Search Results: Autobiography from Le Bookiniste, ABAA-ILAB-IOBA

New York: Random House, 1953. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo (8 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches; 208 x 138 mm), 332, [2] pages, in black cloth, titles to spine, in an unclipped dust jacket (hard cover). Autobiography of newspaper editor James Wechsler (1915-1983), who ran the New York Post when it was a leading voice of liberal anticommunism. Wechsler had joined the Young Communist League while he was a student at Columbia, but he renounced communism some years later. Nonetheless, Senator Joseph McCarthy hauled Wechsler before his Senate committee to grill him on his alleged communist sympathies. Wechsler fought back and continued to battle McCarthyism in his journalism career. CONDITION: Some rubbing to cloth, tiny stains to top and bottom edges but internally clean and unmarked. The unclipped dust jacket has some rubbing, a few nicks, some soiling to the front and rear panels, and age-toning to the verso. Near Fine in a Very Good dust jacket.

Octavo (8 3/4 x 6 inches; 222 x 150 mm),xi, [1], 276 pages, quarter cloth over boards, titles to spine, in a price-clipped, illustrated dust jacket (hard cover).
A combination of 20th-century literary history and memoir by the editor and critic Malcolm Cowley (1898-1989).
CONDITION: Minor soiling on the top edge and front free end paper. Remainder mark on the top edge. The price-clipped dust jacket has a couple closed tears, some rubbing, and sunning to the spine. Very Good or better in a Very Good dust jacket.

Garden City, New York : Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1949. First American Edition, 1st Printing. Small Quarto (9 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches; 245 x 165 mm), xvi, 367, [1] pages, in red buckram, top edge gilt, titles to spine in black and gilt, in an acetate dust jacket and black slipcase. SIGNED by Somerset Maugham on the limitation page in the front of the book, one of 1,000 signed and numbered copies (ours is number 342). A collection of short excerpts from the notebooks that Maugham kept during much of his life, with entries ranging from 1892 to 1944 and covering numerous countries. Maugham had a keen power of observation, writing vividly about the people he met and the places he visited. For instance, here's an entry from 1917, when he visited Russia during the revolution and met Alexander Kerensky: "He came into the room followed by his A.D.C. [aide de camp], with a quick step, and gave me a firm, hasty, mechanical handshake. He seemed fearfully on edge. Sitting down and talking incessantly, he took hold… Read More

New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. First Edition, First Printing.
SIGNED by John Edgar Wideman on the title page. "As a memoir it is superb," the reviewer Mel Watkins wrote in The New York Times on November 13, 1994. "The author brings all of the considerable narrative skills (demonstrated in the novels of his Homewood trilogy and in his short fiction) into play in a quest to understand the simultaneous estrangement and mythical connection he felt toward his father."
PHYSICAL DETAILS: Small Octavo (7 3/4 x 5 inches; 195 x 130 mm), xxv, 197 pages, black boards, in unclipped printed dust jacket.
CONDITION: Fine in a Fine dust jacket.

Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Directions, 2003. First Edition.
SIGNED by John Edgar Wideman on the title page. A travel memoir by the acclaimed author. Signed copies are scarce in the market.
PHYSICAL DETAILS: Octavo (8 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches; 210 x 140 mm), xxx, 167 pages, black and green boards, in an unclipped dust jacket.CONDITION: Fine in a Fine dust jacket.