Search Results: Authors starting with I from ReadInk

New York: William Morrow & Company. Very Good+ in Fair dj. 1948. First Edition. Hardcover. [only lightly shelfworn, lower rear corner very slightly bumped, a couple of tiny tears in cloth at top of spine, front hinge feels a little weak (not cracked); jacket has suffered about an inch-plus of paper loss at both ends of spine, with small but numerous chips at corners and edges]. (Don't get excited, it's not what you think -- "gay" in mainstream parlance didn't always mean what it means today.) This is a madcap comic novel (something of a specialty for this author), featuring "a teetotaling tycoon, his beautiful heiress-apparent and a young man of ideas -- Prince Consort ideas, as it turns out" -- all to do with a PR agency's attempts to shore up the sagging fortunes of its client's hair-preparation product, "Heigh-ho Silver." Jack Iams, who in addition to his novelistic endeavors was a journalist, editor and TV critic, may not have… Read More

New York: William Morrow and Company. Very Good in Very Good- dj. 1943. First Edition. Hardcover. (price-clipped) [solid copy, top edge a little dust-darkened, top corners moderately bumped; jacket worn along top/bottom edges, various tiny tears, minor chipping at spine ends]. Satirical novel about a cave-dwelling hermit who takes a subscription to a weekly news magazine and eventually writes them a letter of appreciation, after which all hell breaks loose. .

New York: Random House. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1962). First Edition. Hardcover. [good solid copy, with just a touch of age-toning to the top of the text block; the jacket is browned at the edges, with a few small surface-scrapes and some light soiling, and has been "stretched" a bit so it now fits a little loosely on the book (which is somewhat corrected by the new mylar jacket cover)]. A collection of lesser-known works by the great American playwright. Per Inge's preface, his famous play "Picnic," as originally presented in 1953, had "never completely fulfilled [his] original intentions," so at some later date (after the play had earned him both the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Critics' Circle Award, and had been adapted into a succesful movie), he dug back into his files for its "early version" -- "Summer Brave" -- and reworked it into the form published here. (He maintained that he preferred it to "Picnic,"… Read More

New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Good. (c.1935). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [a good solid copy, but with considerable external spotting, mostly to spine and front cover; internally clean and well-bound, but still best to consider this a reading copy only]. Novel about four college classmates (Yale, Class of 1928) who get together in 1934 to swap tales of their trials and tribulations in the intervening early Depression years. The New York Times critic was quite disdainful of the whole enterprise: "No argot is so flavorless, unimaginative, spurious, artificial and witless as the jargon of the campus. Mr. Ingham revels in it ad nauseam. If we take his word for it, Yale undergraduates, and particularly the class of '28, and especially [the novel's main characters] are youthful infantiles whose vainglorious deeds, puppy itches, childish mentalities and baby emotions can scarcely be taken seriously except as phenomena." (Sounds to me like sour grapes from… Read More

Boston: Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Company. Fine in Near Fine dj. (c.1999). First Edition. Hardcover. 0821226258 . [book is tight, clean, as-new; jacket shows just a bit of surface handling wear]. (B&W/color photographs) "Published on the occasion of ICP's twenty-fifth anniversary, [this book] provides an innovative look at the diversity of the photographic medium. The selection displays great strength in documentary photography and photojournalism, as well as a marvelous range of fine art, commercial, and vernacular photography. It presents the work of such masters as Richard Avedon, Weegee, Cindy Sherman, Robert Capa, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Margaret Bourke-White, Alfredo Jaar, Ansel Adams, and Irving Penn alongside that of lesser known and anonymous photographers. [It] provides a delightfully unconventional compendium of the infinitely varying viewpoints of its many practitioners." Preface by Willis E. Hartshorn. Essays by Anne Hollander,… Read More

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. Very Good-. 1938. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [a good sound copy with only modest shelfwear, although the yellow-cloth binding has picked up enough light soiling over its lifetime to give the book a somewhat grubby external appearance; faint bookseller's rubber-stamp (Bertrand Smith's Acres of Books, Long Beach, Calif.) on front pastedown]. Novel, set largely in the early years of 20th century Spain, about an acclaimed young matador who kills a man in a fight over a woman, subsequently escapes from prison and wanders the country as a fugitive before finding refuge with a nun. One contemporary reviewer stated that "one feels the surge and push of the tale; there are no leisurely moments, from the first paragraph of the actual telling of the story one is swept forward with it." .

Philadelphia/New York: J. B. Lippincott Company. Very Good. (c.1942). 3rd printing. Hardcover. NOISBN . (no dust jacket) [solid copy with moderate overall wear, some fading to spine cloth; ffep torn out, which has left the front hinge exposed but not separated]. Irish/Woolrich classic, which starts out with both a great dedication ("To Apartment 605, Hotel M----- / in unmitigated thankfulness (at not being in it any more") and a terrific first chapter title ("The Hundred and Fiftieth Day Before the Execution"). A terrific yarn, and the basis for the highly-regarded 1944 movie of the same name, directed by Robert Siodmak and produced by Joan Harrison, who cut her teeth as an assistant/screenwriter to Alfred Hitchcock, and subsequently returned to his fold as producer of his 1955-1965 TV series ( for which she continued to mine the rich vein of Woolrich story material). .

New York: Walter J. Black. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. (c.1951). Book Club Edition. Hardcover. [light bumping to spine ends, otherwise a nice clean copy; jacket shows moderate wear at edges and extremities, slight paper loss at top of spine (just nicking the first "S" in the title a bit), split along top rear foldover, front panel a little rubbed]. A New York detective who's supposed to be taking it easy, on vacation at "Joseph's Vineyard," runs into a murder case, in that way that vacationing detectives invariably do. "What could be the connection between an quiet, elderly male boarder, an indolent, middle-aged toper, a dim-witted youth who lived on the beach and whistled Yankee Doodle over and over, and the town's wealthiest spinster?" (I dunno, but judging from that jacket blurb Woolrich was only about two characters short of a Harry Stephen Keeler plot.) [This is the Detective Book Club issue (unpriced jacket with a blurb for the Club on the… Read More

New York/London: G.P. Putnam's Sons. Very Good. 1895 (c.1887). Second Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [moderately shelfworn book, binding fully intact, small vintage bookseller's stamp on front pastedown (Bertrand Smith Acres of Books, Long Beach, Calif.)]. Tales of old Long Island. The author in his Preface states that he has endeavored to complete the work of his late friend, Mr. John Quod, who in researching his history "examined the whole country from Coney Island to Montauk Point, and in particular, visited the spots therein rendered classic by the deeds of departed worthies." Chief among those worthies was Teunis Van Gelder, "a stalwart soldier who had followed the Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, in his various campaigns," after whom the book is titled, who founded the community of Matinecock. Other individuals who figure in the historical narrative include Nick Wanzer, Derrick Van Dam, Ralph Craft, Rulif Van Pelt, Obed Groot, Harry Blake, and… Read More

New York: The Macmillan Company. Very Good. 1925. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [modest wear to extremities, some soiling to edges of text block, spine slightly turned; binding solid, internally quite clean]. (pen and ink drawings, one map) Something of an adventure-novelization of incidents presented by Stefansson in his 1913 book "My Life with the Eskimo." Stefansson, a U.S.-based, Canadian-born anthropologist of Icelandic extraction, eventually became a somewhat controversial figure, but in earlier times (in particular between 1906 and 1912) was responsible for leading important explorations of the Canadian Arctic region, and gained a lot of attention for his observations and writings about the life and culture of the Copper Inuit, the so-called "blond Eskimos". .

New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc.. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1949. First Edition. Hardcover. [light shelfwear to bottom edge, slight bumping to top rear corner; jacket sunned at spine, light edgewear and scuffing]. "This book, by a former New York city magistrate, is in part the inspiring story of his own life; in part a vivid record of the city he has loved; in part an account of the Fusion Administration, embodying perhaps the most revealing portrait of Fiorello H. LaGuardia ever written. It tells of a career unusual for its variety and constant interest, unique for its inception and meaning. For Judge Isaacs, on graduating from the College of the City of New York, had taken the Ephebic Oath, pledging himself to good citizenship and service -- and meaning what he swore." (Sounds like today's politicians could use a good swift dose of that.) .

New York: Samuel French. Good. (c.1922). French's Standard Library Edition. Softcover. [moderate wear to extremities, one-inch tear at top of spine resulting in separation of spine covering from text block in that area]. (B&W halftone photographs) A screwball comedy (before the term was coined) set in London, about three men who've been declared legally dead, but who had actually been prisoners of war and are in fact alive and well -- but are prevented from coming "back to life" due to various compromising circumstances. (One, because his mother has already claimed the insurance related to his death in service; another because he's on the run from the police, specifically an American detective who's on his trail.) Originally based on a novel of the same name, the play had a respectable run in New York (250 performances) during the 1920/21 season, and was subsequently filmed thrice: as a silent feature in 1922, an early talkie in 1929, and yet another version… Read More

Hollywood CA: The Marcel Rodd Co.. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1945. First Edition. Hardcover. [minimal shelfwear to book, light age-toning to edges of text block; the jacket has some shallow paper loss at the spine ends (slightly effecting the title at the top), some very shallow chipping and a few tiny nicks along the top edge, tiny additional bits of paper loss at several corners, and some modest edgewear; the jacket has also been applied to the book slightly off-center]. An anthology of 68 short articles (all selected from the magazine "Vedanta and the West") examining various aspects of the three basic principles of the Vedanta philosophy: "First, that the real nature of Man is divine; second, that the aim of human life is to realize this divine nature; and, third, that all religions are essentially in agreement." Isherwood himself contributed a lengthy Introduction and four of the shorter pieces; the primary contributors of the others were Aldous Huxley, Gerald… Read More

Toronto: Macmillan. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1956. First Canadian Edition. Hardcover. [light shelfwear, faint staining to fore-edge, age-toning to top of text block; jacket a bit edgeworn (a few tiny nicks along top edge), light dampstaining at bottom right corner of front panel and bottom left corner of rear panel]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the ffep: "For Tess Sobol with / my best regards, / Charles / December, 1956"; beneath the author's inscription is an additional Christmas gift inscription in another hand. A novel, the author's first, dealing "with the small Sudeten German community in Czechoslovakia after the Allied victory, and war's aftermath in the life of Karl Rindl, a distinguished Sudeten surgeon who has run desperate risks in giving help to those who were outlaws under the Germans -- Jews, partisans, Communists. In liberated Czechoslovakia this record does not protect him." He ends up expelled from his community, becoming… Read More

New York/Hollywood/London: Quigley Publishing Company. Very Good. 1963. (31st Annual). Softcover. [bottom right corner of front cover bent and a bit dog-eared (also affecting the first several pages), slight bump and minor damage to base of spine, no other significant wear]. Trade PB (B&W photographs, ads, graphics) A "Greats of the Year" compilation, a large-format paperback featuring numerous lists -- "The Famous Ten of the Screen," "The Money-Making Stars of 1962," "The Stars of Tomorrow," "Directors of the Champion Pictures," and so on, covering both motion pictures and television. Not exactly a comprehensive reference work (for that you would want the "Screen World" volume for the corresponding year), but at the same time a great picture of just Who was considered Who at that moment in entertainment history. (And of course from the publisher's point of view it provided another opportunity -- along with… Read More

New York: St. Martin's Press. Near Fine in Near Fine dj. (c.1989). First Edition. Hardcover. 0312025505 . [nice clean book, slight bumping to base of spine, no other discernible wear; jacket a little bit scuffed on the rear panel]. SIGNED by the author (signature only) on the half-title page. Crime novel about a booster, "a top-notch thief who's always prided himself on his independence from the Mafia," and who takes on the job of stealing some mob-incriminating audio tapes from a vault in a 90th-floor suite in Chicago's Sears Tower. Signed by Author .