Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press. 2006. Hardcover. Good. One copy is ex-library. Other copy is not from a library but has extensive highlighting. Please state your preference when ordering. Nineteen months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR sent twelve "Vice Consuls" to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia on a secret mission. Their objective: To prepare the groundwork for the Allied invasion of North Africa that repelled the Nazis and also enabled the liberation of Italy. This spy network included an ex-Cartier jewel salesman and wine merchant, a madcap Harvard anthropologist, a Parisian playboy who ran with Hemingway, ex-French Foreign Legionnaires and Paris bankers, and a WWI hero.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hardcover. 1996. Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture. Near Fine / no jacket. Text pristine. Spine ends lightly bumped. Not from a library. No remainder mark. xii + 186 pages.
London: Frank Cass & Co. Hardcover. 1968 reprint of 1923 New Edition. Blue cloth over boards with gilt titles on spine with paper jacket. Near Fine book in a Near Fine jacket. Sewn binding. Spine straight and tight. Interior unmarked. Very light foxing to edges. Light shelfwear and sunning to jacket. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped: "90s net". xxviii + 336 pages.
New York: PublicAffairs. Trade Paperback. April 2008. First paperback printing / full number line. Near Fine. Unmarked. Spine straight, tight, uncreased. Cover clean and bright. Square corners. Light edgewear. Not from a library. No remainder mark. 290 pages. Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country had declared its independence, the army had mutinied, and governmental authority had collapsed. Devlin found himself in the heart of Africa, fighting for the future of the most strategically influential country on the continent. He met every significant figure, from presidents to mercenaries, as he took the Cold War to one of the world's hottest zones. This is a classic political memoir from a master spy who lived in wildly dramatic times.
Ames, Iowa: Iowa State Press. May 1998. Hardcover. Signed by the author. First Edition/second printing. Very Good book in Fine jacket. Binding is square and tight. Interior is pristine. Corners are sharp. Cover is clean and crisp. Foxing to edges. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not price clipped. 207 pages. Since his marriage to an Iowan, Richard, Lord Acton has divided his time between England and Iowa. Much of his American life is spent writing the historical studies and whimsical observations of the worlds around him that have endeared him to Iowans. This collection of Acton's essays reflects the rich diversity of the author's interests and experiences. The first chapter, "Finding Myself in Iowa, " concerns the author's attempts to discover what on earth he was doing in the heartland of America and his growing affection for his adopted state. "London Bridges" describes something of the other half of the author's life in "the greatest city in the world." Other chapters invoke a southern African childhood, surprises in the House of Lords, fascinating fragments of Iowa's past, and why "power tends to corrupt."
New Haven: Yale University Press. Hardcover. March 11, 2003. First Edition / full number line. Quarter-bound boards. Near Fine book in a Very Good jacket. Interior is pristine. Spine is straight and tight, ends lightly bumped. Rubbing and light edgewear to jacket. xiv + 402 pages.
London: Verso. Trade Paperback. June 1984. Near Fine. Foxing to closed edges and inside of covers. Not from a library. No remainder mark. 214 pages. Translation of Ibn Khaldoun : naissance de l'histoire, passe? du Tiers monde. This intriguing study opens with a general description of the Maghreb in the later Middle Ages, focusing primarily on mercantile trade, especially in gold, and the social and economic structures of tribal life. He unravels Khaldun's fascinating biography: born in 1332 to an aristocratic family in Tunis, he had an extraordinary diplomatic and military career in the turbulent wars and politics of Western Islam, withdrew to a desert retreat in 1375, and finally emigrated to Egypt. Lacoste then turns his attention to Ibn Khaldun's Universal History, arguably the greatest single synthesis produced by medieval thought anywhere. His account of Ibn Khaldun's thought is a remarkable, sympathetic work of recovery, not only uncovering its basic categories but exploring its contemporary relevance to an understanding of the Arab world.
New York: Harper & Row. Hardcover. 1983. First Edition (stated) / full number line. Inscribed on the half-title page by the author: "To Herman Cohen: A bit of ancient history from the first Assistant Secretary of African Affairs to the newest. George McGhee 4/30/90". A Very Good- book in a Very Good- jacket. Other than the inscription, interior is unmarked. Spine is straight and tight. Dust stains to edges. Bottom corners bumped. Rubbing and edgewear to jacket. Jacket spine faded. 457 pages. Foreword by Dean Rusk.
New York: Penguin. Trade Paperback. March 2000. First Penguin printing / full number line. Near Fine. Dust stains to top edge. Light tanning at page edges. Interior unmarked. Spine straight, tight, and uncreased. Corners sharp. Not from a library. 392 pages. On October 3, 1993, a band of U.S. soldiers embarked on a mission in Somalia to capture two warlords. It was a simple plan. What erupted instead was a night of bloodshed and death. It became the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. This is the extraordinary minute-by-minute account of that courageous, historic, and brutal night.
New York: Penguin. 1977. Paperback. Very Good. Text block lightly tanned but unmarked. Not from a library. 199 pages. When Querry, a world-famous architect, finds he no longer enjoys life or takes pleasure in art he sets off on a voyage. Arriving anonymously at a leper colony in the Congo, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case', a leper mutilated by disease and amputation. Querry slowly moves towards a cure, his mind getting clearer as he works for the colony. However, in the heat of the tropics, no relationship with a married woman, however blameless, will ever be taken as innocent.
Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Trade Paperback. 1968. Near Fine. Near Fine. Lightly tanned but unmarked. Spine is straight and very tight. Small dog-ear creases on bottom corners of both covers. 106 pages. Graham Greene set two of his novels, A Burnt out Case and The Heart of the Matter in Africa. Each arose out of visits to Africa - during each of which he kept a journal. Both "Congo Journey" and "Convoy to West Africa" are printed here and provide a glimpse of the novelist responding to the raw material of his art.
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. June 1994. Hardcover. First Edition (stated). Purple paper over boards with one-quarter white linen spine with black print on spine. First Edition (stated). Near Fine book in a Near Fine jacket. Spine tail bumped. Mild rubbing and edge wear. Interior is pristine. Spine is straight and tight. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped. 386 pages. An autobiographical novel dressed as fiction because nobody who hasn't lived in Sierra Leone could believe that these things happened. If you were a PCV in Sierra Leone in the 1980s, you will probably recognize the main characters. A finalist for the 1994 National Book Award for Fiction. Michael Killigan, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone, is missing. The search for him is launched separately by his father, Randall, a master-of-the-universe and warlord of the Indianapolis bankruptcy courts. and Michael's best friend, Boone Westfall. Once in Freetown, Boone falls in with Sam Lewis, an unscrupulous volunteer who's fed up with Sierra Leone. Lewis leads Boone into the bush and turns him over to Aruna Sisay, "the white Mende man," a fallen anthropologist who's sworn off the rigors of fieldwork. Back in America, Randall receives an ominous bundle of black rags from Sierra Leone and starts to experience terrifying sleep disorders. A raving hypochondriac, he bankrolls a search for his son, while seeking a medical explanation for his nocturnal hallucinations. Meanwhile. Liberian rebels are crossing the border in the south of Sierra Leone, elections are erupting into riots, and the countryside is ruled by warring secret societies of leopard and baboon men which still practice witchcraft and human sacrifice to win political power. But where's Michael? To find Killigan. Boone must negotiate witches and witch-finders, disgruntled ancestors and bush devils, bad medicine and "shapeshifters" who roam about in the guise of animals. And Randall learns that the bundle of rags may have transformed itself into a spirit and "entered" him, causing supernatural disturbances. Both begin by wondering if witchcraft is "true" and conclude that if it "works," it may as well be. An exuberantly funny satire in which litigation, modern medicine, and the insurance business begin to look a lot like traditional witchcraft.
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. June 1994. Hardcover. First Edition (stated). Purple paper over boards with one-quarter white linen spine with black print on spine. First Edition (stated). Very Good book in a Very Good jacket. Dust stains to top edge. Mild edge wear. Interior is pristine. Spine is straight and tight. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped. 386 pages. An autobiographical novel dressed as fiction because nobody who hasn't lived in Sierra Leone could believe that these things happened. If you were a PCV in Sierra Leone in the 1980s, you will probably recognize the main characters. A finalist for the 1994 National Book Award for Fiction. Michael Killigan, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone, is missing. The search for him is launched separately by his father, Randall, a master-of-the-universe and warlord of the Indianapolis bankruptcy courts. and Michael's best friend, Boone Westfall. Once in Freetown, Boone falls in with Sam Lewis, an unscrupulous volunteer who's fed up with Sierra Leone. Lewis leads Boone into the bush and turns him over to Aruna Sisay, "the white Mende man," a fallen anthropologist who's sworn off the rigors of fieldwork. Back in America, Randall receives an ominous bundle of black rags from Sierra Leone and starts to experience terrifying sleep disorders. A raving hypochondriac, he bankrolls a search for his son, while seeking a medical explanation for his nocturnal hallucinations. Meanwhile. Liberian rebels are crossing the border in the south of Sierra Leone, elections are erupting into riots, and the countryside is ruled by warring secret societies of leopard and baboon men which still practice witchcraft and human sacrifice to win political power. But where's Michael? To find Killigan. Boone must negotiate witches and witch-finders, disgruntled ancestors and bush devils, bad medicine and "shapeshifters" who roam about in the guise of animals. And Randall learns that the bundle of rags may have transformed itself into a spirit and "entered" him, causing supernatural disturbances. Both begin by wondering if witchcraft is "true" and conclude that if it "works," it may as well be. An exuberantly funny satire in which litigation, modern medicine, and the insurance business begin to look a lot like traditional witchcraft.
New York: Random House / Vintage Books. September 1954. Trade Paperback. Vintage Books, V-2. Later printing. Very Good. Tanned. Prior owner's name on first page, otherwise unmarked. Shelf and reading wear. Not from a library.
Reading, Massachusetts: Perseus Books. August 1995 Trade Paperback. Very Good. Spine is straight and tight. Interior is unmarked. Cover is clean and bright. Foxing to edges. Light reading wear. Not from a library, no remainder mark. No tears, no creases, no folds. In the 1940s, harems still abounded in Morocco. They weren't the opulent, bejeweled harems of Scherezade, but the domestic sprawl of extended families encamped around a walled courtyard that marked the edges of women's lives. Though born into this tightly sheltered world, Fatimi Mernissi is constantly urged by her rebellious mother to spring beyond it. In Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi's fertile imagination lets her slip back and forth through the gates that trapped her restive mother. She spins amiable tales of the rigidly proper city harem in Fez and the contrasting freedoms of the country harem where her grandmother lives.
London: Heinemann. 1969. African Writers Series #43. Paperback. 1984 reprint. Good. Tanned, foxed, top edge dust soiled. Cover creased. Interior unmarked. Spine straight and tight. Not from a library. Not a remainder. 183 pp. The story of an upright man resisting the temptations of easy bribes and easy satisfactions and winning for his honesty nothing but scorn.
Braamfontein, South Africa: Ravan Press. 1982. Paperback. First Edition. First Impression (stated). Good+. Tanning, foxing, reading wear. Spine and covers creased. Gift inscription on half title page. Text unmarked. Not from a library. No tears. 411 pp. The Return Of Amasi Bird provides a broad historical and critical spectrum of almost a century of black South African poetry. With over 300 poems from more than 150 poets, it is a portrait of cultural resistance from the early Christian poets through to the Black Conscoiusness writers.
Garden City, New York: Doubleday / Anchor Books. 1967. Paperback. First Anchor printing. Very Good. Edgewear. Foxing to top edge. Creasing at hinges. Spine is tight. Cover is clean and bright. Interior is unmarked. Not from a library. Not a remainder. No tears, no creases, no folds. 141 pp. Introduction by K. W. J. Post. Published, prophetically, just days before Nigeria's first attempted coup in 1966, A Man of the People is an essential part of Achebe's body of work. As Minister for Culture, former school teacher M. A. Nanga is a man of the people, as cynical as he is charming, and a roguish opportunist. When Odili, an idealistic young teacher, visits his former instructor at the ministry, the division between them is vast. But in the eat-and-let-eat atmosphere, Odili's idealism soon collides with his lusts--and the two men's personal and political tauntings threaten to send their country into chaos. When Odili launches a vicious campaign against his former mentor for the same seat in an election, their mutual animosity drives the country to revolution.
New York: Ballantine / Fawcett. 1983. Paperback. Fifth Printing, December 1984. Very Good. Tanned. Reading and edge wear. Spine is straight and tight. Interior is unmarked. Not from a library. Not a remainder. No tears. 192 pp. Filled with powerful language and finely drawn characters, Things Fall Apart also shimmers with the sounds and sights of village life. Okonkwo is born into poverty, with a wastrel for a father. Driven by ambition, he works tirelessly to gain the prosperity of many fields and wives and prestige in his village. But he is harsh as well as diligent. As he sees the traditions of his people eroded by white missionaries and government officials, he lashes out in anger. Things Fall Apart traces the growing friction between village leaders and Europeans determined to save the heathen souls of Africa. But its hero, a noble man who is driven by destructive forces, speaks a universal tongue.
New York: Ballantine / Fawcett. 1984. Paperback. Second Printing, January 12, 1985. Very Good+. Spine is tight. Cover is clean and bright. Interior is unmarked. Not from a library. Not a remainder. No tears, no creases, no folds. 159 pp. Achebe uses the 'fall' of one man, a descendant of the hero in Things Fall Apart, to depict the birth of a whole new age in Nigerian life -- one ruled by the most powerful and disillusioning corruption.
