Eight new titles in our door today-

Henry

Bemis

Books

Just-in Preview Catalogue, September 15, 2017

Eight new, over-the-transom titles for your review. Inquire re pricing via Facebook Messenger (Lindsay Thompson), or email henrybemisbookseller@gmail.

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Copyright 2017, Henry Bemis Books

Theodore L. Shaw, Art’s Endurance, Boston: Bruce Humphries, Inc, 1939. 249 pp, hardcover, unclipped dust jacket. Good condition.

One account has it that “Theodore L. Shaw is an obscure writer who published a series of books in the ’50’s and ’60’s with titles like Precious Rubbish and Don’t Get Taught Art This Way! As So Many People Do. I think it’s this guy’s time to shine.  Shaw was singing the gospel of level-playing-field relativism about 20 years before post-modernism legitimized the practice.

“Shaw filled multiple volumes with diagrams, gag cartoons, and barbed, contemptuous prose, all seething with resentment at the Art Establishment and the mechanisms by which we are taught to appreciate “art” as opposed to “entertainment.”   Shaw attempted to objectively prove that every kind of expression had its appropriate value, and that, though certain works were “more complex” than others, none were necessarily better than any others for it.  He sought to prove this through a series of dubious diagrams involving concentric circles and dots, applying pseudo-scientific reasoning to what is essentially a class-based argument against snobbism posing as expertise.”

James Allan Cabaniss, A History of the University of Mississippi, University of Mississippi Press, 1949. A centennial history of Ole Miss by a professor of history (1946-19770) there whose main scholarly interests lay in ecclesiastical history.

Paul Ralli, Nevada Lawyer: A Story of Life and Love in Las Vegas, Murray & Gee, stated 2nd edition, 1949, “revised and enlarged.” Good condition, unclipped dust jacket in Brodart cover. Inscribed by the author “To Ida Gross with my best”.

Born in Cyprus in 1903, Ralli read law in London, then came to the US on a six month visa. He worked as a lumberjack, steelworker, and laborer before getting some bit parts on the New York stage. Mae West sized him up as a prime cut in Diamond Lil; he went to Hollywood and acted in a handful of silents before sound and contract disputes turfed him out of Hollywood.

Ralli escaped to Mexicali ahead of the Justice Department (his visa had long since expired) and obtained fast re-entry as a British citizen; he passed the Nevada bar in 1933 and soon became a deputy DA and was elected city attorney of Las Vegas. He resigned to join the Army in World War II and died in California in 1953. A rollicking account of life when Vegas was so small there was almost no room for what happened there to stay there.

Ralph Nading Hill, Sidewheeler Saga: A Chronicle Of Steamboating, Rinehart & Co., 1952/53, LOC #52-9605. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, Brodart cover, 342 pp., very good condition.

A history of steamboats in America over the century and a half of their rise and gentle decline, culminating in the salvation of the Lake Champlain steamer, Ticonderoga. Tipped in is an envelope containing four well-preserved newspaper clippings on the “Ti” campaign in 1954.

Hill, a Vermont historian and preservationist (1917-1987) ran the Ticonderoga for a grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt for three years; edited Vermont Life for decades; and published history and biographies, including 1949’s The Winooski in the famed Rivers of America series.

E.L. Dayton, Give em Hell Harry: An Informal Biography of the Terrible-Tempered Mr T, New York, The Devin-Adair Co, 1956. LOC # 56-9833. Good condition, hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, Brodart cover.

Eldorous L. Dayton, a New York journalist, chess master, and early television newsman, doesn’t seem to have liked ex-President Harry Truman much. Dayton wrote and published this enthusiastic screed as a rebuttal to Truman’s memoirs: “entertaining, accurate as a bomb sight, pulverizing as a bomb,” the dust jacket claims. Lyons was also the author of a secret life of Hitler and a Trumanesque expose/bio of auto workers leader Walter Reuther.

Lawrence Schoonover, The Prisoner of Tordesillas, Little, Brown & Co., 1959, stated 1st edition. LOC #59-7337. Hardcover, 309 pp., unclipped dust jacket, Brodart cover, some foxing of the end pages. Biographical novel of Mad Joanna (1479-1555), daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and mother of Emperor Charles V.

Joanna married Philip the Handsome on 20 October 1496. Philip was crowned King of Castile in 1506, initiating the rule of the Habsburgs in Spain. After Philip's death that same year, Joanna was deemed mentally ill and was confined to a nunnery for the rest of her life. Though she remained the legal queen of Castile throughout this time, her father, Ferdinand II of Aragon, was regent until his death, when she inherited his kingdom as well. From 1516, her son, Charles I, ruled as king, while she nominally remained co-monarch.na (1479-1555), daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and mother of Emperor Charles V.

Schoonover (1906-1980) was mainly an author of historical novels that were praised for their factual detail and accuracy.

Goffrey Trease, The Grand Tour: A History of the Golden Age of Travel, Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1967, stated 1st edition. L)C #67-12648. Very good condition, hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, Brodart cover. 251 pp.

A popular, well-documented history of the three-to-four year pilgrimages the rich and powerful of Great Britain made of the Continent between the Elizabethan Age and the mid-19C. Trease (1909-1998), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature was the author of 113 books, many in the fields of children’s and young adult history, genres he singlehandedly lifted to academic and critical respect.

Michael Shaara, For The Love of the Game, Carroll & Graff stated 1st edition, 1991. ISBN 0-88184-695-3. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, very good condition. 152 pp.

The last, posthumous novel by the author of The Killer Angels is about the last game of a legendary MLB pitcher. Widely regarded as one of the best baseball novels ever.

Donald Gallup, ed, The Journals of Thornton Wilder (1939-1961), Yale University Press, 1st edition, 1st printing, 1985. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, very good condition. Brodart protective cover. 354 pp.

Two decades in the life of the writer and critic Thornton Wilder (1897-1975). Novelist, Playwright, Screenwriter, Educator. Winner, The Pulitzer Prize (Fiction 1928; Drama, 1938, 1942). Charles Eliot Norton Professor, Harvard; Recipient, Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1963; Screenplay, Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of A Doubt, 1943. Author, Our Town; The Skin of Our Teeth; The Matchmaker*; Author, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Theophilus North, The Eighth Day (*first performed as The Merchant of Yonkers, 1938; revised and presented as The Matchmaker, 1955; revised as a musical and presented as Hello, Dolly!, 1964).

*first performed as The Merchant of Yonkers, 1938; revised and presented as The Matchmaker, 1955; revised as a musical and presented as Hello, Dolly!, 1964