Search Results: Authors starting with K from The Manhattan Rare Book Company

Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1919. First edition. Original three-quarter calf over green and brown paper boards. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL BINDING OF ONE OF THE ONLY WORKS KAFKA PUBLISHED IN HIS LIFETIME. Franz Kafka was much more prolific in his day job than as a novelist, authoring countless statements, annual reports and accident assessments as an insurance officer in the twenty years before his death in 1924. Franz Kafka only published very few works of fiction in his lifetime, and in 1914 he wrote in his diary, "An Fertigem nur: In der Strafkolonie und ein Kapitel des Verschollenen" [Only finished works: In the Penal Colony and a chapter of The Missing] (cited in Dietz, p. 101). Why was Kafka so timid about his work? An intensely private person, he was very meticulous and self-critical as a writer, often doubting the worth of his own creative pieces and eventually requesting that all of his manuscripts be burnt upon his death. We know the name "Kafka" today in large part because of… Read More

First edition. Original wrappers. FIRST EDITION, THE PREFERRED ISSUE IN ILLUSTRATED WRAPPERS, OF ONE OF THE MASTERPIECES OF WORLD LITERATURE. "On the evening of November 17, 1912, a young employee of the Workmen's Accident Insurance Agency, in Prague, sat down to work on a 'troubling little story' that had occurred to him 'in bed' the previous night. After spending the first part of the day in the office, he returned to the apartment he shared with his parents and thee sisters, had lunch, napped, took a walk, and then did a series of strengthening and stretching calisthenics. This was his daily ritual before settling in for the evening - and often far into the night - to what he considered his true life, a life dedicated to writing. Then, whether acting on a long-meditated plan or following an obscure, sudden intuition, he set down the words of the first hammerlike sentence of what would become his most famous story and one of the defining works of modern imaginative fiction, The Metamorphosis, or… Read More

Leipzig: Der Weissen Bücher, 1915. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST APPEARANCE OF A MASTERPIECE OF WESTERN LITERATURE, PRECEDING THE FIRST BOOK EDITION. "Kafka read the first section of his 'bug piece' (Wanzensache) aloud to friends on November 24, 1912, and again on December 15. People started talking about it, and Kafka received a query from publisher Kurt Wolff in March 1913 on the recommendation of Kafka's friend Franz Werfel. Franz Blei, the literary editor of the new avant-garde journal Die weissen Blätter, expressed interest, and Robert Musil wrote as well, soliciting the novella for the more established Die neue Rundschau. But months passed before Kafka had a clean manuscript ready for submission, and then World War I intervened, causing further delays... In the spring of 1915, René Schickele took over as editor-in-chief of Die weissen Blätter, and with Max Brod's help, Kafka placed the story there. It came out in October 1915, and… Read More

Berlin and Leipzig: S. Fischer Verlag, 1922. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST PRINTING IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS. "One of the most highly regarded literary and cultural journals in the German language, Die neue Rundschau, which is still published today, first appeared in 1890. In Kafka's time it was the major periodical publication of one of the leading German literary presses... it published literary works by some of the most significant authors of the time, including Herman Hesse, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke. Kafka was a regular reader of Die neue Rundschau throughout his life." After Kafka's submission of "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis") was rejected due to its inordinate length, "Kafka was disappointed not to be able to count himself among the authors represented by this respected journal. However he did eventually join their ranks in October 1922, when the story "Ein Hungerkünstler" ("A Hunger Artist")… Read More

Budapest: Athenaeum, 1929. First edition. Original cloth. Very Good. THE RARE FIRST EDITION OF THE BOOK THAT INTRODUCED THE IDEA OF "SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION" AS A FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTIC OF SOCIAL NETWORKS. One of the key characteristics of social networks is what is known as the "small world phenomenon" - the idea that every individual can be linked to every other individual through a relatively short chain of acquaintance relationships. "[T]he first significant empirical study of [the phenomenon] was undertaken by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who asked randomly chosen 'starter individuals' to each try forwarding a letter to a designated 'target' person living in the town of Sharon, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston... Roughly a third of the letters eventually arrived at the target, in a median of six steps, and this has since served as basic experimental evidence for the existence of short paths in the global friendship network, linking all (or almost all) of us together in… Read More

Karsh, 1960. Framed. Very Good. ICONIC PHOTOGRAPH BY YOUSUF KARSH, INSCRIBED BY KENNEDY IN INK ON THE IMAGE. Yousuf Karsh's masterful portrait of John F. Kennedy, taken on August 25, 1960, just weeks after he accepted the Democratic nomination, captured the nation's imagination. By 1960 Kennedy was a rising star in American politics and this photograph embodied the aspirations and idealism of Kennedy and his presidential campaign. This image was widely circulated and is regarded as one of the most famous and influential portraits of JFK, helping to shape his public image as a young and vibrant leader. In this portrait Karsh depicts Kennedy in an introspective pose. The lighting emphasizes Kennedy's strong profile and the shadows and highlights accentuate Kennedy's dignified features. It is believed that Karsh swapped ties with Kennedy just minutes before photographing him because he thought his own tie created a better image. (Enman) Karsh's photograph symbolized the promise of Kennedy's presidency… Read More

Northport, NY: n.p., 1963. First edition. Custom cloth folder. Fine. SIGNED LETTER FROM KEROUAC FEATURING RARE DRAWING AND DISCUSSIONS OF FELLOW WRITERS. Dating from the final decade of Kerouac's life, the present letter is an unpublished insight into how the writer's relationships, attitudes and motivations developed in his later years. On the back of the second leaf is a collection of abstracted forms to which he refers at the start of the letter. Kerouac ironically describes his artwork as a gift "worth 10,000 dollars within 5 years". Identifying the piece, completed in pencil and marker, as an oil painting, he further comments on its value and rarity arising from the probability that he will "suddenly get bored with paint again". Subsequently, Kerouac describes an original piano composition titled "Procession of the Iroquois Chieftain" which-though left un-scored, "'cause I dont know how"-he claims to have recorded on tape. Charting his creative impulses, with increasing proficiency, from… Read More

1956. first edition. Original wrappers, custom box. Very Good. SCARCE FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE of Khrushchev's 'Secret Speech' Which Attacked Stalinism and Changed the Course of World History. On February 14, 1956 the twentieth congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union assembled in Moscow for their first meeting following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Almost nothing was said about the deceased leader until, in a closed session on February 25th, 1,500 delegates and visitors with special passes listened to a shocking speech by First Secretary of the party Nikita Khrushchev entitled The Personality Cult and its Consequences. In this speech Khrushchev denounced Stalin, seeking to destroy the beloved image and legacy of the late dictator. Guests and members of the press were excluded, and the Polish translation was the only version circulated during the Cold War. We have on offer the scarce first printing of the Polish text which included the recorded interjections which were edited out… Read More

London: Macmillan, 1897. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. FIRST EDITION of Kipling's popular nautical tale, with vivid descriptions of the Massachusetts fishing industry. The basis for the 1937 film starring Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, and Mickey Rooney. London: Macmillan, 1897. Octavo, original cloth gilt, all edges gilt. With illustrations by I.W. Taber. Book slightly cocked (as often); a few spots to cloth, crease to rear endpaper. Text unusually clean and cloth gilt bright. Without scarce dust jacket.

Berlin: Julius Springer, 1933. First edition. original wrappers. Fine. THE FIRST EDITION, IN ITS ORIGINAL WRAPPERS, OF KOLMOGOROV'S FAMOUS PAPER PUTTING PROBABILITY THEORY ON A FIRM AXIOMATIC BASIS. A formal system is a set of precisely-specified definitions, axioms, and rules of inference relating to a particular domain (such as geometry or arithmetic) that allow the rigorous development of theorems within that domain. Such systems replace vague and intuitive conceptions of a domain, or empirical rules of thumb, with rigorous standards of proof. The first formal system to be developed in the West was of course the system set forth in Euclid's Elements (see quotation above). Recognizing in that system, or at least in idealized versions of it, the gold standard of rigor, mathematicians in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries began trying to develop comparable systems outside the domain of geometry. Peano, for example, famously developed an axiomatic basis for natural-number arithmetic,… Read More