Some interesting new arrivals

As it was never our intention to present here only “gun-related stuff,” and since a number of readers raised their hands when asked not long ago if they’d like to see more “book stuff,” herewith an update of interest primarily to those seeking interesting and hard-to-find titles.

Most of you know The Brunette sells vintage clothes and fabric at the Charleston Antique Mall, next to Arizona Charlie’s casino on Decatur Boulevard in downtown Las Vegas (within a mile of Amber Unicorn and Las Vegas Fine Books — formerly Greyhound’s — which string out to the south along Decatur), and that in between work on the next novel Vin pitches in, stocking a few bays with used and collectible books and records.

A few interesting titles have turned up of late, now available as part of our 1,200-title Online stock at
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sortby=0&vci=51238921 , where the new flatbed scanner even allows us to show pictures!

A selective sampling:

Shay’s Rebellion: Selected Essays
Kaufman, Martin, edited by
Price: US$ 62.50
Book Description: Institute for Massachusetts Studies, Westfield State College, 1987. Soft cover. Book Condition: Near Fine. No Jacket. 1st Edition. 8vo – over 7¾ – 9¾” tall. Near fine unread; shallow fold to bottom outside corner of rear wrap, but unread with no reading creases. Book prepared in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Shay’s Rebellion, “a crucial event in convincing Americans of the need to establish a strong central government,” which editor Kaufman evidently believes was a good thing. Contributors include Randall Conrad; Kenneth J. Moynihan (chairman of the History department at Assumption College, Worcester); Richard R. Mros; David P. Szatmary, and Myron F. Wehtje, professor of history at Atlantic Union College, South Lancaster, Mass. 104 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002515

Arctic Homestead / The True Story of One Family’s Survival and Courage in the Alaskan Wilds (SIGNED)
Cobb, Norma, and Charles W. Sasser
ISBN: 0312261985 / 0-312-26198-5
Price: US$ 37.50
Book Description: St. Martins’ Press, New York, 2000. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Jacket design by Scott Levine (illustrator). 1st Edition. First edition stated; number line 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Inscribed in purple ink diagonally in a small hand to title page: “We enjoy sharing our world! / Norma Cobb.” There is also a second, non-authorial Christmas gift inscription to top of blue FFE. Cobb was essentially the last woman to successfully claim and “prove up” Alaskan land — and that far north of Fairbanks — under the expiring Homestead Act. Jacket is worn to the corners, and displays odd twin vertical blue streaks to front panel and each flap (see scan.) As these markings appear to be in the same color ink as featured on the jacket illustration, and are impermeable to rubbing alcohol, we conclude this is a printing error, as made. 300 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002516

Tobacco War / Inside the California Battles (SIGNED)
Glantz, Stanton A., and Edith D. Balbach
ISBN: 0520222865 / 0-520-22286-5
Price: US$ 57.50
Book Description: University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000. Soft cover. Book Condition: As New. No Jacket. Cover photo by Paul Taylor / Photonika (illustrator). 8vo – over 7¾ – 9¾” tall. Large trade paperback, unread as new, signed to the FFE diagonally. Inscription marginally legible, but we make it “To Katherine / Cause Chaos! / Stan Glantz.” (See scan.) Number line complete 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Copyright page lists two slightly different ISBNs, so it’s likely there was a simultaneous hardcover edition; this is the trade paperback. Glantz is a professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco; co-author Balbach is or was director of the Community Health Program at Tufts University. Blurbs to rear wrap by Ralph Nader, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, et al., make it clear book celebrates efforts to further tax or restrict access to tobacco, against the political wiles of “Big Tobacco and its political minions,” based on the dangers of “second-hand smoke.” 469 pp. including index. Bookseller Inventory # 002514

Sharpe’s Sword
Cornwell, Bernard
ISBN: 0002214105 / 0-00-221410-5
Price: US$ 230.00
Book Description: Collins, London, 1983. Hardcover. Book Condition: Fair. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. Jacket illustration by Ian Robertson (illustrator). 1st Edition. 8vo – over 7¾ – 9¾” tall. “First published in 1983 / Reprinted in 1983.” Thus, the second printing. Book presents quite handsomely in near fine, price-clipped dust jacket. Public library trappings are minimal — “Waterloo Public Library” stamp to title page; small “Withdrawn” stamp to half-title, and a very faint library stamping to top page edges. But the reason the library trappings are minimal is probably that the free front endpaper has been neatly and entirely removed, so the first page is now the half-title. A tight, square copy of the rarest of the Sharpe novels, easily read and with the pages only slightly age-toned, but definitely ex-library. 319 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002507

Devil’s Guard / The Fascinating, True Story of the French Foreign Legion’s Nazi Batallion
Elford, George Robert
ISBN: 0440120144 / 0-440-12014-4
Price: US$ 135.00
Book Description: Dell Publishing, a division of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc., New York, 1988. Pictorial Wraps. Book Condition: As New. No Jacket. “New Dell Edition,” first printing. 4 X 6 3/4 Inches. White titles dropped out of mostly dark blue wraps; red swastika superimposed over map of Indochina. Cover price $3.95 U.S., $4.95 Canadian. Published “December 1988,” number line 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Very-good-plus unread with slight white rack rub to edges but NO reading creases. Thus, imperfect but still “as new.” Reputedly the true story of the successes of the former German troops fighting for the French against the Communists in Southeast Asia from 1954. (They were finally defeated POLITICALLY, when the Viets wised up and got their sympathizers in Europe to wail with indignation that former NAZIS were being used to whup their butts out in the jungle — though the author indicates the white-gloved French officers escorting damsels to fancy balls in Saigon would never listen to the German’s tactical advice, anyway.) Book begins with a hand-wringing disclaimer that this work is being published “to provide the reading public with a clear insight into the mind and personality of an unregenerate Nazi . . .” while of course publication “in no way indicates that the publisher agrees with or condones the points of view it expresses.” Book is more about jungle tactics vs. irregulars than about deviant Aryan racial theories, anyway. 336 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002508

The State of Humanity
Simon, Julian L., Edited by
ISBN: 1557861196 / 1-55786-119-6
Price: US$ 90.00
Book Description: Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass., and Oxford, U.K., 1995. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. 8vo – over 7¾ – 9¾” tall. “First Published 1995.” Book will close its text block and its rear board; “very good plus.” Health, life expectancy, per capita wealth, productivity, standard of living, natural resources, agriculture, water, pollution and the environment — everything’s getting better, as statistically demonstrated in this massive study, yet the gloom-and-doom news media are determined to report just the opposite. Simon taught business administration at the University of Maryland and was an adjunct professor at the Cato Institute. Four-inch vertical scratch (not a tear; a scratch) visible to glossy black DJ rear panel. 694 pp. including index. Bookseller Inventory # 002506

The Violent Land / Tales the Old Timers Tell About Nevada
Laxalt, Robert
Price: US$ 80.00
Book Description: Nevada Publishing Company, Reno, Nev., 1953. Soft cover. Book Condition: Near Fine. No Jacket. Illustrated by Richard Allen (illustrator). 1st Edition. 8vo – over 7¾ – 9¾” tall. This trade paperback is the first book (and we believe the first printing, though some sources list as “1950”) by Laxalt, younger brother of Paul Laxalt, who served as governor of — and then U.S. senator from — Nevada in the 1970s and 1980s. Author Robert Laxalt, who later founded the University of Nevada Press, is best known for “Sweet Promised Land,” 1957, about the return of his father to his Basque homeland after a lifetime as a Nevada sheepman. 1953 title-page date matches copyright dater; no later printings mentioned. The pages of this trade paperback are moderately and evenly age-toned, and the spine is considerably sun-faded, but it is unread, with no folds or curling; only one small edge-tear to rear wrap. 68 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002497

The Morning of the Magicians
Pauwels, Louis, and Jacques Bergier / Translated from the French by Rollo Myers
Price: US$ 47.50
Book Description: Stein and Day, New York, 1964. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. Jacket design by Peretz Kaminsky (illustrator). 1st Edition. 8vo – over 7¾ – 9¾” tall. First U.S. edition. First published in France 1960 as Le Matin des Magiciens; first published in England 1963 as “The Dawn of Magic.” Not price clipped; original $5.95 price showing. Quantum science & the frontiers of consciousness. Is the mutated “new man” already among us? What role did occult forces play in the development of atomic energy? (Co-author Bergier is a nuclear physicist.) 300 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002493

The Surgeon’s Mate / A New Jack Aubrey Story
O’Brian, Patrick
ISBN: 0002224062 / 0-00-222406-2
Price: US$ 155.00
Book Description: Collins, London, 1980. Hardcover. Book Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Jacket painting of H.M. sloop Sparrowhawk by W. Smyth (illustrator). 1st Edition. 12mo – over 6¾ – 7¾” tall. Cloak-and-dagger work in the Baltic, featuring some action at sea, as usual. “First published 1980.” The seventh and hardest-to-find hardcover first printing of the Aubrey/Maturin series, this example at a bargain price because it’s ex-public library, though the library trappings are gratifyingly minimal. Only a portion of a “WITHDRAWN FROM STOCK” rubber stamping is visible to FFE; the rest presumably absorbed by an earlier dust jacket protector. Another rubber-stamping to the copyright page identifies the book as property of the Llyfrgell Library, Dyfed, acquired in 1980. And that’s it. There’s no evidence any attachments were ever glued into this book, nor are there any edge stampings. Condition “good” with some light foxing to preliminary pages, spine rolled about 1/4-inch. DJ undamaged and not price clipped; original L5.95 price showing, but we downgrade DJ to “good-plus” due to the fact author’s name, originally in red ink, is entirely faded from the DJ spine. 315 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002485

Clans of the Alphane Moon / An abandoned satellite holds two worlds at bay
Dick, Philip K.
Price: US$ 32.50
Book Description: Ace Books, New York, 1964. Soft cover. Book Condition: As New. No Jacket. 1st Edition. 16mo – over 5¾ – 6¾” tall. Unread as new, no creases. Mass market paperback. No later printings mentioned. 192 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002483

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
Maclean, Norman
ISBN: 0226500551 / 0-226-50055-1
Price: US$ 114.00
Book Description: University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1976. Hardcover. Book Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. Illustrations by R. Williams (illustrator). 5th or later Edition. 12mo – over 6¾ – 7¾” tall. Non-authorial gift inscription to FFE, otherwise book would grade “as new unread.” Twentieth printing, number line 20 21 22 23 only. Full bound in black cloth; DJ, which never bore a price, is primarily powder blue, with woodcut vignette of lake and mountain. A famous set of stories by the outdoorsman and former William Rainey Harper professor of English at the University of Chicago. 217 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002474

The Great American Fraud / Articles on the Nostrum Evil and Quackery / Reprinted from Collier’s
Adams, Samuel Hopkins
Price: US$ 105.00
Book Description: Press of the American Medical Association, Chicago, 1912. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. 5th or later Edition. 12mo – over 6¾ – 7¾” tall. One wonders how happy most American doctors are, today, with the current level of government intervention in their trade. Recall that around the time this book was published, the fledgling AMA was also militating against the “Lodge Practice Evil,” which gave us fee-for-service medicine as we know it today. Nonetheless, the importance of this book in paving the way for the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, and thus the whole of medical regulation and the War on Drugs which flowed therefrom, cannot be exaggerated, nor is it easy today to defend the inflated claims made for the patent nostrums exposed here, more likely to contain alcohol and dilute sulfuric acid than anything of provable benefit. This is the fifth edition, 1912, revised. 185 pp followed by index and six pp. of publisher’s ads. Bookseller Inventory # 002470

Red Dirt Marijuana / And Other Tastes
Southern, Terry
Price: US$ 40.00
Book Description: New American Library, New York, New York, 1967. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. Cover photo by Robert Dudas (illustrator). 1st Edition. 8vo – over 7¾ – 9¾” tall. “First Printing” stated. Top of front DJ flap not price clipped; original $5.50 price showing. (Bottom of flap appears to be clipped; we don’t know why.) Full-bound black cloth, NO book-club deboss, though bottom of rear board is marked in red “HO184.” 246 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002466

Operation Overflight: The U-2 Spy Pilot Tells His Story for The First Time (SIGNED)
Powers, Francis Gary, with Curt Gentry
Price: US$ 175.00
Book Description: Holt Rinehart Winston, New York * Chicago * San Francisco, 1970. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Jacket design by Jay Smith (illustrator). 1st Edition. 8vo – over 7¾ – 9¾” tall. “First Edition” stated. Price-clipped DJ is coded”0570″ and shows an inch-and-a-half closed tear to top of front panel; call it “Good-Plus.” Copyright page lists SBN as 03-083045-1 (nine digits), whether today’s know-it-all computers like the number or not. Dated “July 8, 1970,” inscribed, & signed “Francis Gary Powers” diagonally in black felt-tip to FFE. 375 pp. Inscribed by Author(s). Bookseller Inventory # 002468

Thuvia, Maid of Mars
Burroughs, Edgar Rice
Price: US$ 112.50
Book Description: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., Tarzana, Calif., 1948. Hardcover. Book Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Frontispiece by J. Allen St. John (illustrator). 5th or later Edition. 12mo – over 6¾ – 7¾” tall. Zeuschner 808. Book will close its boards as well as its text block; small irregularity to spine cloth but no rub or wear; fine. DJ “good plus” with chipping to head of spine, removing the “T” of “THUVIA,” and small closed tears to edges. Zeuschner calls for a $1.00 price but this DJ, though unclipped, is also unpriced. Original DJ, NOT some photocopy or later reproduction. J. Allen St. John glossy B&W frontispiece is firmly attached. No repairs; no tape anywhere on this original dust jacket. 256 pp. including glossary. Bookseller Inventory # 002461

David Noebel Speaks on “The Marxist Minstrels” / The Communist Subversion of American Folk Music
Noebel, David, the Rev.
Price: US$ 90.00
Book Description: Christian Crusade Recordings, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1967. Hardcover. Book Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. This is not a book but a Near Mint 33 rpm vinyl LP record, High Fidelity No. 26009, promoting the narrator’s book, “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution, . . . The Book That Can Put Out the Fire of Red Inspired Youth Revolution,” copies offered at $1 each postage paid. Photos to rear jacket indicate the agents of this form of Communist subversion included The Beatles and Joan Baez, the latter shown at Berkeley “before an audience of insurrectionists, dupes, revolutionists, pro-Reds and pro-Viet Cong, stir(ring) the fires of revolution!” Noebel was an ordained Minister of the Gospel and associate of evangelist Billy James Hargis of the Christian Crusade. “Today’s youth possess the power to destroy the United States of America and well they may . . . unless the truths of this book can reach them in time!”. Bookseller Inventory # 002449

It’s time for Tina / The songs of Tina Louise
Louise, Tina
Price: US$ 525.00
Book Description: Concert Hall, New York, 1957. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Not a book, but an original 12-inch vinyl LP record, VG in VG-plus (downgraded for some small but visible scratches, which play through but do cause one unmistakable pop during the fifth track of Side One, “I’m in the Mood for Love.”) Original H-1521, not the re-release on Urania. Features Buddy Weed on piano, Hilton Jefferson on alto sax and Coleman Hawkins (yes, really) on tenor sax. Tracks include “Embraceable You” and “Let’s Do It,” on the latter of which the lovely but generally slow-breathing Miss Louise finally demonstrates she was NOT doped up on Nembutal for these sessions. (At least the sultry pace leaves lots of room for sax fills.) Before she played the quintessential Stepford Wife (1975), Tina Louise Blacker of course portrayed movie star Ginger Grant on “Gilligan’s Island” from 1964-67, making her the correct answer to the question “Ginger or Mary Ann?” Her only known LP. Hey, it wasn’t THAT bad. Bookseller Inventory # 002448

Learning from Las Vegas
Venturi, Robert; denise scott brown and steven izenour
ISBN: 0262220156 / 0-262-22015-6
Price: US$ 850.00
Book Description: MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1972. Dark gray cloth. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. First Edition (no edition stated). Quarto. NOT ex-library; book is unmarked. Some minor rub to bottom page edges; corners somewhat toed in. A folded four-page prospectus for the book is laid in, but original translucent dust jacket is absent. This book began as a studio project at the Yale School of Art and Architecture in the fall of 1968. “It was, in fact, a research project, undertaken as a collaboration among three instructors, nine students of architecture, and two planning and two graphics students in graduate programs at Yale,” all of whom eventually spent 10 days in Las Vegas. Chapters include “Billboards Are Almost All Right”; “The Architecture of Persuasion”; “The Interior Oasis”; “Las Vegas Lighting”; “Architectural Monumentality and the Big Low Space,” etc. A handsome copy of the hard-to-find, full-sized, original edition. 189 pp. Bookseller Inventory # 002433

Etiquette / In Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home
Post, Emily (Mrs. Price Post)
Price: US$ 95.00
Book Description: Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1926. Full-bound Blue Cloth. Book Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. Illustrated with private photographs and facsimiles of social forms (illustrator). Sixteenth Edition stated. Heavy 8vo. The indispensable guide to announcing persons of rank, how to behave when presented to royalty, the fact that only a virgin may wear white at her wedding, the necessity of wearing mourning for a full year, and of course the fact that the uniforms of one’s domestics should match the color scheme of one’s dining room. A book indispensable for getting everything right . . . if you maintain maids and footmen in both your town and country home, and believe it’s still 1926. (In Boston, at least, one will be glad to learn that, thanks to the good example of the dignified “older ladies of distinction, . . . dancing has not degenerated into gymnastics and contortions.”) Book announces itself as “Sixteenth Edition published in November, 1926,” but as these “editions” seem to have followed one another at a rate of about four per year following the first printing in 1922, one suspects we might refer to these today as “printings.” Slight age-toning to pages, more pronounced browning to endpapers. Non-authorial gift inscription (to Lady Percy from Mummie) to front pastedown. The book firmly bound, hinges untroubled, with gilt titles still easily legible to front boards and spine, but rubbed to all corners — a solid “good” but no better. 627 pp. including index. NOTE: Cat’s Curiosities sells used books. We attempt to identify books which have a damp or musty smell, when we sell them at all. Otherwise, buyers should assume used books have been shelved inside human habitations and have been exposed over the years to some combination of wood smoke, tobacco smoke, leather dressing, or other aromatic agents unknown to us. We offer no certificates of hypoallergenic purity. Those wishing to make symbolic gestures of support for the prohibition of tobacco and other medicinal plant extracts should apply elsewhere. Bookseller Inventory # 002412

One Comment to “Some interesting new arrivals”

  1. MamaLiberty Says:

    I like all the stuff you write, Vin… just wish you’d write more here! Once a month is kind of thin. 🙂