Author : Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 42,60 MB
Release : 2003-11
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN : 9780805074413
Guide on book collecting, making use of the electronic tools now available and more proven methods of acquisition. Insights from the world's most notable collectors, dealers and librarians. Collecting strategies. Survey of some prices of antiquarian books.
Author : Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publisher :
Page : 635 pages
File Size : 41,69 MB
Release : 2012
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780979949159
A Gentle Madness continues to astound and delight readers about the passion and expense a collector is willing to make in pursuit of the book. The book captures that last moment in time when collectors pursued their passions in dusty bookshops and street stalls, high stakes auctions, and the subterfuge worthy of a true bibliomaniac. An adventure among the afflicted, A Gentle Madness is vividly anecdotal and thoroughly researched. Nicholas Basbanes brings an investigative reporter's heart to illuminate collectors past and present in their pursuit of bibliomania. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Author : Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publisher : Harper
Page : 696 pages
File Size : 44,48 MB
Release : 2001-10-02
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN :
In 1995 Nicholas Basbanes introduced a resonant phrase to describe the obsessive passion people have had over the past twenty-five hundred years to possess books, a condition more commonly known as bibliomania, one he christened in his book A Gentle Madness. Reviewing the work in the Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda judged it to be a gallery of wonderful characters, "each more appealing than the last." Now, in Patience & Fortitude, Basbanes continues his discursive adventures among the gently mad, expanding his focus to probe the more comprehensive concept of book culture. Visiting many key "book places" around the world, he talks with a striking variety of kindred spirits, each one a living testament to the unending relevance of these essential artifacts in our lives. Drawing its title from the unofficial names of the marble lions that guard the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Patience & Fortitude explores the changing form of the book over the centuries and describes the nature of the institutions that have evolved to contain them, including academic, public, private, and national repositories. Using the same narrative technique that made A Gentle Madness a national bestseller, Basbanes employs a lively balance of scholarly research with investigative journalism to document many pertinent book stories that have not been told before, and offers unprecedented depth to others that have barely scratched the surface. Picking up seamlessly where its predecessor left off, Patience & Fortitude profiles the experiences and thoughts of all kinds of dedicated "book people," be they librarians, readers, writers, bookmakers, booksellers, preservationists, or collectors.
Author : Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 46,69 MB
Release : 2008-01-01
Category : Education
ISBN : 0300142722
For Yale University Press, which celebrates its hundredth birthday in 2008, the century has been an eventful one, punctuated with no few surprises. The Press has published more than 8,000 volumes through the years, scores of bestsellers and award-winners among them, and these books have come to fruition through the efforts of a host of colorful authors, editors, directors, board members, and others of intellectual and literary renown. With an ear always cocked for an interesting tale, one of today's best storytellers presents an anecdote-rich chronicle of the Press's first 100 years. Nicholas Basbanes, whom David McCullough has called the leading authority of books about books, quickly convinces us that the Press's history, while bookish, is also lively and fascinating. Basbanes explores the saga behind the acquisition of Eugene O'Neill's blockbuster play, the all-time Yale bestseller Long Day's Journey into Night; the controversy sparked in 1965 by publication of The Vinland Map; the origins of the groundbreaking Annals of Communism series, initiated in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise; and many more highlights from Press annals. Basbanes looks at the reasons behind the publisher's remarkable financial success, and he completes A World of Letters with a glimpse at the new initiatives that will propel the Press into a second exciting century.
Author : Kate Zernike
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 191 pages
File Size : 37,24 MB
Release : 2010-09-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1429982721
A surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics They burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession—angry voters gathering by the thousands to rail against bailouts and big government. Evoking the Founding Fathers, they called themselves the Tea Party. Within the year, they had changed the terms of debate in Washington, emboldening Republicans and confounding a new administration's ability to get things done. Boiling Mad is Kate Zernike's eye-opening look inside the Tea Party, introducing us to a cast of unlikely activists and the philosophy that animates them. She shows how the Tea Party movement emerged from an unusual alliance of young Internet-savvy conservatives and older people alarmed at a country they no longer recognize. The movement is the latest manifestation of a long history of conservative discontent in America, breeding on a distrust of government that is older than the nation itself. But the Tea Partiers' grievances are rooted in the present, a response to the election of the nation's first black president and to the far-reaching government intervention that followed the economic crisis of 2008-2009. Though they are better educated and better off than most other Americans, they remain deeply pessimistic about the economy and the direction of the country. Zernike introduces us to the first Tea Partier, a nose-pierced young teacher who lives in Seattle with her fiancé, an Obama supporter. We listen in on what Tea Partiers learn about the Constitution, which they embrace as the backbone of their political philosophy. We see how young conservatives, who model their organization on the Grateful Dead, mobilize a new set of activists several decades their elder. And we watch as suburban mothers, who draw their inspiration from MoveOn and other icons of the Left, plot to upend the Republican Party in a swing district outside Philadelphia. The Tea Party movement has energized a lot of voters, but it has polarized the electorate, too. Agree or disagree, we must understand this movement to understand American politics in 2010 and beyond.
Author : Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 13,38 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Bibliomania
ISBN : 9780979949104
General Adult. From the acclaimed author of A Gentle Madness comes a new collection of more than thirty dispatches from the world of books. Reports on a nascent library in Iraq and a firsthand account of a high-stakes book auction combine with provocative discussions of the deliberate destruction of books and insightful profiles of book collectors, writers, and librarians to create a panoramic view of bibliomania.
Author : Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 450 pages
File Size : 11,12 MB
Release : 2014-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0307279642
A Best Book of the Year: Mother Jones • Bloomberg News • National Post • Kirkus In these pages, Nicholas Basbanes—the consummate bibliophile’s bibliophile—shows how paper has been civilization’s constant companion. It preserves our history and gives record to our very finest literary, cultural, and scientific accomplishments. Since its invention in China nearly two millennia ago, the technology of paper has spread throughout the inhabited world. With deep knowledge and care, Basbanes traces paper’s trail from the earliest handmade sheets to the modern-day mills. Paper, yoked to politics, has played a crucial role in the unfolding of landmark events, from the American Revolution to Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers to the aftermath of 9/11. Without paper, modern hygienic practice would be unimaginable; as currency, people will do almost anything to possess it; and, as a tool of expression, it is inextricable from human culture. Lavishly researched, compellingly written, this masterful guide illuminates paper’s endless possibilities.
Author : George Plimpton
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 26,89 MB
Release : 2016-04-26
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 031632647X
George Plimpton's follow-up to Paper Lion, one of his personal favorites among his classic books -- repackaged and including a foreword from Steve Almond and never-before-seen content from the Plimpton archives. In Mad Ducks and Bears, George Plimpton's engaging companion to Paper Lion, Plimpton focuses on two of the most entertaining and roguish linemen and former teammates -- Alex Karras ("Mad Ducks") and John Gordy ("Bears"), both of whom went on to achieve brilliant post-football success. A more reflective, less madcap book than Plimpton's other work, Mad Ducks and Bears is no less truthful and searching. In this fond exploration of football's values and follies, Plimpton rejoins his two teammates to discuss their careers in this brutal but captivating game. The result is an astute exploration into the fascinating lives and motivations of the players at home, in the locker room, and on the field.
Author : Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 28,36 MB
Release : 2006-12-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0060593245
Inspired by a landmark exhibition mounted by the British Museum in 1963 to celebrate five eventful centuries of the printed word, Nicholas A. Basbanes offers a lively consideration of writings that have "made things happen" in the world, works that have both nudged the course of history and fired the imagination of countless influential people. In his fifth work to examine a specific aspect of book culture, Basbanes also asks what we can know about such figures as John Milton, Edward Gibbon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Adams, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Henry James, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller––even the notorious Marquis de Sade and Adolf Hitler––by knowing what they have read. He shows how books that many of these people have consulted, in some cases annotated with their marginal notes, can offer tantalizing clues to the evolution of their character and the development of their thought.
Author : Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 20,69 MB
Release : 2020-06-02
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1101875143
A major literary biography of America's best-loved nineteenth-century poet, the first in more than fifty years, and a much-needed reassessment for the twenty-first century of a writer whose stature and celebrity were unparalleled in his time, whose work helped to explain America's new world not only to Americans but to Europe and beyond. From the author of On Paper ("Buoyant"--The New Yorker; "Essential"--Publishers Weekly), Patience and Fortitude ("A wonderful hymn"--Simon Winchester), and A Gentle Madness ("A jewel"--David McCullough). In Cross of Snow, the result of more than twelve years of research, including access to never-before-examined letters, diaries, journals, notes, Nicholas Basbanes reveals the life, the times, the work--the soul--of the man who shaped the literature of a new nation with his countless poems, sonnets, stories, essays, translations, and whose renown was so wide-reaching that his deep friendships included Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, and Oscar Wilde. Basbanes writes of the shaping of Longfellow's character, his huge body of work that included translations of numerous foreign works, among them, the first rendering into a complete edition by an American of Dante's Divine Comedy. We see Longfellow's two marriages, both happy and contented, each cut short by tragedy. His first to Mary Storer Potter that ended in the aftermath of a miscarriage, leaving Longfellow devastated. His second marriage to the brilliant Boston socialite--Fanny Appleton, after a three-year pursuit by Longfellow (his "fiery crucible," he called it), and his emergence as a literary force and a man of letters. A portrait of a bold artist, experimenter of poetic form and an innovative translator--the human being that he was, the times in which he lived, the people whose lives he touched, his monumental work and its place in his America and ours.
