Search Results: Titles starting with S from The Manhattan Rare Book Company

Paris: Éditions Sagesse, 1938. Limited edition. Deluxe artist's binding. Fine. MARCEL DUCHAMP'S COPY, WARMLY INSCRIBED TO HIM BY ALICE PAALEN. ALSO WITH ORIGINAL FRONTISPIECE ETCHING SIGNED BY JOAN MIRÓ. BOUND BY LEGENDARY FRENCH BOOKBINDER MONIQUE MATHIEU. Signed limited edition, number 23 of only 75 copies, signed by Paalen on the limitation page (in addition to the signed inscription). On Alice Paalen: In a poem dedicated to her lover Pablo Picasso, the poet and visual artist Alice Paalen wrote, "I've been living in a map on the wall. I think I am at the crossroads of the wind. I converse with it." Bicultural, bisexual, and wildly independent, she was referred to as a shapeshifter who defied categorization. Born Alice Marie Yvonne Philppot in 1904 in eastern France, she moved to Paris with her family in 1920 and delighted in the bohemian scene. By 1934 she had married Austrian artist Wolfgang Paalen and been introduced to Paul Éluard, André Breton, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. In 1935… Read More

Berlin: Deutschen Verlag. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. FIRST EDITION, in exceptionally fine dust jacket and extremely rare original glassine, of Riefenstahl's classic monument to the athletes of the 1936 Olympics. Profusely illustrated with 273 black-and-white photographs. "With the German photographer Leni Riefenstahl, sports imagery rose to new aesthetic heights. Commissioned by Joseph Goebbels, she brought her considerable visual and organizational skills to bear on both the photographing and filming the 1936 Olympic Games. Although the film Olympiad has become an acknowledged classic, her book of photographs, Schönheit im Olympischen Kampf, no less spectacular in its own way, is less known. Sometimes Riefenstahl relied on poses modelled on the antique Greek ideal, faithful to Hitler's belief that modern Teutonic man was 'feeling closer to classical antiquity' than he had 'in possibly a thousand years'. But far more original were her depictions of superbly… Read More

Washington, DC: The National Research Council of The National Academy of Sciences, 1922. First edition. Original wrappers. Fine. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of Compton's report providing the data and experimental evidence for the dual wave-particle nature of electromagnetic radiation, later called "the Compton effect". "One surprise Compton observed while wrestling with his X-ray equipment was that the scattered X-ray changes its frequency. He had explored the effect very deeply to make sure it really resulted from the scattering and not from one of the many secondary effects. Finally he had obtained a clear picture: X-rays approach the metal at a different frequency. This change was like discovering that a violet flower's mirror image looks red... "Compton eventually wrote a report for the National Research Council in which he set forth his X-ray data and observations. Although he still had no explanation for the frequency change, he included it and many… Read More

London: Collins. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. FIRST EDITION of Cornwell's second published book in the Sharpe series on the Napoleonic Wars. Set in August 1810 during the Peninsular War and featuring the destruction of Almeida. Although it is Cornwell's second book in the series, it is the ninth book chronologically in the fictional epic. London: Harper Collins, 1981. Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket. Book fine, dust jacket price-clipped, otherwise fine.

New York: Harper & Row. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine. FIRST EDITION, SIGNED AND DATED BY MAURICE SENDAK (1981). A delightful collaboration between Sendak and Keeshan, better known for his role as Captain Kangaroo. Text by Robert Keeshan. New York: Harper & Row, 1963. 16mo. Original color pictorial boards, original dustjacket. Rare signed.

Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1949. First edition. Original Wrappers. Fine. FIRST EDITIONS, OFFPRINT ISSUES, IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS, OF PAPERS ANNOUNCING THE DISCOVERY OF THE MOLECULAR BASIS OF SICKLE-CELL ANEMIA. Determining the extent to which biological traits (including susceptibility to certain diseases) are linked to genetic factors presents difficult, often intractable, analytical problems. Multiple genetic factors may interact in complex ways with each other and with environmental factors in shaping a single characteristic or trait of an organism; conversely, a single genetic change can have cascading effects on a broad range of traits. In some cases, however, specific genetic abnormalities can be linked in a clean, direct, and simple manner to specific diseases. An example of this is provided by the research described in the papers offered here, which firmly established the genetic and biological underpinning of sickle-cell anemia. Biologist Graham… Read More

np: np, 1930. First edition. Custom box. Very Good. RARE AND REVEALING COLLECTION OF FAMILY LETTERS WRITTEN BY KURT VONNEGUT. This collection of 12 letters, most of which are addressed to Vonnegut's father, brother (Bernard), sister-in-law (Bow), and family as a whole, chronicle the life, rise, and development of one of America's most beloved writers. Taken together, these letters - in which he begins to test the possibilities of a career in writing - are a unique glimpse into Vonnegut's psychic and writerly interior, and bubble with the experimentality, imagination, and distinctive prose that would define Vonnegut's most famous works in the decades to follow. Housed together in handsome archival case. II. Letters 1-2: EARLY LIFE (Early 1930s) "Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation" (Dinitia Smith, New York Times).… Read More

New York: n.p., 1896. First edition. Fine. STUNNING LARGE HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPH OF TESLA, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY TESLA TO EDWARD EVERETT BARLETT. Albumen print, signed and inscribed by Tesla on the original gray mount: "To my friend E. E. Bartlett, New York, June 9, 1896, Nikola Tesla." The photograph shows Tesla in profile seated before the spiral coil of his high-voltage transformer at his East Houston St., New York, laboratory. The photograph, in addition to being arguably the most famous and dramatic portrait of Tesla, is scientifically significant, for it served as a demonstration of the power of his new technique of providing illumination with vacuum tubes. A reproduction of the photograph appeared in the May 20, 1896 issue of Electrical Review, alongside an article where a reporter interviewed Tesla about the novel circumstances of the creation of this photo: "As to his continuous efforts to improve his system of lighting by vacuum tubes, with which he has been identified during a number… Read More

New York: Stieglitz, 1931. framed. Very Good. IMPORTANT ALFRED STIEGLITZ PHOTOGRAPH, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY STIEGLITZ. Alfred Stieglitz's (1864 - 1946) influence on American art and culture cannot be overstated. He has been justly celebrated for the pioneering exhibitions of modern European art that he presented at 291, the gallery that he ran between 1905 and 1917. There Stieglitz introduced American audiences to the works of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and George Braque. He championed early American modernist painters, embracing those such as Georgia O'Keeffe (his muse and wife), Marsden Hartley, and Charles Demuth first at 291 and then at his subsequent galleries The Intimate Gallery (1925 - 1929) and An American Place (1929 - 1946).  His greatest passion, though, was photography. During Stieglitz's youth, photography's cumbersome tools and technical requirements restricted its use to descriptive and recording purposes. Stieglitz understood that photography, much like painting and sculpture,… Read More

New York: Arnold Genthe, 1916. framed. Very Good. EXQUISITE ICONIC PHOTOGRAPH OF ISADORA DUNCAN BY ARNOLD GENTHE. "In the early 20th century, a new form of dance was emerging, one fostered by periods of experimentation in European cities and transferred to American stages by impassioned personalities led by Isadora Duncan. As this new, modern dance both challenged and influenced other dances from ballet to vaudeville, the lines between these forms became blurred allowing for a cacophony of creative expression. The dance world was expanding and changing in a myriad of ways, and nowhere was that more evident than in New York City, where high and low dance shared the same urban space and exchanged ideas and inspiration. Modern dance, as with other modernist movements of the time, sought new forms with which to express the spirit of modern times, and as Duncan phrased it, to express 'the free spirit, who will inhabit the body of the new woman; more glorious than any woman that has yet been...… Read More

Mainz and Paris: B. Schotts Söhnen, 1826. First edition. Very Good. A MAGNIFICENT COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, OF BEETHOVEN'S NINTH, ONE OF THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENTS OF WESTERN MUSIC. "Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 was ultimately more than three decades in the making. Schiller's popular 'Ode to Joy' was published in 1785, and it is possible that Beethoven made his first of multiple attempts to set it to music in the early 1790s. He clearly revisited the poem in 1808 and 1811, as his notebooks include numerous remarks regarding possible settings. In 1812 Beethoven determined to place his setting of 'Ode to Joy' within a grand symphony. "Ten more years passed before that symphony's completion, and during that time Beethoven agonized over the composition's every note. His notebooks indicate that he considered and rejected more than 200 different versions of the 'Ode to Joy' theme alone. When he finally finished the work, he offered to the public a radically new creation that was part symphony… Read More

Millerton NY: Aperture. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine. SIGNED LIMITED FIRST EDITION, illustrated with 69 black and white images of Fink's photographs. One of 250 signed and numbered copies issued with an original photograph, "Tavern on the Green", signed and dated on the back. Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1984. Quarto (262 x 224mm), gilt-lettered brown cloth; matching slipcase. A fine copy. Rare.

Lancaster, PA: American Physical Society, 1948. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. First edition, first printing, of Feynman's path integral formalism, his revolutionary approach to solving the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics and the basis for his later famous formulations of "Feynman rules" and "Feynman diagrams".. "In mid-1947 friends of Feynman persuaded him - threats and cajoling were required - to write for publication the theoretical ideas they kept hearing him explain. When he finally did, he used no diagrams. The result was partly a reworking of his thesis, but it also showed the maturing and broadening of his command of the issues of quantum electrodynamics. He expressed the tenets of his new vision with unabashed plainness. For some physicists this would be the most influential set of ideas Feynman ever published. "He said he had developed an alternative formulation of quantum mechanics to add to the pair of formulations produced two decades before by Schrodinger and… Read More

Berlin: Königlich Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1919. First Edition. Fine. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of one of Einstein's major papers on the modification of general relativity and the beginning of his unified field theory. "As so often the case in relativity, the story of quantum gravity begins with Einstein himself. Soon after the final formulation of general relativity, he pointed out the need for a quantum modification of the theory... [In "Do Gravitational Fields Play an Essential Role in the Structure of the Elementary Particles of Matter?"] he began to speculate whether gravitation plays a role in the atomistic structure of matter: There are reasons for thinking that the elementary formations which go to make up the atom are held together by gravitational forces... The above reflections show the possibility of a theoretical construction of matter out of the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field alone... "In order to construct such a model… Read More

Valencia Spain & New York: Aperture/A New Images Book & IVAM/Col.lecció Centre del Carme, 1989. 1st Edition. Soft cover. Fine. FIRST EDITION of one of Prince's most influential books, published in conjunction with the artist's landmark 1989 exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain. Illustrated with over 200 color images and with a preface by Corinne Diserens & Vincent Todoli and an 'interview' with Richard Prince and the author J.G. Ballard. (Valencia, Spain/New York): Aperture/A New Images Book & IVAM/Col.lecció Centre del Carme, (1989). Quarto (286x195mm), original photo-pictorial wrappers. A fine copy.

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1965. 1st Edition. Soft cover. Fine. SCARCE PRESS RELEASE for the State Funeral of Winston Churchill, WITH FINE COPIES of "The Order of Service" and the "Ceremonial to be Observed". Churchill died on 24 January, 1965. "The funeral was six days later, the coffin having lain in state in Westminster Hall for the preceding three days. It was the first time since Gladstone in 1898 that any non-royal personage had been so treated" (Roy Jenkins). It has been said with only slight exaggeration that the whole word paid tribute to Churchill on January 30, 1965, for representatives from over 100 countries came to pay their respects, forming the largest gathering of dignitaries ever in Britain. Only the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005 surpassed Churchill's funeral in the number of statesmen attending.

 The press release, with the strict note that it was "not for publication before 0001 hours… Read More

Braunschweig: Druck und Verlag von Friedr Vieweg and Son, 1916. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST PRINTING IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OF ONE OF EINSTEIN'S MAJOR WORKS: HIS FIRST PAPER ON THE DERIVATION OF PLANK'S LAW AND PROVIDING THE THEORETICAL BASIS FOR THE LASER. "Einstein commended the 'unparalleled boldness' of Planck's derivation of 1900, meaning not only the problem itself but also the fact that it was based on assumptions that were not entirely free of contradictions. Einstein now succeeded in the first of two papers in eliminating that flaw. More interesting than the derivation itself was the general character of his methods. Einstein proceeded from Niels Bohr's basic--and by then well tested--assumption that the electrons within an atom occupy a number of discrete energy states, and are able, through emission or absorption of radiation, to pass from one of those states to another. Added to this was an assumption of thermodynamic equilibrium between radiation field and atom, as… Read More

np: np, 1996. First edition. nb. Fine. EXTREMELY RARE LITHOGRAPH SIGNED BY ILLUSTRATOR GARTH WILLIAMS OF THE COVER ART FOR E.B. WHITE'S CLASSIC STUART LITTLE. WITH HAND-COLORING BY WILLIAMS. Pulled by hand from the original pen and ink drawing by Garth Williams. Marked "Bon à Tirer" ("ready for press") in pencil by the printer. This image was acquired directly from the lithographer; Williams added the delicate gray hand-coloring in this image as a guide for the lithographer to follow in coloring the full edition. Williams died in 1996 just after this "ready for press" lithograph was printed; therefore no copies of the final printing of approximately 300 were signed. 

 11.25 x 15 inches. Fine condition. A UNIQUE EXAMPLE OF ONE OF GARTH WILLIAMS'S MOST DESIRABLE IMAGES.

Paris: Ch. Lahure et Cie, 1862. first edition offprint. original wrappers. Very Good. PRESENTATION AND ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE RARE AUTHOR'S OFFPRINT OF PASTEUR'S FAMOUS LECTURE DISCREDITING THE THEORY OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, WITH HIS AUTOGRAPH NOTES TO FELLOW SCIENTIST JOHN TYNDALL. Spontaneous generation - the theory that living organisms are routinely created from inanimate matter - goes back to ancient times. Although the theory had been cast into doubt by the observations and experimental work of Redi, Spallanzani, and others in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it proved remarkably hard to kill, and still had many distinguished adherents in the early nineteenth century. In part its persistence was due to the rise of microscopy, which had revealed a host of previously unknown organisms, with no apparent origin, in soil, pond water, and other natural environments. Where had these organisms come from, if they had not been spontaneously generated? In part it was due to bona fide… Read More

Lancaster, PA and New York, NY: American Inst, 1962. 1st Edition. Soft cover. Fine. FIRST EDITION of Murray Gell-Mann's Nobel-Prize winning work on the discovery of the "Eightfold Way" "Gell-Mann, as naturalist, collector, and categorizer, was well primed to interpret the exploding particle universe of the 1960s. New technology in the accelerators- liquid hydrogen bubble chambers and computers for automating the analysis of collision tracks- seemed to have spilled open a bulky canvas bag from which nearly a hundred distinct particles had now tumbled forth. Gell-Mann and, independently, an Israeli theorist, Yuval Ne'eman, found a way in 1961 to organize the various symmetries of spins and strangeness into a single scheme. It was a group, in the mathematicians' sense of the word, known as SU(3), though Gell-Mann quickly and puckishly dubbed it the Eightfold Way. It was like an intricate translucent object which, when held to the light, would reveal families of eight or ten or possibly twenty-seven… Read More