Ondes et Mouvements [Waves and Motions]

Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1926

FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of de Broglie’s presentation of his revolutionary theory of the wave-particle duality of matter. PMM 417.

De Broglie’s work “served as the basis for developing the general theory nowadays known by the name of wave mechanics, a theory which has utterly transformed our knowledge of physical phenomena on the atomic scale.”

Octavo, original printed wrappers; custom cloth box. Modest bookplate on inside front wrapper; tape repair to initial blank. Minor discoloration to wrapper edges; an excellent copy.

$2,500

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The Anatomy of Melancholy

LIMITED EDITION, one of 750 copies. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color: #424242; -webkit-text-stroke: #424242} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} All I can say is that most modern books weary me, but Burton never does...His writing is like talk, learned but earthy, and once he starts, he is hard to stop...That he was a humorist in our sense of the word we need no biographical facts to attest: The Anatomy of Melancholy is, by a magnificent and somehow very English irony, one of the great comic works of the world.— Anthony Burgess Two volumes. Quarto. Original vellum-backed decorative boards. Printed on Dutch paper. An excellent set, clean throughout.

$500

Antlitz der Zeit

FIRST EDITION of Sander’s classic, one of the most influential photobooks of the early twentieth-century. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY SANDER.August Sander “was part of a coterie of photographers who established the photographic book as an aesthetically and commercially viable art form in the 1920s. Though Sander had published one such book in 1924, Unsere Heimat, Hannover, it was the 1929 publication of Antlitz der Zeit (The Face of Our Time) that propelled him into enduring fame” (Warren, Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography). “Many of his classic images are included in this seminal photobook, and the essential qualities of Sander’s vision can be seen. He took typical examples of professions, trades and social classes in Weimar Germany, and photographed them in their familiar environments in order to build up, piece by piece, a dispassionate image of the ‘face’ of society… One of his work’s miracles is how, despite his nominal objectivity, his political view shines through… His work is not neutral. It is not just penetrating, but was seen as positively dangerous, a little too acute in its analysis of society and class, by those with certain vested interests. This is made clear by the fact that when the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, publisher’s copies of Antlitz der Zeit were seized, the plates destroyed, and the negatives confiscated by Hitler’s Ministry of Culture” (The Photobook, I.124). Roth 52. Quarto. Original yellow cloth, original dust jacket. Signed and inscribed by Sander. Scarce original dust jacket with small chips at spine ends and extremities, and significant tears with loss at bottom portion of spine and front cover and at top of dust jacket rear (1"x4").

Price On Request

Facile: Poemes de Paul Eluard, Photographies de Man Ray

"Although Man Ray participated in and produced hundreds of fruitful collaborative works in his life, Facile must be ranked among the most successful." --Roth, 101 BooksNumber 623 of 1200 copies on vein, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED by Paul Eluard on the half-title.Quarto, original wappers; custom half-morocco box. First gathering loose, a hint of wear to wrapper edges. A fine copy.

$15,000

Nova Methodus pro maximis et minimis. IN: Acta Eruditorum.

FIRST EDITION of the first announcement of differential calculus. "The controversy with Newton on priority of invention of the calculus does not detract from the superiority of Leibniz' method of notation, one retained in modern use. He applied his new method to the solution of the cubic parabola and the inverse methods of tangents and many problems left unsolved by Descartes. Fifteen years after Newton's first work in fluxions and nine after his own independent discovery, Leibniz published [Nova Methodus], his first announcement of the differential calculus" (Dibner 109). "Leibniz was an almost universal genius whose place in the history of mathematics depends on his being an independent inventor of the infinitesimal calculus and on his contributions to combinatorial analysis which foreshadowed the development of modern mathematical analysis... The Acta Eruditorum was established in imitation of the French Journal des Scavans in Berlin in 1682 and Leibniz was a frequent contributor. Another German mathematician (E.W. Tschirnhausen) having published in it his paper on quadratures, based on researches that Liebniz had communicated to him, Leibniz at last decided in 1684 to present to the world the more abstruse parts of his own work on the calculus. His epoch-making papers give rules of calculation without proof for rates of variation of functions and for drawing tangents to curves... "The infinitesimal calculus originated in the 17th century with the researches of Kepler, Cavalieri, Torrecelli, Fermat and Barrow, but the two independant inventors of the subject, as we understand it today, were Newton and Leibniz... Although both Newton and Leibniz developed similar ideas, Leibniz devised a superior symbolism and his notation is now an essential feature in all presentation of the sibject.... With the calculus a new era began in mathematics, and the development of mathematical physics since the 17th century would not have been possible without the aid of this powerful technique" (PMM 160).IN: Acta Eruditorum, 1684-1685, pp. 467-73. The full volume offered, with volume title, index, and addenda. Thick quarto, contemporary half-calf with elaborately gilt-decorated spine; edges dyed red. Corners on binding bumped and worn. Text generally very clean with only ocassional light browning.

$21,500

An Account of a Female of the White Race of Mankind, Part of Whose Skin Resembles that of a Negro; With some Observations on the Causes of the Differences in Colour and Form Between the White and Negro Races of Men

FIRST EDITION. "The first statement of the theory of natural selection and an almost complete anticipation of Darwin's theory" – Garrison Morton"[What was done for animals artificially] seems to be done with equal efficiency, though more slowly, by nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the country which they inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur among the first scattered inhabitants, some one would be better fitted than the others to bear the dis- eases of the country. This race would multiply while the others would decrease, and as the darkest would be the best fitted for the [African] climate, at length [they would] be- come the most prevalent, if not the only race."Wells presented “An Account of a Female of the White Race...” to the Royal Society in 1813 but the work was not published until 1818, after his death, as a paper in the volume entitled Two Essays. In this paper, Wells describeshow the natural selection process applies to skin color in humans.Octavo.

$1,200

The Photographic History of the Civil War

"The grandfather of pictorial histories, this mammoth work is a necessary part of any Civil War library. The work contains 3,389 images that constitute an important source on the war's appearance—its battlefields, common soldiers, officers, forts, diseases, camp scenes, army movements, and materiel." Eicher, The Civil War in Books 771."The greatest single collection of Brady illustrations" (Allan Nevins). The Mathew Brady photographs represent the first instance of a comprehensive photo-documentation of a war. New York: The Review of Reviews, 1911. Quarto, original blue cloth gilt. Ten volumes. An exceptional set, gilt uncommonly bright. Only occasional trivial wear to bindings. Very rare in this condition.

$1,250

Ulysses

First authorized American edition, INSCRIBED BY ILLUSTRATOR ERNST REICHL IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION. "Not only designed, but signed, for a good old friend. Ernst Reichl / 1.23.34" Octavo, original oatmeal cloth, presumed first issue dust jacket (with 'Reichl' on lower front wrapper). Book near fine with few marks on covers, dust jacket very good with tape reinforcement at spine head verso, crease and small chips to jacket spine.

$5,000

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

FIRST EDITION, FIRST STATE of the most famous and most beloved biography in the English language. One of only 1750 copies of the first edition printed (both first and second states combined). p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color: #424242; -webkit-text-stroke: #424242} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} "Anyone interested in biography soon becomes interested in Boswell's Life of Johnson. It stands next to other biographies as Shakespeare stands beside other playwrights: towering above them all. For more than two centuries it has been continually in print, and in that time it has won innumerable admirers. No other biography has given so much pleasure; no other biographer has created such a vivid central character. It has become a truism that, as a result of Boswell's extraordinary book, Samuel Johnson is better known to us than any other man in history" (Sisman, Boswell's Presumptuous Task, xv). First state with "gve" on page 135 of vol. I. Quarto. Two volumes. Contemporary calf, skillfully rebacked. Gilt compartments, double-labels. A wide margined copy in a handsome binding. With frontispiece (after Sir Joshua Reynolds) and the two engraved plates in vol. II. Courtney & Smith, pp. 172-73. Pottle 79. Grolier English Hundred 65. Rothschild 463.

$9,000

Le Neo-Plasticisme

FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY MONDRIAN IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS. 14 pp. Octavo. Original wrappers. Signed and incribed in pencil by Mondrian on title. Small chip at head of spine, small stain on front wrapper. VERY RARE SIGNED.

$7,500

The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man

SECOND AMERICAN EDITION. Lyell uses the evidence of fossil remains to place the age of the human race in the context of other historical artifacts such as glaciers and extinct species of animals. This was much longer than previously supposed. Lyell also comments on the ideas of species and race, and on the evolution theories of Lamarck, Chambers, Darwin, and Wallace.“Though written by a single author, Antiquity of Man was substantively and symbolically the work of all the human antiquity investigators. It drew extensively on Prestwichʼs and Evansʼs work in the Somme Valley, Pengellyʼs excavation of Brixham Cave, Flaconerʼs investigations of caves throughout Europe, and a variety of recent archaeological stud- ies... His knowledge of post-Tertiary geology and his reputation as theorist meant that, in expressing his belief in men among the mammoths, he tacitly spoke for all the geolo-gists working on the human antiquity question.” - A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Men Among the Mammoths: Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human PrehistoryOctavo. Original pebbled cloth. An attractive copy in original cloth. Generally clean throughout; spine ends frayed with loss, corners rubbed, gilt somewhat dulled. Generally a handsome and sound volume.

$500

Television (Seeing by Wire or Wireless)

Dinsdale's Seeing by Wire or Wireless was the first book entirely devoted to subject of television. Dinsdale gives and account of the demonstration of John Baird's successful television system in January 1926, details similar previous experiments, and describes the mechanics of television. Overall, the history of television is well-documented in Dinsdale's work, and Baird's system paved the way for future developments in television, leading to the first high-definition broadcasting system in 1936. First edition. Original wraps, no dust cover; in clamshell box.

$1,700

Essay on the Theory of the Earth

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. “In paleontology, catastrophism reached an apogee in Georges Cuvierʼs... ʻEssay on the theory of the earth.” Cuvier did not present his Essay as a textbook of catastrophism, but as a statement about the roles that paleontology and geology should play in unravelling the history of the earth. Nonetheless, Cuvierʼs Essay exposes all characteristic features of catastrophism as a science, and illustrates the incompatibility of this geologi- cal approach with Darwinʼs prerequisites for natural selection as a chief agent of macro-evolutionary pattern.” - Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary TheoryOctavo. Complete with half-title and 8 engraved plates. Modern 1/4 calf over early marbled boards. Scattered foxing; glean throughout. A handsome copy.

$700

DE BROGLIE, LOUIS-VICTOR