice, a "former Chicago cop and World War II veteran, has returned to his rural childhood hometown of Southville, Illinois. to help his uncle with the family farm which is tottering on failure due to drought. Hoping for rain to bring in the string beans, Elliot takes a quick job to serve a summons in Chicago for a divorce case. His half-day job turns into weeks of murders, revelations of family secrets and old grudges, squabbles with the Irish mob," and more. One of the themes - the politics involved in how people were compensated for their land when it was acquired for the University of IllinoisÕ Chicago Campus - is still relevant today, and an area where there is growing awareness of the extent of past injustices and especially how it affected Black families for generations to come. Gardner has commented that he hopes writing about wrongs can help right some wrongs. INSCRIBED on the title page. 284 pp. ISBN: 97-1952427060.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, (1974) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A frank and vivid autobiography by an African American woman which shows the depths of racism's effects, from witnessing the murder of her mother as a 6 year old child through Jim Crow in Texas as the wife of a soldier, to the continuing desperate struggle for her family's survival. The dust jacket refers to it as "life on the bottom, told by a black woman who won't learn to quit." The introduction by Leo Hamilian describes how this book came to be: it began as an essay written by Jackson as part of the admissions process at the City College of New York emerged from an admissions essay, and Hamilian, the Dean involved, passed the essay to an editor at The Nation, which published it in May, 1968, and that resulted in Jackson received a book offer - she spent 5 years writing this book. INSCRIBED on the title page in December 1976: "To My Brother Gerald, Together we can win to make this a better world / Dare To Struggle! Dare To Win! Dare To Be You! Dare To See Tomorrow, I Do!/ 'Love Is A Circle of Sharing'/ from your sister in the struggle/ Harrisene 'Penny' Jackson." vii, 168 pp. A hard-to-find book, and scarce signed. ISBN: 0-139146970.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. dj. Hardcover first edition - A full-scale biography of Jack Johnson - the first black heavyweight champion in history, and the most celebrated - and most reviled - African American of his age. "At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not exist. While most blacks struggled just to survive, he reveled in his riches and his fame. And at a time when the mere suspicion that a black man had flirted with a white woman could cost him his life, he insisted on sleeping with whomever he pleased, and married three. Because he did so the federal government set out to destroy him, and he was forced to endure a year of prison and seven years of exile." This draws on much new material, including Johnson's never-before-published prison memoir. Illustrated with more than fifty photographs. Notes, bibliography, index. Slightly oversized format. 492 pp. ISBN: 0-375415327.

New York: Crown, (1991) dj. Hardcover first edition - The author's first novel (preceded by poetry and two highly acclaimed collections of short stories) set in a small midwestern town celebrating its centennial. "Honey Parrish of Divinity, Iowa, drinks too much, sleeps around and talks to her dead lover. . . .she is a woman drifting toward madness while searching for something that will anchor her to safety.. . Honey is also plagued by the voice of Clinton, her dead lover, until Jasper Johnson comes along. Johnson, the ``sweet eyes'' of the title, is the town's only black man. His tempestuous affair with Honey is the spark that fires a smoldering racism in the community, spearheaded by Sonny Boy [Honey's pyschotic brother]. Fearing that her brother's bigotry caused the death of a young black woman 15 years earlier, Honey launches a painful search for the truth." (Kirkus) A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. 404 pp.,. ISBN: 0-517575159.

New York: Viking, (2003). SIGNED hardcover first edition - Young African American author's second novel, set in the aftermath of World War II. Two men, one an African American raised in France who enlists after his parents are killed trying to flee France, and the other a white Southerner from Mississippi, serve together during World War II only to confront the painful post-war realities of American racism. Mather is denied the Medal of Freedom because of his race, and after a futile visit to Washington DC, he is driving back to Los Angeles through Mississippi where a confrontation with a racist winds up with the white man's death, and his brother vowing revenge. SIGNED on the title page. 275 pp. Review copy with publisher's material laid in. ISBN: 0-67003164X.