Search Results: Titles starting with N from The Book Collector ABAA, ILAB, TBA

185-191 pages with bibliography. Royal octavo (10" x 6 3/4") bound in original publisher's wrappers. Ethnology Volume XLIII Number 2 complete issue. First edition.
This essay discusses a traditional model of the maternal nurturing of newborn babies in the Shoshoni tradition from a native-language perspective. It examines the 30-day period of confinement called nagotooh(gahni), which was viewed as a symbolic extension of a mother's womb (no aabi). Nagotooh(gahni) implied behavioral and dietary prescriptions and recommendations that guided a woman during a socially structured transition to motherhood. (Confinement practices, mother-infant interactions, nagotooh(gahni), Shoshoni)
Condition: Light edge wear with bumped corners, head page ends soiled else very good

x+287 pages with diagrams, tables, appendixes and index. Royal octavo (9 1/4 " x 6 1/4") issued in green cloth with white lettering to spine. From the library of George M Foster. Texas Pan American Series. 1st edition.James Taggart compares the folklore of two communities of Nahuat speakers of the northern Sierra de Puebla, in Mexico. Because of close historical, linguistic and cultural ties, these groups share many stories, but Taggart clearly illustrates how their differing positions as Indians in Mexican society influence the content of these stories. One community, for example, is unusually autonomous in their dealings with the Hispanic populace. In their tales they retain many Aztec religious personalities, including the anthropomorphized serpent gods Quetzalcoatl and Coatlicue. Like that of the ancient Aztecs, their oral tradition exhibits and integrated view of human-animal relationship. In contrast, the Nahuat whose ethnic community is dominated by their Hispanic populace have replaced many of… Read More

298 pages with diagrams and index. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's pictorial wrappers.
The Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defence is one of the most popular, reputable, and deeply studied of all chess openings. The opening is named after the Polish-Argentine grandmaster Miguel Najdorf, although he was not the first strong player to play the variation. Many players have relied on the Najdorf (notably Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov, although Kasparov would often transpose into a Scheveningen)The Najdorf begins:
1. e4 c52. Nf3 d63. d4 cxd44. Nxd4 Nf65. Nc3 a6Black's 5...a6 aims to deny the b5-square to White's knights and light-square bishop while maintaining flexible development. If Black plays 5...e5?! immediately, then after 6.Bb5+! Bd7 (or 6...Nbd7 7.Nf5) 7.Bxd7+ Nbxd7 (or Qxd7) 8.Nf5, the knight on f5 is difficult to dislodge without concessions. Games in the Najdorf frequently feature opposite-side castling, where White castles long and both sides launch simultaneous… Read More

296 pages. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6") bound in original publisher's quarter green cloth with gilt lettering to spine over light green boards in original pictorial jacket. First edition.She may be a bestselling author, but ex-librarian Jacqueline Kirby's views on the publishing biz aren't fit to print. In fact, she's thinking of trading celebrity for serenity and a house far away from fiendish editors and demented fans when her agent whispers the only words that could ever make her stay: Naked in the Ice.Seven years ago, this blockbuster skyrocketed Kathleen Darcy to instant fame. Now the author's heirs are looking for a writer to pen the sequel. It's an opportunity no novelist in her right mind would pass up, and there's no doubting Jacqueline's sanity...until she starts digging through the missing woman's papers--and her past. Until she gets mixed up with Kathleen's enigmatic lover. Until a series of nasty accidents convince her much too late that someone wants to bring Jacqueline's story--and her… Read More

293 pages. royal octavo (99 1/2" x 6 1/4") bound in original publisher's quarter black paper with silver lettering to spine over red boards in original pictorial wrappers. Signed by the author to title. First edition. Seattle homicide detective J. P. Beaumont investigates the New Year's Eve murder of a high-tech executive with a degenerate personal life. By the author of Lying in Wait. Tour. Condition: Slightly cocked, page ends lightly soiled else very good in a fine copy.

257 pages. Octavo (8 1/2" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's quarter beige cloth with gilt lettering to spine in original jacket. First edition. Lawrence Thornton is an American novelist and critic living in Claremont, California. His most well known novel, Imagining Argentina, employs the methods of magic realism to tell a story of the Dirty War. Condition: A fine copy in like jacket.

259 pages. Octavo (8 1/2" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's quarter red cloth with black lettering to spine over grey boards in original pictorial jacket. First edition. When director William Olds arrives on the island of Nantucket with his entourage to shoot soap opera, Professor Neil Kelly must sort through the death and destruction they leave behind. Condition: Previous owner's blind stamp to front end page, spine end lightly sunned at edges else very good in a near fine jacket.

276 pages. Octavo (8 1/2" x 5 1/2') bound in original publisher's quarter green cloth with gilt lettering to spine over beige boards in original pictorial jacket. First edition. Returning to Nantucket for a midwinter reunion with her old friends, Mrs. Potter finds her friends dangerously thin as a result of diet doctor Count Tony Ferencz's influence and finds the community plagued by "accidental deaths". Condition: Previous owner's neat name to front end paper else near fine in a fine jacket.

v+354 pages with diagrams, plates and indexes. Royal octavo (9 1/4 x 6 1/2") issued in original publisher's red cloth with gilt lettering to spine and front cover. First edition.William Ewart Napier (17 January 1881 in East Dulwich, Surrey - 6 September 1952 in Washington, D.C.) was an American chess master of English birth. His parents emigrated to the United States when he was five years old. From 1895 he lived in Brooklyn and came into contact with some of the best chess players of the country. He had his first successes with simultaneous games, among other things winning in December 1894 versus the acting United States Chess Champion Jackson Whipps Showalter. At the beginning of 1896 he, despite his young age, became a member of the Brooklyn Chess Club and won the club championship later that year, at the age of 15. In the same year he defeated the later grandmaster Frank James Marshall in a match, winning 7:1 with 3 draws. 1897 saw him win a tournament game against ex-world champion Wilhelm… Read More

xxix+212 pages with plates, illustrations, maps, bibliography and index. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6") bound in original publisher's red cloth with gilt lettering to spine and cover in original pictorial jacket. First edition. Antonio Nariño (1765 1823) as a prosperous merchant who served as alcalde and as royal treasurer of tithes. He also headed a group that met to discuss the issues of the day in the light of new intellectual currents emanating from the European Enlightenment, whose principal authors were represented in Nariño's extensive personal library. He gained political notoriety when he was arrested in 1794 for having printed and secretly distributed a Spanish translation of the French revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man. He traveled where he attempted to sound out the British concerning possible help in case a revolution broke out in Spanish America. In 1797 he returned to New Granada, where he boldly surrendered to the authorities. He was not sent back to exile, but over the… Read More

[8]+194+[4] pages with full-page engraving on verso of title page. Quarto (7 3/4" x 6") bound in contemporary vellum with edges tinted red. (European Americana 740/121; Medina, BHA 6467; Palau 92347; Sabin 24815) Second edition, first published in 1692.
Francisco de Florencia was the first Jesuit to be born in the territory that is now known as the United States, in the current state of Florida. At the age of twenty-three, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1612 and was professor of philosophy and theology at the Colegio Máximo de México. In 1668 he was sent as procurator of his province to Rome and Madrid. He then returned to the Mexican capital, where he died in 1695. Of his sixteen works (almost all with very baroque titles), the History of the Province of the Society of Jesus in New Spain stands out , published in Mexico in 1694, where he recorded the missionary work of the priests, without making concessions to the Indians, whom he almost totally ignores.
Before entering the Society of Jesus… Read More

225 pages. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's blue cloth with yellow lettering to spine and cover in original pictorial jacket. Inscribed. First edition.To most of his family, and to the residents of the Wisconsin town in which he had lived so many years, the death of cynical, blasphemous old Van Vliet Narracong was quite natural. He had led a hard life and his exit from it was nothing to arouse conjecture. But his stern old sister thought otherwise and called in Judge Peck, the juridical detective whose uncannily penetrating mind had solved other strange cases of murder. For it was soon apparent that Van Vliet had been murdered--so cleverly that only the most observant eyes could discover the method. There were plenty of people who disliked him but it was Judge Peck's job to find out who hated Van Viet enough to go to the extreme of murder. So Judge Peck probed the secrets of the curious Narracong household, sounded its devious undercurrents, and untangled the strange family… Read More

2 volumes. xiii+[3]+458 pages with 3 plates including frontispiece, folding map and music score of "Dog Dance of the Sioux"; vi+156 pages with 4 plates (2 in color), tables (3 folding) and appendix. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 3/4") bound in full black leather with gilt lettering to spine. (Howes K20; Wagner- Camp IV: 26b:1; Graff 2280; Pilling 2066; Streeter 1785; Field 949) First British edition.William Hypolitus (or Hippolitus, or Hypolite) Keating was an American geologist. His father, Baron John Keating, of Irish ancestry, had been an officer in the French army in the West Indies and had settled in Wilmington, Delaware. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, and then in France and Switzerland, where he studied mining. In 1822, he became Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He is perhaps best known for his work on the staff of Stephen Long's expedition to the Great Lakes in 1823, an account of which he… Read More

3 volumes: xvii+[1]+537 pages with 90 lithographs plates including the usual expunged bathing plate, many in color, including 3 "facsimiles" of Japanese woodblock prints (2 folding); 6 maps and charts (2 folding); 79 woodcuts in the text; [2]+414+[4]+14-1+xi pages with 4 color lithographs of Chinese scenes; 2 uncolored natural history engraved plates; 6 hand-colored lithographs of birds; 10 hand-colored steel-engravings of fish; 5 lithographs of shells, 2 hand-colored; 16 diagram plates of winds and currents; 14-page facsimile of Japanese language version of the U.S.-Japan treaty; 17 folding charts on 16 sheets; numerous woodcuts in the text; xliii+[1]+705+[1] pages woodcut star charts throughout. Volume III titled "United States Japan Expedition. Observations on the zodiacal light, from April 2, 1853, to April 22, 1855, ... by Rev. George Jones, A.M., chaplain United States Navy". Quarto (11½ x 8 ¾") bound in the original blind stamped cloth. Volume 1 rebacked with the original cloth spine laid… Read More

[6]+xxvii+[3, Table of Contents and Directions for Placing Plates]+285; [2]+297+[3] pages with folding frontispiece map and 14 lithographed plates (two folding) Part 2: 299 pages with 11 lithographed plates, tables, in-text red line diagram and appendices. Quarto (10 3/4" x 8 1/2") bound in half leather with new spine and original marbled boards. (Ferguson 885; Hill 298; Sabin 1865) First English Edition.
Jacques Étienne Victor Arago was a French writer, artist and explorer, author of a Voyage Round the World. Jacques Arago joined Louis de Freycinet as an artist when he left Toulon in 1817 in command of a scientific voyage around the world aboard the corvette Uranie. The expedition returned in 1820 and Arago was the first to publish an account, the Promenade autour du monde, in the form of letters to a friend named Battle, in 1822. An English translation followed in 1823. He continued to expand on his adventures in further editions and in the late 1830s published a much longer version under the title… Read More

599 pages with frontispice, plate and map. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 1/4") Bound in leather, respined with gilt. (HOWES D233. SABIN 19349. SHAW & SHOEMAKER 40635. HILL 463. RICH, pp.92-93. FORBES 463. NAYLOR 64.) First edition.Amasa Delano, whose Voyages and Travels (1817) was the source for Herman Melville's Benito Cereno (1855), was born in Massachusetts. After serving briefly in the Continental army during the American Revolution, Delano began a lifelong career as sailor, ship captain, and occasional shipbuilder, often in conjunction with his brother Samuel.
Delano gave significant space to an account of his capture of the Spanish ship Tryal off the coast of Chile in 1801 and to the events subsequent to the capture. Seeing the ship in apparent difficulty, Delano went aboard, was told that the ship was long without provisions, remained on board while a boat went for food and water, and learned that the slaves had revolted and captured the ship only when its captain, Benito Cereno, jumped into his boat as… Read More

2 volumes. xxi+472 pages with three maps (two folding and one double page), figures, and 13 plates; iv+452 pages with 10 plates (some folding), tables and appendices. Octavo (9 1/2" x 5 1/2") Bound in contemporary half leather with marbled boards and gilt lettering to spine. (Ferguson 1418; Hill I, p. 19; Howes B309; Lada-Mocarski 95; Sabin 4347). Second edition published after quarto edition of the same year.Frederick William Beechey (17 February 1796 – 29 November 1856) was an English naval officer and geographer. He was the son of Sir William Beechey RA, and was born in London. 1806 he entered the Royal Navy, and saw active service during the wars with France and America. In 1818 he served under Lieutenant (afterwards Sir) John Franklin in David Buchan's Arctic expedition, of which at a later period he published a narrative. In the following year he accompanied Lieutenant W. E. Parry in HMS Hecla. In 1821 he took part in the survey of the Mediterranean coast of Africa under the direction of… Read More

cxxxviii413 pages with tables and large folding map. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 1/2") bound in contemporary calf with red and black spine labels lettered in gilt, marbled edges. Edited by Major Edward Sabine. (Arctic Bibliography 18994; Howes E-151) First English edition second edition overall, preceded by the first edition in 1839 in German.
Baron Ferdinand Friedrich Georg Ludwig von Wrangel was a Baltic German explorer and officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, Honorable Member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a founder of the Russian Geographic Society. He is best known as chief manager of the Russian-American Company, in fact governor of the Russian settlements in present-day Alaska.
He was appointed in 1820 to command the Kolymskaya expedition to explore the Russian polar seas. Sailing from St. Petersburg, he arrived at Nizhnekolymsk on 2 November 1820, and early in 1821 journeyed to Cape Shelagskiy on sledges drawn by dogs. He sailed afterward up Kolyma River, advancing about 125 miles into… Read More

xiii+324 pages with frontispiece, maps, plates, illustrations, appendix and index. Quarto (10 3/4" x 7 1/4") bound in green cloth with gilt lettering to spine housed in custom enclosure. Translated by Buckingham Smith. Edited by Edward Gaylord Bourne. Bradford Club Series number 5. First edition limited to 125 copies of which this is number 76.
Hernando de Soto (c1500-1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula. He played an important role in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, but is best known for leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States (through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and most likely Arkansas). He is the first European documented as having crossed the Mississippi River.
De Soto's North American expedition was a vast undertaking. It ranged throughout what is now the southeastern United States, both searching for gold, which had been… Read More

2 volumes. xii-[13]-405 pages with frontispiece, folding map and one lithographic plate; xii-[11]-406 pages with frontispiece and two lithographic plates. Octavo ( 8" x 5 1/4") bound in original publisher's brown cloth and blind-stamped gilt titles to spine. and blind stamped pictorial design to covers. (Best of the West 84; Jenkins, Basic Texas Books 116; Graff 2304; Howes K75 "aa"; Wagner-Camp 110:1; Rittenhouse 347; Sabin 37360; Streeter, Texas 1515) First edition, second issue binding with 1845 imprinted on spine.George Wilkins Kendall, journalist and pioneer Texas sheepman. In 1841 at Austin Kendall joined the Texan Santa Fe expedition, launched by Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar. Near Tucumcari, New Mexico, the expedition, suffering hardships and confusion, surrendered to the Mexican army. Kendall marched as a prisoner to Mexico City, where he and others were imprisoned for a time in a leper colony. The Picayune published twenty-three of his letters (June 17, 1841-April 30, 1842) detailing… Read More