Search Results: Titles starting with S from Alembic Rare Books

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946. Octavo. Original grey cloth, titles and design to spine and upper board blocked in red and blue, top edge dyed red. Frontispiece and 33 double-sided plates from photographs, 3 illustrations within the text. Spine toned, cloth slightly rubbed, endpapers tanned, light spotting to the edges of the text block and occasionally to the contents. First edition, first printing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Allied technological development during the Second World War. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Betty Way Brown, with best wishes, James P. Baxter 3rd". Author James F. Baxter (1893-1975) was a historian and for more than twenty years the popular president of Williams College in Massachusetts. During the Second World War he served as research coordinator of information (1941-1943) and director of the Office of Strategic Services (1942-1943), and the work for this book was undertaken during the latter part of the war while he served… Read More

Chicago: The House of Manz, 1915. Octavo. Brown cloth library binding, titles to spine and upper board in black. Tipped-in photographic frontispiece and 8 plates from photographs. From the library of the Los Angeles Medical Association, with partially removed numbers at the tail of the spine, blind stamp to the title and page 49, pencilled library notes to the contents list, remnants of a bookplate to the front pastedown, and abraded spots on the rear pastedown where the the card pocket was removed. Cloth a little rubbed and marked with a small knock to the edge of the lower board and a scuff affecting the same board. Contents clean. A very good copy. First edition of this important book on the use of "twilight sleep" anaesthesia during labour by the female surgeon who first advocated its use in the United States. Rare, with WorldCat listing only electronic copies, and only one copy appearing in auction records (Bonhams 2020). Born into a Michigan farming family, Bertha van Hoosen (1863-1952)… Read More

1941. Hardcover. Good. Oblong Quarto. Second World War photo album compiled by American Red Cross worker Elizabeth Ridley, with three wartime Naval yearbooks & souvenir books owned by her sister Christine, a naval air mechanic in the WAVES programme. Oblong folio (340 x 260 mm). 1941-45. Contemporary dark blue skiver elaborately embossed in grey with military motifs including an American Eagle, planes, tank, battleship, artillery, and blimp. Bound with black nylon ties that may not be original. 80 black paper pages containing 219 photographs attached with photo corners. The photos range in size, with the majority measuring 90 x 60 mm, and the largest 255 x 200 mm. A few items, including some photos, a small colour Kodachrome, several negatives, and an unused Anchor Line trunk label are loosely inserted. Elizabeth has written her name and address on the front free endpaper and annotated many of the photos with white ink. The naval books owned by Christine Ridley include We Keep 'Em Flying: A Visit… Read More

New York: a Wiley-Interscience Publication, John Wiley & Sons, 1977. Octavo. Original blue-grey cloth, titles to spine and ISBN on lower board in metallic blue, publisher's device to upper board in blind. With the dust jacket. Diagrams and illustrations throughout the text. Cloth slightly rubbed at the tips, two small worn spots on the edge of the upper board. A very good copy in the jacket that is creased and worn with some closed tears and small chips. First edition first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine, and also signed by co-author Grégoire Nicolis, for fellow physicist Peter Landsberg. Books signed by either Prigogine and Nicolis are uncommon. With a small pencilled notation of Landsberg's on page 34 also repeated with a question mark on the front free endpaper. Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003) is today one of the most well-known figures in the field of chaos theory. Though others before him, primarily Lars Onsager, had investigated the thermodynamics of… Read More

London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1932. Sextodecimo. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 22 plates of which all but one are double-sided. Ink stamp of the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory. Cloth a little rubbed, corners bumped, spotting to endpapers, light musty smell. Very good condition. First edition, first impression. This copy contains the library stamp of the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory, which was founded in 1936 as part of the Shadow Factory plan to quickly ramp up aircraft production in case of war. It became the largest and most successful plant of its type during the Second World War, being the largest Spitfire factory in the UK and also producing Lancaster bombers. Immediately after hostilities ended it was taken over by car body specialists Fisher & Ludlow, and is still in operation today, now manufacturing vehicles for Jaguar Land Rover.

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969. Octavo. Original brick red cloth, titles to spine and upper board in white with black accents. With the dust jacket. A handful of lightly pencilled check marks in the margins. Spine rolled, cloth lightly rubbed at the edges, thin dark mark on the lower board. A very good copy in the rubbed jacket with faded spine panel and some wear and tiny nicks at the edges. First edition, first printing and rare in commerce. James E. Webb (1906-1996) was NASA's second administrator and arguably its most significant, seeing the agency through the Mercury and Gemini programs and the preparation for the Apollo missions. This volume is based on a series of lectures given at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business in 1968, and discusses Webb's experience of leading one of the largest and most complex organisations ever established. It explores why traditional management systems were no longer sufficient for modern technological undertakings, describes new methods pioneered by… Read More

London: Harrison and Sons & R. Friedländer & Sohn for the Royal Society, June 22, 1904. Octavo. Original grey-green wrappers printed in black. 2 folding graphs. Index leaves on onion skin paper loosely inserted. Contents partially unopened, leaf 2K7 clumsily opened with slight loss from the margin. Wrappers toned along the spine and edges, a little rubbing and some nicks and creases along the edges, slight loss from the head of the spine. Very good condition. First edition, the journal issue in original wrappers. Chemist Sir William Ramsay's (1852-1916) most important research was on the noble, or inert, gases. He was the first to isolate helium and discovered neon, krypton, xenon, and argon, the latter being the element for which he and John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, were awarded Nobel Prizes in 1905. In his Nobel lecture Ramsay described on-going spectroscopic work on radium, begun in 1903: "Much work remains to be done on these emanations. In conjunction with Dr. Collie, my colleague,… Read More

New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine in silver. With the dust jacket. Illustrations and charts within the text. Spine a little rolled. An excellent, fresh copy in the bright jacket. First edition, first printing of this important popular work by leading climate scientist James Hansen (1941 - ). Hansen, currently director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University, has been studying climate change since the 1970s, making important contributions to our understanding of the atmosphere of Venus; how the global average temperature is measured and calculated; the effects of black carbon (such as that produced by forest fires and burning coal); and the design and analysis of climate models, showing that climate change has been occurring faster than most early models predicted. Hansen first came to public prominence when he testified to Congress in 1988 on the causes and effects of climate change. In recent years he has been an… Read More

London: Country Life Ltd, 1929. Quarto. Original green cloth backed aqua boards, titles to spine and upper board in brown. Frontispiece and 23 plates from photographs by the author. Wear to the ends of the spine and board edges, spine browned, boards rubbed and dulled, spotting and offsetting to contents. A good copy. First edition, first impression of this uncommon work by the pioneering bird photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940). The contents Turner became interested in wildlife photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and in Europe to photograph them, but her main base of operations was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was… Read More

Chiacgo, IL: The University of Chicago, 1929. 25 page pamphlet. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 4 colour plates, 5 illustrations from microphotographs within the text. Closed tears to the wrappers at the head and tail of spine, light toning and dulling at the edges of the wrappers, a few light marks, contents faintly toned. Very good condition. The rare offprint of the dissertation of the first Black American to earn a doctorate in anatomy, a presentation copy inscribed by the author to his doctoral advisor on the upper wrapper, "To Dr. W. Bloom with my best regards, Roscoe L. McKinney". WorldCat locates only three institutional copies: at Duke University, the University of Chicago, and the Bibliothèque Nationale. Roscoe L. McKinney (1900-1978) earned his bachelor's degree from Bates College in 1921 and then worked as a biology professor, first at Morehouse and then at Howard University, where his department head was the famed zoologist Ernest Everett Just. McKinney's doctoral work was… Read More

New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Yale University Press, 1942. Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. Contents unopened. Two mild, vertical creases to the upper wrapper, just a little faint toning along the edges of the wrappers. Excellent condition. An uncommon offprint by noted endocrinologist Grace E. Pickford (1902-1986). An attractive and fresh copy, the contents unopened. Pickford was educated at Cambridge and Yale, and taught at Albertus Magnus College, Yale, and Hiram College. Taking advantage of the Yale Peabody Museum's extensive natural history collections, she became an authority on cephalopod systematics and in 1951 joined the Galathea deep-sea expedition to study rare octopods in the Indo-Malayan region. During the 1940s she began researching the killifish, and it became the organism "on which she established her outstanding work on fish endocrinology. She became interested in the growth rings on fish scales, and the examined effects of the newly… Read More

Neuchâtel: Secrétariat de l'Université, 1939. Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. Text block unopened. Wrappers tanned along the edges and spine, a little creasing at the edges, small chip at the top of the upper wrapper, contents faintly toned in the margins. An excellent copy. First edition of this significant work on set theory, an unopened copy in the original wrappers. Author Sophie Piccard (1904-1990) showed great mathematical ability from an early age. She was born and completed her first undergraduate education in Russia, but fled to Switzerland with her parents in 1925. Piccard then completed a second mathematics degree, and obtained her doctoral dissertation on probability at the University of Lausanne. Following her father's death, she worked as an actuary and then an administrative secretary, but continued doing research, and in 1936 became assistant in geometry to at professor at the University of Neuchâtel. She succeeded to his position in 1938, and from 1943 held… Read More

Hardcover. Very Good. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. 170 page manuscript. Contemporary half speckled sheep, marbled sides. Several contemporary sheets of manuscript with mathematical notations loosely inserted. Corners repaired, a little wear and some discolouration to boards, endpapers tanned, contents with the occasional light spot but overall quite clean. Very good condition. An elegant, substantial early-19th century manuscript containing practical mathematical and astronomical problems likely produced by a student of navigation. The majority of the text is from John Bonnycastle''s A Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, originally published in 1806. Bonnycastle was a respected mathematics teacher who tutored the children of the aristocracy and taught at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. A man of "considerable classical and general literary culture", he was a great friend of Fuseli and also of Leigh Hunt, who included Bonnycastle in his book Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries.… Read More