Dashiell Hammett

Please see photos. Wow this book is not in perfect condition... there is minimal shelf wear to the Dust cover. The ribbon bookmark is fully intact and has no frame. The book itself is in phenomenal shape.. and would look beautiful on any collectors shelf!

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Red Harvest / the Dain Curse / the Maltese Falcon / the Glass Key / the Thin Man

In a few years of extraordinary creative energy, Dashiell Hammett invented the modern American crime novel. In the words of Raymond Chandler, "Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse. . . . He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes." Beginning as a prolific contributor to the pulp magazines of the 1920s, he succeeded during his brief career in making his kind of crime fiction a crucial part of the fabric of American writing: a genre that did not evade reality but rather embodied the grittiness and harshness of modern urban life.

The five novels that Hammett published between 1929 and 1934, collected here in one Library of America volume, have become part of modern American culture, creating archetypal characters and establishing the ground rules and characteristic tone for a whole tradition of hardboiled writing. Drawing on his own experiences as a Pinkerton detective, Hammett gave a harshly realistic edge to novels that were at the same time infused with a spirit of romantic adventure. His lean and deliberately simplified prose won admiration from such contemporaries as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner.

Each novel is distinct in mood and structure. Red Harvest (1929) epitomizes the violence and momentum of his Black Mask stories about the anonymous detective the Continental Op. In this raucous and nightmarish evocation of political corruption and gang warfare in a western mining town (modeled on Butte, Montana) nicknamed "Poisonville," the Op takes Machiavellian pleasure in pitting one faction against another to bring about their mutual destruction. The Op returns in The Dain Curse (1929) to preside over a more ornately melodramatic tale involving jewel theft, drugs, and a mysterious religious cult.

With The Maltese Falcon (1930) and its protagonist Sam Spade, Hammett achieved his most enduring popular success. A tightly constructed quest story with an unforgettable cast of eccentric adventurers, it is at the same time shot through with a sense of disillusionment and the arbitrariness of personal destiny.

The Glass Key (1931), an exploration of city politics at their most scurrilous, traces intricate patterns of loyalty and betrayal in scenes charged with drama. His last novel, The Thin Man (1934), is a ruefully comic tale distinct from the rest of his work. Paying homage to the traditional mystery form, it is best remembered for its protagonists Nick and Nora Charles, the sophisticated inebriates who would enjoy a long afterlife in the movies.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels (LOA #110)

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Raymond Chandler

Absolutely beautiful condition, other than a few small imperfections, the volume looks new. The ribbon bookmark is intact with no fraying whatsoever, and other than the small bit of shelf wear on the bottom corners.. this is definitely a collector's dream edition!

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The Lady in the Lake / the Little Sister / the Long Goodbye / Playback / Double Indemnity (screenplay) / Essays and Letters

With humor, along with an unerring sense of dialogue and the telling details of dress and behavior, Raymond Chandler created a distinctive fictional universe out of the dark side of sunlit Los Angeles. In the process, he transformed both crime writing and the American language.

Written during the war,The Lady in the Lake(1943) takes Philip Marlowe out of the seamy L.A. streets to the deceptive tranquility of the surrounding mountains, as the search for a businessman's missing wife expands into an elegy of loneliness and loss. The darker tone typical of Chandler's later fiction is evident inThe Little Sister(1949), in which an ambitious starlet, a blackmailer, and a seemingly naive young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, are the key players in a plot that provides fuel for a bitter indictment of Hollywood and Chandler's most savage portrayal of his adopted city.

The Long Goodbye(1953), his most ambitious and self-revealing novel, uncovers a more anguished resonance in the Marlowe character, in a plot that hinges on the betrayal of friendship and the compromises of middle age.Playback(1958), written originally as a screenplay, is Chandler's seventh and last novel.

A special feature of this volume is Chandler's long-unavailable screenplay for the film noir classic,Double Indemnity(1944), adapted from James M. Cain's novel. Written with director Billy Wilder, it is one of the best screenplays in American cinema, masterful in construction and dialogue. Supplementing the volume, and providing a more personal glimpse of Chandler's personality, is a selection of letters and essays-including "The Simple Art of Murder," in which Chandler muses on his pulp roots and on the special qualities of his hero and style.

LIBRARY OF AMERICAis an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Raymond Chandler: Later Novels and Other Writings (LOA #80)

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Sun-tzu

Ralph D. Sawyer

This work is the most famous study of military strategy ever written and has had an extraordinary influence on the history of warfare. Its principles were used by Mao Tse-tung, General Vo Ngyuen Giap, and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. First translated two hundred years ago, it has been credited with influencing Napoleon, the German general staff, and even the planning for Operation Desert Storm. Today, Western businessmen and other are turning to it for inspiration and advice on how to succeed in competitive situations of all kinds. Unlike other editions currently available, this translation make use of the best available classical Chinese manuscripts, including the ancient tomb text version discovered by archaeologists at Linyi, China. The author places this classic work of strategy in its proper historical context by supplying a portrait of Sun-Tzu's era and outlining several battles of the period that may have either influenced him or been conducted by him.

The Art of War

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Bill Moyers

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A Festival of Poets

"Poets live the lives all of us live," says Bill Moyers, "with one big difference. They have the power--the power of the word--to create a world of thoughts and emotions other can share. We only have to learn to listen." In a series of fascinating conversations with thirty-four American poets, The Language Of Life celebrates language in its "most exalted, wrenching, delighted, and concentrated form," and its unique power to re-create the human experience: falling in love, facing death, leaving home, playing basketball, losing faith, finding God. Listening to Linda McCarriston's award-winning poems about a child trapped in a violent home, or to Jimmy Santiago Baca explaining how words changed his life in prison, or to David Mura describing his Japanese American grandfather's experience in relocation camps, or to Sekou Sundiata stitching the magic of his childhood church in Harlem to the African tradition of storytelling, or to Gary Snyder invoking the natural wonder of mountains and rivers, or to Adrienne Rich calling for honesty in human relations, all testify to the necessity and clarity of the poet's voice, and all give hope that from such a wide variety of racial, ethnic, and religious threads we might yet weave a new American fabric. "'Listen,' said the storytellers of old, 'listen and you shall hear,'" explains Bill Moyers. The Language Of Life is a joyous, life-affirming invitation to listen, learn, and experience the exhilarating power of the spoken word.

The Language of Life

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James Thurber

Malcolm Gladwell

Susan Orlean

John Updike

Please see photos. The book itself is in very good condition, however the dust cover does have some minor wrinkling along the top edge of the book.

A collection of anecdotes, essays, fiction pieces, and illustrations-- all about dogs, and all from the pages of New Yorker magazine. From Charles Addams to E.B. White, this book is a gift to dog lovers everywhere.

The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs

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Robert B. Marks

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century

This clearly written and engrossing book presents a global narrative of the origins of the modern world from 1400 to the present. Unlike most studies, which assume that the "rise of the West" is the story of the coming of the modern world, this history, drawing upon new scholarship on Asia, Africa, and the New World and upon the maturing field of environmental history, constructs a story in which those parts of the world play major roles, including their impacts on the environment. Robert B. Marks defines the modern world as one marked by industry, the nation state, interstate warfare, a large and growing gap between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the world, increasing inequality within the wealthiest industrialized countries, and an escape from the environmental constraints of the "biological old regime." He explains its origins by emphasizing contingencies (such as the conquest of the New World); the broad comparability of the most advanced regions in China, India, and Europe; the reasons why England was able to escape from common ecological constraints facing all of those regions by the eighteenth century; a conjuncture of human and natural forces that solidified a gap between the industrialized and non-industrialized parts of the world; the mounting environmental crisis that defines the modern world; and the ways in which the forces of globalization stress the economic and political underpinnings of the modern world. Now in a new edition that brings the saga of the modern world to the present in an environmental context, the book considers how and why the United States emerged as a world power in the twentieth century and became the sole superpower by the twenty-first century, and why the changed relationship of humans to the environmental likely will be the hallmark of the modern era--the Anthopocene. Once again arguing that the US rise to global hegemon was contingent, not inevitable, Marks also points to the resurgence of Asia and the vastly changed relationship of humans to the environment that may in the long run overshadow any political and economic milestones of the past hundred years.

The Origins of the Modern World

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George Henty

Please see photos. The corners have a weird curling thing happening.. I'm not sure why. We have tried to press the book in order to stop the curling from happening, but it still curls again. The book itself is in excellent shape, the pages are crisp and the Binding is clean.

Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion

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Motomi Oguchi

Joseph Cali

A Practical Guide

In this book, renowned garden designer Motomi Oguchi offers the reader a step-by-step, practical approach to creating Japanese gardens, drawn from a wealth of experience that covers thirty years and encompasses the design of more than 400 gardens. The author uses real examples from gardens he has designed, constructed, and photographed to illustrate his key points, approaching each work from the perspective of the home or building owner. Oguchi begins with front gardens, as these are usually what one encounters first when entering a home. Typically, these front plantings are not defined Japanese garden types but rather, physical areas. He then moves on to tsubo niwa (courtyard gardens) and kare sansui (dry gardens) that might be found in the middle or rear of a building, or any available small space. Next, he introduces tea and tree gardens, which are more likely to be sections of a larger garden; and highlights specific characteristics and conditions of interior gardens. Within each chapter are general layouts and methods of developing the various gardens, which precede specific, step-by-step instructions. The author also offers practical and affordable variations on more ambitious designs and shows how they can be adapted to the readers home or building. In addition, Oguchi emphasizes the importance of proper maintenance and offers suggestions for special touches and restoration.

Create Your Own Japanese Garden

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Edward Klein

Please see photos. There is a small tear to the dust cover on the front top corner. The book itself is in excellent condition other than the damage to the Dust cover.

Her Private Years

The author of the best-selling All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy continues to draw on his exclusive sources to illuminate the late First Lady's second marriage and her life in New York. 200,000 first printing. Tour.

Just Jackie

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Harper Lee

A Novel

An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014. Go Set a Watchman features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch—Scout—struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her. Exploring how the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird are adjusting to the turbulent events transforming mid-1950s America, Go Set a Watchman casts a fascinating new light on Harper Lee’s enduring classic. Moving, funny and compelling, it stands as a magnificent novel in its own right.

Go Set a Watchman

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John W. Freeman

James Levine

Peter Allen

Stories of the Great Operas

Here at last is the definitive opera story collection, the only one now authorized by the Metropolitan Opera. Written by the associate editor of Opera News magazine, the volume includes the complete plots of 150 different operas, biographical information on all of the 72 composers represented, easy access to the stories through both a table of contents and an index, and a foreword by Peter Allen.

The Metropolitan Opera

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Carl Sferrazza Anthony

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the Words of Her Family and Friends

An intimate look into the world of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- from the people who knew her best In As We Remember Her, Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a historian of first ladies, paints the most personal, revealing portrait of Jackie to date -- one that shows her not in theshadow of her famous husbands or frozen in the light of flashbulbs but as she viewed herself over the years and as she was known by those closest to her. To understand Jackie on her own terms, Anthony conducted exhaustive interviews with an impressive collection of Jackie's friends, family members, and colleagues -- many of whom speak here about her publicly for the first time -- and drew upon rarely published but quite revealing autobiographical accounts. Those interviewed include Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Ted Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Joan Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, former senator John Glenn, Pamela Harriman, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Gloria Steinem, Yusha Auchincloss, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert McNamara, Ted Sorenson, Pierre Salinger, Rose Styron, former senator Claiborne Pell, and George Plimpton. And from previously sealed oral histories housed in the Kennedy Library, we hear from Jackie's mother, Janet Auchincloss, and lifetime confidante, Nancy Tuckerman, among others. With never-before-seen family photographs and letters throughout, Carl Sferrazza Anthony has created a beautiful tribute to the private woman who forever captured the world's attention.

As We Remember Her

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Werner A. Bischof

Miriam Mafai

Photographs by Werner Bischof

In 1945, already known as a photographer of refined images verging on the abstract, Werner Bischof made his way by bicycle through war-torn Germany, documenting signs of human life emerging from the rubble. In luminous images - of little girls playing tag in the shell of a bombed cathedral, of a young man luxuriating in the sun smoking a cigar - Bischof captured the struggles of ordinary people incrementally resuming their daily lives in a devastated landscape.

After the War

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H. P. Lovecraft

Collects the author's novel, four novellas, and fifty-three short stories. Written between the years 1917 and 1935, this collection features Lovecraft's trademark fantastical creatures and supernatural thrills, as well as many horrific and cautionary science-fiction themes. Includes such horror classics as The call of Cthulhu, At the mountains of madness, The Dunwich horror, The colour out of space, along with other works.

The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft

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Please see photos. These books are approximately 100 years old. They were printed in 1930. They are in amazing condition for their age. The pages still have the gold foil on the top, the spines are all still solid and intact, some of the raised lettering has been a little bit more rubbed in some places, but the books are all in phenomenal shape. The full set of 25 is present, with volume 25 having the most wear. The chapter assignments book is also included, and it has no visible writing. It is our understanding that that is the hardest volume to find for the University Library set.

Mammoth Hardcover (8 to 10 lbs)

Art, Music, Drama/Theater

The University Library (Full Set of 25 + Chapter Assignments Book)

Please see photos. These books are in good condition. However, it appears that they were stored oddly, as the spines are a little loose and slightly warped. However, the binding is secure and other than some shelf wear, they are a good educational collection.

A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Full Set of 6 Volumes)

Please see photos. These books were printed in 1912. For being over 100 years old, they are in really good shape! However, the spines definitely have seen better days. The pages have considerable yellowing as would be expected for books of this age. However, everything is fully intact and crisp I don't see any thing that takes away from the ability to read and enjoy these books. The only two volumes that give me concern, are volume one and volume eight. The rest of the volumes have very minimal damage to the spines. The front and back covers of all of the volumes are in excellent shape. Only the spines show any real damage. If you would like more photos, please reach out!

Henley Edition 

The Works of William Shakespeare in Ten Volumes 

Please see photos. These books are in very good condition, they were printed in 1935, so for their age, they are in phenomenal shape. You can see the yellow aging on the inside... as well as some of the Aging that comes with the glue... I have shown pictures of the inside of all of the books as well as the spine, front and back covers. If there are any other photos that you would like, please reach out.. thank you for taking a look!

Huge Hardcover (6 to 8 lbs)

Wonder Book of the World's Progress (Full Set of 10 Volumes)

Please see photos. These books are in excellent condition. However they do show signs of age and yellowing. All six come with their fabric bookmarks, all six show very minimal signs of shelf wear. If you would like more pictures or have any questions please reach out!

MEMORIAL EDITION 

Anthology of the World's Best Poems (Full Set of 6 Books)

Please see photos. All nine books have Shelf wear, most of the books have bubbling of the plastic coating that they put on them.. but all of the books are in good condition, there is no spine cracking, and they are all in good readable condition.

Mammoth Paperback (8 to 10 lbs)

Left Behind Series, Volumes 1-9

Please note that these are books from the late 1800s. They have very secure binding, however they have a lot of shelf wear. Great Expectations probably has the most shelf wear.. the others have acceptable shelf wear for their age. This set is not complete, only 12 of the 20 books are present. You would need to look somewhere else for the eight that are missing.

The Works of Charles Dickens (Vintage) 12 Volumes

Absolutely gorgeous set of books. Volumes 5 and 16 are the only two that have a bit more wear than the others. (See photos)

Browse by categories

Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels (LOA #110)

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler: Later Novels and Other Writings (LOA #80)

Sun-tzu; Ralph D. Sawyer

The Art of War

Bill Moyers

The Language of Life

James Thurber; Malcolm Gladwell; Susan Orlean; John Updike

The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs

Robert B. Marks

The Origins of the Modern World

George Henty

Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion

Motomi Oguchi; Joseph Cali

Create Your Own Japanese Garden

Edward Klein

Just Jackie

Harper Lee

Go Set a Watchman

John W. Freeman; James Levine; Peter Allen

The Metropolitan Opera

Carl Sferrazza Anthony

As We Remember Her

Werner A. Bischof; Miriam Mafai

After the War

H. P. Lovecraft

The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft

John Hudson Finley LL.D.

The University Library (Full Set of 25 + Chapter Assignments Book)

B.H. Roberts

A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Full Set of 6 Volumes)

William Shakespeare

The Works of William Shakespeare in Ten Volumes

Henry Smith Williams

Wonder Book of the World's Progress (Full Set of 10 Volumes)

Edwin Markham

Anthology of the World's Best Poems (Full Set of 6 Books)

Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins

Left Behind Series, Volumes 1-9

Charles Dickens

The Works of Charles Dickens (Vintage) 12 Volumes

Weekly Reader Books

Young Students Learning Library Set of 22 Books

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