Myer, Valerie Grosvenor:Victorian Lady in Africa: Story of Mary Kingsley
- signed or inscribed book 1996, ISBN: 9781852530990
Paperback, Hardcover
London: Penguin Books. Very Good-. 1966. Reprint; Eleventh Printing. Paperback. Mass Market PB . Some cover creases, some shelf and edge wear, lightly sunned spine, small stain to top of… More...
London: Penguin Books. Very Good-. 1966. Reprint; Eleventh Printing. Paperback. Mass Market PB . Some cover creases, some shelf and edge wear, lightly sunned spine, small stain to top of inside rear cover and endpaper, some notes and marginalia. Ink stamp and book plate with previous owner name and details of a college of University of London to front endpaper. ; Eleventh printing of English Library edition, 1977. Nice tight copy. Cover artwork detail of a painting of Westcombe House by George Lambert. Very heavy book and priced accordingly. ; Penguin English Library; 912 pages; The richly comic, bawdy story of a passionate young rogue in a full-blooded age. Edited by R. P. C. Mutter. ., Penguin Books, 1966, 3, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 x, 249 pages, illustrations; 24 cm. PRESENTATION COPY. Signed and warmly inscribed by the author. A near-fine copy, age toning. "We all talk about the 'tube' or 'box,' as if television were simply another appliance like the refrigerator or toaster oven. But Cecilia Tichi argues that TV is actually an environment--a pervasive screen-world that saturates almost every aspect of modern life. In Electronic Hearth, she looks at how that environment evolved, and how it, in turn, has shaped the American experience. Tichi explores almost fifty years of writing about television--in novels, cartoons, journalism, advertising, and critical books and articles--to define the role of television in the American consciousness. She examines early TV advertising to show how the industry tried to position the new device as not just a gadget but a prestigious new piece of furniture, a highly prized addition to the home. The television set, she writes, has emerged as a new electronic hearth--the center of family activity. John Updike described this 'primitive appeal of the hearth' in Roger's Version: 'Television is--its irresistable charm--a fire. Entering an empty room, we turn it on, and a talking face flares into being.' Sitting in front of the TV, Americans exist in a safety zone, free from the hostility and violence of the outside world. She also discusses long-standing suspicions of TV viewing: its often solitary, almost autoerotic character, its supposed numbing of the minds and imagination of children, and assertions that watching television drugs the minds of Americans. Television has been seen as treacherous territory for public figures, from generals to presidents, where satire and broadcast journalism often deflate their authority. And the print culture of journalism and book publishing has waged a decades-long war of survival against it--only to see new TV generations embrace both the box and the book as a part of their cultural world. In today's culture, she writes, we have become 'teleconscious'--Seeing, for example, real life being certified through television ('as seen on TV'), and television constantly ratified through its universal presence in art, movies, music, comic strips, fabric prints, and even references to TV on TV. Ranging far beyond the bounds of the broadcast industry, Tichi provides a history of contemporary American culture, a culture defined by the television environment. Intensively researched and insightfully written, The Electronic Hearth offers a new understanding of a critical, but much-maligned, aspect of modern life. / Cecelia Tichi is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, and Culture in Modernist America and New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from Puritans to Whitman." - Publisher. CONTENTS: Television Environment; A Preface; Introduction; Phasing In; Electronic Hearth; Peep Show, Private Sector; Leisure, Labor, and the La-Z-Boy; Drugs, Backtalk, and Teleconsciousness; Certification; As Seen on TV; Videoportraits and Authority; Two Cultures and the Battle by the Books; The Child; A Television Allegory; Comics, Movies, Music, Stories, Art, TV-on-TV, Etc.. SIGNED. Paperback. Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Collectible., Oxford University Press, 1992, 3, Icon Books Ltd, Dec 1996. Paperback. Regarding the Introducing series in general, before I get down to the specifics of the Derrida title... Even as a philosophy M.A., I was an admirer of these Introducing books. While they naturally appeal to the uninitiated reader, I think they can also be of some small use to academics --- as a gangplank leading to far more detailed texts! The great benefit of this series is that anyone can master the basics of a field-of-study or major thinker in a single day. These 176 mini-page books take just a long afternoon to read cover to cover. And most of it will sink in reasonably well after just one rushed sitting because of their radical ("comic strip") format. The very small morsels of text on each page are often mildly amusing or else employ some other device to aid their memorability. So these are often ideal way to prepare for a class on the subject or understand the basics of what is probably important about the subject before scanning the library for all the texts you will need for your essay. These books include fairly decent select bibliographies, which really help you to find serious texts if you feel you're ready to move onto the next step.\r\n\r\nI should point out that of the many many books in the Introducing... series, they vary slightly in quality and usefulness. But I am happy to report that Introducing Derrida is one of the absolute best. Maybe the best of all (I haven't read every single title).\r\n\r\nAll the key ideas, devices, strategies and concepts associated with this allegedly "impossible" thinker are at a basic level, unpacked very well indeed. The book is adequately up to date, covering Derrida's writings way into the 1990s, not merely the c.1967 texts which initially brought him to widespread attention as a controversial sensation within academia, following his 1966 "Structure, Sign and Play" lecture at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.\r\n\r\nI should point out that while Introducing Derrida does occasionally reference some of his famous books where relevant, its emphasis is very much on conveying an understanding of the important points one needs to know about this man, rather than chronologically trawling through all the texts with which he and his publishers saturated the market. This is very much to its credit, making it immediately readable and useful time and time again.\r\n\r\nIn terms of both the text by Jeff Collins and the artwork by Bill Mayblin, this book is an especially bright star in this bold series from Icon Books. The graphics totally compliment the text and aid in its digestibility and comprehensibility at all times. In some of the other titles, it seems to be little more than background imagery. But in Introducing Derrida it is brilliant and essential. One gets the impression that on this title, the writer and the artist worked very closely together, making sure that every page was brought alive to the maximum extent by the harmony of their respective labours.\r\n\r\nDerrida is held to be a difficult thinker to comprehend. But Introducing Derrida can make this brilliant and critically important thinker very palatable for those who have never attended university, while also being a valuable first nudge in the right direction for those who are already experienced academics.\r\n\r\nIf you get beyond this book with a thirst for really tackling Derrida, I recommend reading his major and early opuses in French. The English translations make less sense for these titles. His much smaller texts which are really just essays on applying his mindset to specific topics, mostly dating from the last decade or two of his life, are just fine in English. But the big '60s and '70s tomes should be read in French. His writing is beautiful and brilliant in his native language. As Derrida himself suggested: something will always be lost in translation. A huge thanks to Collins and Mayblin for "translating" the fundamentals of Derrida into a special format that will help countless readers get a foothold., Icon Books Ltd, 0, Ashford, Buchan & Enright. Very Good/Very Good. 1989. First Edition. Hard Cover. Sm 4to 1852530995 Dust jacket price clipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Illustrations / photographs. 168 pages clean and tight. In On and Offshore Dick Durham rediscovers the lesser known areas of the east coast of England, in the wake of nineteenth-century yachtsman Frank Cowper. The skipper and crew of the 26 foot cutter Almita cruise the lower reaches of the Thames and the coasts of Essex, Suffolk and North Kent, viewing Cowper's old sailing grounds with modern eyes but with hearts of oak yearning for the bygone days of sail. From Teddington up to Lowestoft Dick Durham maintains a steady flow of anecdote and incident, ancient and modern, on and offshore. Bloody historical battles mingle with comical mishap on the mudbanks of Essex in an entertaining narrative evoking the full flavour of this oft-neglected area. ., Ashford, Buchan & Enright, 1989, 3<