Recent Acquisitions

Weeks, Mary Elvira | The Discovery of the Elements

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing and a beautiful copy. The Discovery of the Elements is a classic in the history of chemistry, going through seven editions by 1968, but copies of the 1933 first edition are rare in commerce, particularly in such nice condition.

  Author Mary Elvira Weeks (1892 - ?) was a physical and analytical chemist at the University of Kansas. “She worked on the atmospheric oxidation of solutions of sodium sulfite in ultraviolet light, the role of hydrogen ion concentration in the precipitation of calcium and magnesium carbonates and the use of oxidation-reduction indicators in the determination of iron. She was also interested in the history of chemistry, particularly in the discovery of the elements” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1358).

  This copy with the ownership signature of Dr. Charles B. Gates, head of the Chemistry Department of the Wisconsin State Teacher’s College, Milwaukee, on the title.

• ...Collected Reprints of a Series of Articles Published in the Journal of Chemical Education. Easton, PA: Mack Printing Co., 1933.

  Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt. Illustrations throughout the text. Ownership signature and date “5/24/33” to the title. Short pencilled note listing six elements on the rear pastedown. very lightly rubbed at the extremities. An excellent, fresh copy.

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Ferguson, Lloyd N. | Highlights of Alicyclic Chemistry. Part I.

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• First edition, first printing of this foundational work on alicyclic chemistry. Uncommon in the jacket in such nice condition.

  Author Lloyd N. Ferguson (1918-2011) was a distinguished chemist whose interest in science dated to his childhood, when “he bought himself a chemistry set at age 12 and did chemistry experiments in a backyard shed... He put together a moth repellent, invented a spot remover and a silver polish, and developed a lemonade mix. A budding entrepreneur, as well, he sold his inventions to his neighbours” (Spangenburg, African Americans in Science, Math and Invention, p. 80).

  Ferguson attended Berkeley for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees, and was the first African American to earn a PhD in chemistry at the university. In 1945 Ferguson joined the faculty at Howard University, where he would remain for the next two decades. “He served as department head as well from 1958 to 1965. In this capacity, he built the first doctoral program in chemistry at any Black college in the nation” (Spangenberg, p. 80). He later joined the faculty at California State University at Los Angeles, serving as chemistry department chair between 1968 and 1971.

  At Howard, Ferguson did extensive research on the properties of aromatic molecules and the chemistry of taste, and after moving to Cal State he began exploring alicyclic chemistry. “In his 1969 article ‘Alicyclic Chemistry: the Playground for Organic Chemists’, Ferguson describes alicycles as providing ‘ideal systems for measuring electrical and magnetic interaction between nonbonded atoms and for studying the [structural] and mechanistic aspects of organic reactions’, and as supplying ‘models for elucidating the chemistry of natural products such as steroids, alkaloids, vitamins, carbohydrates, [and] antibiotics’” (Krapp, Notable Black American Scientists, p. 118).

  Ferguson was also very active in administrative roles, including as chairman of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Chemical Education and director of Cal State L.A.’s Minority Biomedical Research Support Program, and he was publicly recognised for his extensive work mentoring science students from under-represented backgrounds.

• Palisade, NJ: Franklin Publishing Company, Inc., 1973.

  Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine in gilt on blue ground. With the dust jacket. Chemical diagrams throughout the text. An excellent, fresh copy in the price-clipped jacket that is a little rubbed with some light marks and toning of the edges and spine panel.

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Thomas, Dorothy Swaine & Richard S. Nishimoto | The Spoilage

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• First edition, first printing of this important work on the internment of Japanese citizens during the Second World War. Presentation copy inscribed by Thomas on the front free endpaper, “With deep appreciation and sincere regard — Dorothy Swaine Thomas” and also signed by co-author Richard S. Nishimoto.

  Almost as soon as Japanese internment was begun “a group of University of California social scientists, sensing the enormity of the outrage, organized in 1942 to record and analyze the causes, legal and social consequences, and long-term effects of the detention program. The Spoilage, one of a series of books which resulted, analyzes the experiences of that part of the detained group-some 18,000 in total-whose response was to renounce America as a homeland; it shows the steps by which these "disloyal" citizens were inexorably pushed toward the disaster of denationalization. Essentially the result of years of research by participant observers of Japanese ancestry, it is a factual record of enduring value to the student of America's troubled ethnic relations” (University of California Press)
  
  Richard Shigeaki Nishimoto (1904-56) was born in Japan in 1904 and immigrated to the US with his parents at age 17. He earned an engineering degree at Stanford in 1929, but struggled to find work due to anti-Japanese prejudice. Nishimoto was “probably the most cited Issei author who wrote on the camps in English—specifically on the WRA camp known as Tule Lake. Educated in both Japan and the USA, Nishimoto distinguished himself as the only Issei to be employed full-time as a researcher for the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS). He was also the only Japanese American co-author of any of the JERS publications, authoring The Spoilage (1946) with JERS director Dorothy S. Thomas. Besides being an Issei, Nishimoto was atypical of JERS researchers in that he was an active community leader in Poston , and thus drew from a unique point of view as both an 'insider,' and an 'analytic' observer" (Densho Encyclopedia).

• ...Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1946.

  Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt. With the dust jacket. 2 photographic plates, charts and diagrams within the text. Damp spots to the faded spine, partial fading of the boards, contents toned. A very good copy in the rubbed and partially toned jacket with three vertical creases from folding.

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Wootton, Barbara | In a World I Never Made

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• Second impression. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Ted Willis, with love, B. W., December 1976” and additionally signed by the author on the title.

  Wootton (1897-1988) was a prominent, left-leaning London University sociologist and economist who, in addition to her respected academic work, “served on four royal commissions and innumerable committees, was a governor of the BBC, and was a magistrate for forty years” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1400). “One of her most important academic works was published in 1959 and resulted from five years of research. In this work she reversed commonly accepted ideas about the criminal personality, juvenile delinquency, inherited behaviour trends, and problems of illegitimacy” (Ogilvie, p. 1400).

  While the identify of the recipient is not known for sure, it may have been Baron Willis (1914-1992), the playwright, screenwriter, and active supporter of the Labour Party who was made a life peer just a few years after Wootton.

• ...Autobiographical Reflections. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1967.

  Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine gilt on black ground, With the dust jacket. Small black mark to the cloth of the upper board, a few light spots to the edges of the text block. A very good copy in the rubbed, creased, and price-clipped jacket with a few small spots on the lower panel and an over-price sticker on the front flap.

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Thoms, Adah B. | Pathfinders. A History of the Progress of Colored Graduate Nurses

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• First and only edition of this important early source on African American nurses. With the ownership signature of Aileen Cole Stewart, one of the nurses featured in the text.

  Author Adah Thoms (1863-1943) started her career as a nurse in her thirties, moving from Virginia to New York for her education and eventually becoming assistant director of the School of Nursing of the Lincoln Hospital and Home in Brooklyn, where she helped institute the teaching of public health. Thoms was a founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, sponsoring its first meeting at the Lincoln Hospital, and later serving as treasurer and president. “She also attended the International Nursing Council in Cologne, Germany, where, with three other Black delegates, she urged the admission of black nurses from Africa, South America, and the Caribbean” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1286). After retiring in 1923 Thoms continued advocating for Black nurses in the American Nurses Association and National Organization for Public Health, which led to their incorporation of her organization.

  The previous owner of this volume, Aileen Cole Stewart, was one of eighteen Black nurses enrolled in the Army Nurse Corps in 1918, and she appears in a group photos with her colleagues at page 160. As this chapter explains, “During World War I, Thoms fought hard, as president of the National Association of Coloured Graduate Nurses, to gain the admission of black nurses into the American Red Cross. Although the head of the Red Cross agreed, this was vetoed by the Surgeon General of the United States. By 1917, one African-American nurse was enrolled in the Red Cross but given no assignment. By 1918, the great influenza epidemic made the use of all available nurses urgent, and eighteen black nurses were enrolled in the Army Nurse Corps, where, although they treated sick soldiers of all backgrounds, they themselves lived in segregated quarters” (Ogilvie p. 1286).

  “Little is known about Aileen Cole Stewart’s early life, but she did write about her experiences as a young nurse in training. She attended the Freedmen’s Hospital Training School in Washington, DC and studied at the hospital’s training center at Howard University Medical School. She participated in the three-year program for African American nurses to earn their diplomas.” When the great influenza increased demand for nurses, “Stewart and a few other Freedmen’s nurses were sent to areas where the railroad workers were dying quickly. The Red Cross sent Stewart to Putney, West Virginia with another nurse. Conditions for the railroad workers soon got worse, and Stewart was sent by herself to a small town called Cascade. She worked alone in the mountains until she received a letter from the director of field nursing at the American Red Cross asking Stewart to serve. On December 1, 1918, Stewart began her service in the Army Nurse Corps, along with 17 other African American nurses. Half of the nurses went to Camp Sherman in Ohio, and half went to Camp Grant in Illinois. Stewart was stationed at Camp Sherman, where the African American nurses lived in segregated areas... Stewart continued her career in nursing as a New York public health nurse. She earned a degree in public health nursing from the University of Washington at the age of 68 and continued to volunteer with the Red Cross youth program until she died” (Alexander, ”Aileen Cole Stewart”, National Women’s History Museum biography).

• ...With Biographies of Many Prominent Nurses (Illustrated). New York: Kay Printing House for the author, 1929.

  Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt. Frontispiece and 14 photographic plates of which 12 are double-sided. Ownership signature to the front pastedown, gift inscription to the frontispiece. Cloth worn at the corners and ends of spine, a couple of faint marks to the cloth, spine titles dulled. An excellent copy, the contents fresh.

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Barnes, W. Harry | The Necessity of Bronchoscopy in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of the Lungs

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• First and only edition of a talk by the first Black doctor to become a board-certified specialist and to use the bronchoscope, given at a meeting of the first organisation for African American medical professionals.

  W. Harry Barnes (1887-1945) was a “nationally recognized ear, nose, and throat specialist whose ‘ability as a diagnostician and surgeon was equalled by few, and surpassed by none’” (Krapp, Notable Black American Scientists, p. 20). Barnes grew up poor with “a fierce determination to rise out of poverty and to pursue a career as a professional” (Krapp). He won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, receiving his M.D. in 1912 and returning in 1921 for postgraduate work in otolaryngology. Unable to receive higher training in the US, he studied at the Universities of Paris and Bordeaux and was later mentored by the renowned Dr. Chevalier Jackson, who taught him the use of the bronchoscope. Barnes established a department of bronchoscopy at Mercy Hospital and later accepted a teaching position at Howard University.

  “Barnes was an innovator in his field. His invention of the hypophyscope, an instrument used to visualize the pituitary gland through the sphenoid sinus, made him famous. His accomplishments included other innovative operative techniques as well as a streamlined, efficient medical record system. Barnes was very active in the National Medical Association, for which he presented papers and gave demonstrations. One such demonstration showed the speedy and bloodless technique of his ten-minute tonsillectomy. He became president of the Association in 1935” (Krapp).
  
  Established in 1895, the National Medical Association is the “oldest and largest organization representing African American physicians and health professionals in the United States” and was founded when “membership in America’s professional organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA), was restricted to whites only. The AMA determined medical policy for the country and played an influential role in broadening the expertise of physicians. When a group of black doctors sought membership into the AMA, they were repeatedly denied admission. Subsequently, the NMA was created for black doctors and health professionals who found it necessary to establish their own medical societies and hospitals” (NMA website).

• ...Read at National Medical Ass. Convention, Aug. 16, 1933. [Philadelphia], 1933.
  
  

  8 page pamphlet, stapled. Minor crease to the tail of the spine. Excellent condition.

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(Miller, Peter L.) Longfield, Cynthia | Dragonflies of the British Isles

• Overview
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• Second edition, enlarged, of the authoritative guide of the period. From the library of dragonfly specialist Peter L. Miller, with his ownership signature and bookplate, two manuscript notes in ink in the text, notes and sketches of dragonfly nymphs on a blank postcard, and a dragonfly wing loosely inserted.

  Miller was a lecturer in zoology at Oxford who made significant contributions to a number of fields. “At Oxford he soon became widely respected for the excellence of his research on insects, being awarded the prestigious Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 1972. Until the early 1980s he explored physiology and neural control, primarily of respiration but also of rhythmic and motor behaviour, ventilation and learning. His international standing at that time is reflected in the authorship of more than a dozen chapters on these topics in different definitive textbooks on insect physiology. During those years he also published on insect behaviour in the field and edited two symposium volumes on cell biology.

  From the early 1980s Miller focused his research on dragonflies, a group of insects for which he had developed a strong affection while in Uganda. His highly developed skills - for interpreting subtle elements of behaviour, for micro-anatomical dissection and for quantifying neural processes - allowed him to reveal much of the structural and behavioural framework on which dragonfly reproduction is based. This work has far-reaching comparative value and provides a definitive reference point for future contributions to the field.

  Other products of his interest in dragonflies have been his stimulation and training of postgraduate students, authorship of two editions of a book on British dragonflies - a model of its genre - and active participation in the British Dragonfly Society, as Vice President and as member of the Dragonfly Conservation Group. Increasingly in later years Miller's energies were directed towards conservation of dragonflies and their habitats, especially through facilitating involvement of young people and non-specialists.” (Peter Miller obituary, the Independent, May 6, 1996.)

  In this copy Miller has made two notes in the text: On page 126, under the entry for the Downy Emerald, he wrote, “2 emerged c. 25/5/58 from [?] F. B. A. Windermere”. On page 139, under the entry for the Black-lined Orthetrum, “Nymph from F. B. A. Windermere... emerged c. 25/5/58”. The most extensive notes are on a blank postcard loosely inserted at page 181. Ink manuscript notes describe the larva (nymphs) of four dragonfly species, with pencilled drawings of three. On the back of the card are additional notes about the effect of temperature on dragonfly development, including a small bar graph showing a two-year larval cycle for a species.

  The author of this guide, Cynthia Longfield (1896-1989?), was one of Britain’s leading dragonfly specialist. She spent her career as an unpaid worker at the British Museum of Natural History, where she played a major role in collecting and systemising the records of British dragonflies (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 802), and she also served as president of the London Natural History Society. The Dragonflies of the the British Isles, originally published in 1939, was “accepted immediately as the authoritative guide” (Ogilvie).

• London and New York: Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd., 1949.

  Duodecimo. Original green cloth, titles to spine and upper board and dragonfly device in gilt to upper board, publisher’s name and borders to boards blocked in black, pictorial endpapers. With the dust jacket with dragonfly illustration pasted-on to the front. 16 colour plates, 12 double-sided black & white photographic plates, illustrations within the text. Ownership signature of Peter L. Miller to the front free endpaper, some short notes in his hand in the text, and his and his wife’s bookplate to the verso of the same. Spine rolled, cloth lightly rubbed at the extremities, a little spotting to contents, particularly the edges of the text block. A very good copy in the rubbed, spotted, and dulled jacket with small nicks and chips from the ends of the spine panel.

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[Waite, Arthur Edward] Valentinus, Basilius | The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony

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• First edition of mystic Arthur E. Waite’s translation of this key alchemical text. Rare in commerce: we can locate only three other copies in auction records since 1915, at Swann in 2000 and 1998.

  The mysterious Basil Valentine was “one of the most celebrated figures of early modern chymistry” (Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy, p. 138). Though described as the work of a 15th-century German monk, his large corpus was likely the work of several authors beginning in the 1590s, primarily Johann Thölde (1565-1624), a salt manufacturer who published the first five books that appeared under Valentine’s name.

  “The most famous book in the Valentine corpus appeared in 1604 under the grand title of The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony (Der Triumph-Wagen Antimonii). The first part is largely theoretical, while the second contains about two dozen practical preparations seemingly very clearly described, based on antimony. Today, antimony is known as a fairly rare, semimetallic element of moderate toxicity... but for early modern chymists it was a source of inexhaustible fascination. Despite the toxicity of antimony compounds, most of Valentine’s preparations are pharmaceutical... The Triumphal Chariot’s emphasis on transforming poisons into pharmaceuticals, and its vitriolic condemnations of the medical establishment, places it firmly in the tradition of Parcelsianism.” (Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy, p. 140).

  Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942) is perhaps best known as co-creator of the famed Raider-Waite-Smith tarot deck. He was involved with numerous aspects of turn-of-the-century mysticism and the occult, including the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, and his own organisation, the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Waite was also a prolific author, publishing widely on the history of esotericism, alchemy, ceremonial magic, Kabbalah, the Holy Grail, and Freemasonry, and preparing translations of a number of important texts in these traditions.

• ...With the Commentary of Theodore Kerckringius. Being the Latin Version Published at Amsterdam in the Year 1685 Translated into English, with a Biographical Preface. London: James Elliott and Co., 1893.
  
  

  Octavo. Original black cloth blocked in red, titles to spine gilt. 4 page publisher’s ads at rear. Frontispiece, illustrations within the text. Pencilled circling and check marks to the publisher’s ads. Spine rolled, cloth a little rubbed with some spots and scuffs, slight wear to the tips and ends of spine, contents tanned. A very good copy.

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Mann, Michael E. | The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

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• First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed on the front free endpaper, “3/24/2012, To John & Louis, thanks for all you’re doing, Michael Mann”.

  This "important and disturbing account" of climate change science and politics is by leading researcher Michael Mann of Penn State’s Earth Science System Center (Kirkus Reviews).
  
  Mann was the leader of the team that produced the 1999 “hockey stick graph” showing the dramatic rise in atmospheric temperature of the past century as compared with the previous thousand years. Mann’s work is central to the current understanding of anthropomorphic climate change, he has published four books and more than two hundred papers, and has been involved with numerous high-profile government and scientific organisations. Mann has also been on the receiving end of the climate change disinformation campaign, most notably in 2009 when his email was hacked and cherry-picked statements were released to make it look as though his results were fabricated. Following this, the Republican Attorney General of Virginia demanded, and was denied, access to his papers and Mann was also forced to sue several news organisations for defamation.

  This volume covers the basics of climate science, Mann’s personal experiences in the field, including the development of the hockey stick graph, and the aggressive disinformation campaigns waged against climate scientists by fossil fuel companies, politicians, and the right-wing media.

• ...Dispatches from the Front Lines. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

  Octavo. Original red boards, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket. A fine copy in the jacket.

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Jeans, James | The Universe Around Us

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• Second printing, in the rare and evocative Raymond McGrath-designed dust jacket.

  Author James Jeans (1877-1946) was a respected Cambridge mathematician and astronomer, best known for his work on rotating, gravitational bodies, "a problem of fundamental importance that had already been tackled by some of the leading mathematicians" (ODNB), and the motions, structures, and life-cycles of stars and stellar clusters.

  "In 1928 Jeans's academic work Astronomy and Cosmogony came to the attention of S. C. Roberts, the secretary of Cambridge University Press, who appreciated the general interest of its subject matter and the attraction of Jeans's writing style. He persuaded Jeans to write a popular account, The Universe Around Us, which was published by the press in 1929" (ODNB). Jeans's popularity as a writer "depended partly on his topic-new, thought provoking views of the universe-and partly on his style, which combined an authoritative knowledge of the subject with a vivid turn of phrase" (ODNB).

  As Jeans describes it in the introduction, The Universe Around Us is “a brief account, written in simple language, of the methods and results of modern astronomical research, both observational and theoretical. Special attention has been given to problems of cosmology and evolution, and to the general structure of the universe.”

  The dust jacket designer, Raymond McGrath (1903-1977) was a printmaker, illustrator, architect, and interior designer whose first commission was the interior of the BBC’s Broadcasting House in 1930. He later completed commissions for Imperial Airways and the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, and spent the latter part of his career as Senior and the Principal Architect at the Office of Public Works in Dublin.

• Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929.

  Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. 24 plates, illustrations and diagrams within the text. A few small spots to the cloth, light dampstain affecting the edge of the upper board, partial toning of the free endpapers, some faint toning of the contents. A very good copy in the rubbed, tanned, and price-clipped jacket with slight dampstain corresponding to that on the cloth, a chip from the head of the spine panel, and some smaller chips and short closed tears.

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Smyth, Henry DeWolf | Atomic Energy for Military Purposes

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• First trade edition, first printing. An unusually nice copy in the jacket.

  Atomic Energy for Military Purposes was written as the official, unclassified narrative of the development of the atomic bomb, a “remarkably full and candid account” intended for general release once the weapon was made public (Printing and the Mind of Man 422).
  
  The first — now unobtainable — edition, was a mimeographed version stamped secret, of which all copies save Smyth’s own were destroyed. The next was a lithoprint published in an edition of only 1,000 copies distributed to project leaders and members of the press, followed by a Government Printing Office edition. This is the first trade edition, published by Princeton University Press after editors at McGraw-Hill found the text too technical for a general audience and suggested a major rewrite, which was vetoed by Smyth. They needn’t have worried: officially published on September 10, 1945, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes remained on the New York Times bestseller list until January of the following year, and would go through eight printings by 1973.

• ...The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940-1945. Written at the Request of Maj. Gen. L. R. Groves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945.

  Octavo. Original coral-coloured cloth, titles to spine in dark red. With the dust jacket. 5 double-sided plates of which 4 are photographic. Lower corner slightly bumped also affecting the jacket, small white spot to extreme edge of upper board, contents faintly toned in the margins. An excellent, fresh copy in the jacket that is a little tanned along the spine panel and edges, with some tiny nicks at the head of the spine panel.

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Wallace-Wells, David | The Uninhabitable Earth. Life After Warming

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• First edition, first printing. A fine copy signed by the author on the title page and dated “3/12/19”, the day that Wallace-Wells spoke at the Politics and Prose bookshop in Washington D. C.
  
  The Uninhabitable Earth, by journalist David Wallace-Wells, is one of the key popular science books of the climate change crisis. Expanded from a 2017 essay published in New York magazine, its frightening predictions for the worst-case climate scenario made it an international best-seller, achieving a level of public interest not seen since Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
  
  The Uninhabitable Earth has received extensive critical praise, with novelist Amitav Gosh describing it as “gripping, terrifying, and furiously readable”, and Slate reviewer Susan Matthews comparing its potential impact to that of Silent Spring. It has also engendered controversy in the community of climate scientists, with leading researchers such as Michael Mann pointing out minor factual errors and arguing that its focus on extreme scenarios is more likely to lead to public despair and apathy than activism.
• New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2019.
  
  Octavo. Original grey boards, titles to spine in black, grey endpapers. With the dust jacket. A fine copy.
  

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Emiliani, Cesare | Ancient Temperatures

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• Offprint of an early popular article on ancient climate by one of the founders of the field, Cesare Emiliani (1922-1995).
  
  During the late 1950s Emiliani studied the tests (shells) of marine amoebas called foraminifera that are found in samples taken from the floors of the deep oceans. He realised that the oxygen isotope composition of the tests was influenced by atmospheric conditions at the time they were alive and that the deep-sea cores could be used to chart climate going back millions of years. This work laid the foundations for modern analysis of past climates. It also established that the ice ages were a cyclic phenomena; contributed to our understanding ocean floor spreading and plate tectonics; and provided influential support for the hypothesis of Milutin Milanković that climate changes in the deep past had been driven by long-term alterations in the Earth’s orbit and geology. Emiliani remained a leading figure in the study of Earth’s climate history through the 1990s, and was awarded both the Vega Medal and the Alexander Aggasiz Medal.
• ...Reprinted from Scientific American, February 1958. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1958.
  
  12 page pamphlet, stapled. Illustrations throughout. Very faintly toned at the extreme edges of the spine and wrappers. A superb copy.

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Talbot, Marion | The Education of Women

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• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing. In the rare dust jacket.

  Marion Talbot (1858-1948), one of the founders of the American Association of University Women, was raised in a family “deeply involved in education”, her mother serving as a leading figure in the establishment of Girl’s Latin School, a Boston institution offering a college preparatory curriculum for women.

  Talbot graduated from Boston University and then joined the new Woman’s Laboratory at MIT. “The Laboratory was then studying the adulteration of foods an the chemical constituents of common household materials” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1262). Talbot worked closely with Ellen Swallow Richards, the laboratory’s founder, and together they published a book on home sanitation. Later, Talbot joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor in home economics, becoming dean of women’s instruction three years later. “At Chicago, Talbot actively investigated the nutritional requirements of college women and wrote a second book with Richards on this topic. She also developed a house system for the women and helped establish a woman’s student union with a hall that included a gymnasium and pool” (Ogilvie, p. 1262).

  The present volume describes recent social and economic changes in the lives of women in the United States, and explains how women’s needs can be better met at every level of education.

• Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1910.

  Octavo. Original dark green cloth, title to spine gilt. With the rare dust jacket. Spine rolled, dampstain and loss of size affecting the head of the spine, top edge of the lower board, and verso of the jacket, contents faintly toned with occasional light spots. A very good copy in the price-clipped jacket that is rubbed, toned, and foxed, with tanned spine panel, a small chip from the upper panel, and small chips at the head and tail of the spine panel.

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Newbigin, Marion I. | Ordnance Survey Maps

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• The rare first edition, and an unusually nice copy, of this popular work on ordnance survey maps by a female geographer.

  Author Marion Isabel Newbigin (1869-1934) was “a strong feminist” who earned both her bachelor’s and doctorate at the University of London and succeeded J Arthur Thompson as lecturer in biology and zoology at the School of Medicine for Women in Edinburgh (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 937). “Her studies on coloration in plants, crustaceans, and fish resulted in several publications. She became editor of the Scottish Geographical Magazine in 1902 and served until her death in 1904. “Her interests in geography were very broad, and she published widely in the area. She was an examiner in geography for many institutions and served as president of the geographical section of the British Association in 1922” (Ogilvie).

• ...Their Meaning and Use, with Descriptions of Typical Sheets. Edinburgh & London: W. & A. K. Johnston, Limited, 1913.

  Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine and upper board, and silhouette of the British Isles to upper board, in black, floral-patterned endpapers. Frontispiece and 1 plate, 3 illustrations within the text. 1 leaf of integral as at rear. Cloth very lightly rubbed with a few faints marks and spots, spine a little rolled, light spotting to edges of text block and occasionally to contents. An excellent copy.

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Goin, Peter & Peter Friederici | A New Form of Beauty

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• First edition, first printing of this significant work on the changing landscapes of the American West, as represented by the Glen Canyon reservoir. Signed by both authors on the title, with an additional inscription by Friederici, “Off into the ‘Great Unknown’!”.

  Photographer Peter Goin focuses on human-altered landscapes and is best known for his series on nuclear test sites, published in 1991 as Nuclear Landscapes. His work has been exhibited at more than fifty US and international museums, and he has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, as well as nominated for an Emmy for his work in experimental video.

  Co-author Peter Friederici is an award-winning journalist and academic specialising in science and the environment. As he writes in the introduction, “This book is about that moment of falling when the solid ground under us gives way to something new. It is about the vanishing of the second-largest artificial lake in America in the face of the new, potent phenomenon we call climate change... Though the book focuses on one reservoir in the Colorado River Basin, it is really about all our known landscapes as we watch them shape-shift into new forms.”

• ...Glen Canyon Beyond Climate Change. Photographs by Peter Goin. Essays by Peter Friederici. Tucson, AR: The University of Arizona Press, 2016.

  Oblong quarto. Original dark blue cloth, titles to spine in orange. With the dust jacket. Colour illustrations throughout, including 1 folding plate. A fine copy in the jacket.

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Freundlich, Erwin | Die Grundlagen der Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie

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• Details & Condition

• Second impression (originally published the previous year) of this proposal for testing Einstein’s theory of relativity by the astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich (1885-1964).

  Freundlich knew Einstein well during the period when they both lived in Berlin, and astronomical proofs of Einstein’s theories were among his major research interests. “The quest for high accuracy in the measurement of the redshift in the solar spectrum led him to plan the building of the famous Einstein tower in Potsdam. he was also involved in some of the earliest attempts to measure the deflection of starlight during eclipses. In the summer of 1914 he led an expedition to the Crimea to observe a total solar eclipse. Caught by the outbreak of the First World War, he and some of his party were interned by the Russians as enemy aliens. Fortunately, the group was soon exchanged for some Russian officers who had been early taken as prisoners of war” (Batten “Obituary: Erwin Finlay-Freundlich”, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, issue 1, vol. 96, p. 33, 1985).
  
  It is possible that this failure led to the rapid acceptance of general relativity several years later. “Einstein had not completed his work on that theory in 1914, and was predicting a deflection of starlight... only half the value that he gave in the definitive paper of 1915. Had Freundlich been successful in 1914, he would thus have found twice the expected value, and Einstein’s later paper, instead of appearing as a brilliant predication, might have seemed an ad hoc adjustment of the theory to fit the observations” (Batten, p. 33).

• ...Mit einem Vorwort von Albert Einstein. Berlin: Julius Springer, 1917.

  Duodecimo. Original cream wrappers printed in black. 1 leaf of publisher’s ads at rear. Short pencil note to upper wrapper. Wrappers toned and rubbed with a few small marks, creases and nicks. Contents fresh. A very good copy.

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Klieneberger, Emmy | Über die Größe und Beschaffenheit der Zellkerne mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Systematik.

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• First edition, first impression of the doctoral dissertation of prominent bacteriologist Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel (1892-1985).

  Klieneberger-Nobel’s doctorate was in botany, with mathematics and zoology as areas of special interest. This, her dissertation, is on the nature of cell nuclei. After graduation she worked part-time in the zoology laboratory at Goethe University and then found a position as a bacteriologist at the Hygiene Institute in Frankfurt. “Although she knew little about bacteriology when she began, by 1930 she had become a member of the German Society for Hygiene and Bacteriology and a member of the institute’s medical faculty” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 705).

  After Hitler’s ascent, Klieneberger-Nobel emigrated to the UK, where she obtained two further degrees at London University joined the staff of the Lister Institute. Her main area of research were the mycoplasma, the genus of microbes which lacked a cell wall and were suspected to be an intermediate form of life between bacteria and viruses. “She discovered a variant, known as the ‘L-form’, which she named for the Lister Institute. Recognising that there were variants within the mycoplasma, Klieneberger-Nobel developed a medium to grow the mycoplasma that caused an unusual strain of bronchopneumonia in rodents. She found that after incubating for several days, colonies had grown that were similar to those of the well-known pleuropneumonia and agalactia. New morphological forms were found in dogs as well as rodents, and a saprophytic strain was found in sewage and soil” (Ogilvie, p. 705).

  “Dr. Albert Sabin in the United States had a described a ‘rolling disease’ that resulted from toxoplasma infection of mouse brains. After Klieneberger-Nobel had written to Sabin, he sent her freeze-dried brains of infected mice. She successfulyl grew cultures from his samples in her special medium and shared her results with Sabin. Before her work could be published in the Lancet, Sabin published his results in Science, neglecting to mention Klieneberger-Nobel’s part in his results” (Ogilvie, p. 705). Klieneberger-Nobel identified several other mycoplasma diseases. She discovered that the rat disease polyarthritis was caused by mycoplasma in the animals’ joint fluid, and her work later led to the isolation of the human illness Mycoplasma pneummoniae.

• ...Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der hohen naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Königlichen Universität zu Frankfurt a. M. Dresden: Druck von C. Heinrich, 1917.

  Duodecimo. Original yellow wrappers printed in black. 1 plate. Diagrams and charts within the text. Three institutional ink stamps to the upper wrapper. Wrappers tanned with some short closed tears, splits and and chips at the ends of the spine and the corners of the upper wrapper. Contents tanned. A very good copy.

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Tyndall, John | Contributions to Molecular Physics in the Domain of Radiant Heat

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• Details & Condition

• First collected edition, presentation copy inscribed in the year of publication by the author on the half title, “Herbert Spencer Esq, from his friend, the Author June 1872”. The recipient was the biologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), best known for coining the phrase “survival of the fittest” based on Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

  The author, physicist John Tyndall (1820-1893) was one of the first scientists to show that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere controls the Earth’s climate (Eunice Foote has only recently been recognised as the first to publish a paper explaining the greenhouse effect).

  During the 1820s French physicist Joseph Fourier showed that the atmosphere retained heat, but was unable to determine the mechanism by which this occurred. “Tyndall pondered how the atmosphere might control the earth’s temperature, but he was stymied by the opinion, held by most scientists at the time, that all gases are transparent to infrared radiation. In 1859 he decided to check this out in his laboratory. He confirmed that the main gases in the atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen, are indeed transparent. he was ready to quit when he thought to try coal gas. This gas, produced by heating coal and used for lighting, was piped into his laboratory. He found that for heat rays, the gas was as opaque as a plank of wood. Thus the industrial Revolution, intruding into Tyndall’s laboratory in the form of a gas jet, declared its significance for the planet’s heat balance. Tyndall went on to try other gases, an he found that the gas CO2 was likewise opaque — what we would now call a ‘greenhouse’ gas” (Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, p. 3). Tyndall went on to discover, as Foote also had, that water vapour was also an important greenhouse gas, calling it “a blanket more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man” and pondering on its role in creating the ice ages.

  The present volume collects seventeen different writings by Tyndall on aspects of atmospheric science, including the key papers “On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours”, “On the Relation of Radiant Heat to Aqueous Vapour”, “On Radiation through the Earth’s Atmosphere” and “Further Researches on the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gaseous Matter”, as well as historic remarks and further analysis.

• ...A Series of Memoirs Published in the 'Philosophical Transactions' and 'Philosophical Magazine,' with Additions. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1872.
  
  

  Octavo. Original red cloth, rebacked with the original spine laid down, titles to spine gilt. 2 page ad for other works by Tyndall and 20 page publisher’s ads dated March 1872 preceding the index, tipped-in errata slip. 2 folding plates, steel engravings within the text. Ink stamp of Herbert Spencer to the title. Professionally rebacked as noted with the original spine laid down, 2 cm of cloth from the head of the spine panel lacking but not affecting the title, small repairs to corners and edges of boards, tissue repairs to the gutter of the front free endpaper and half title, contents toned and a little brittle. Very good condition.

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Bigelow, Frank H. | Balloon Ascensions

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• Details & Condition

• A substantial, 196-page manuscript of measurements obtained during meterological balloon flights in South America, Europe, Africa, and the United States between 1906 and 1911 (the title gives a date range of 1911-1913, but there do not seem to be any entries after 1911).
  
  The compiler of this manuscript, meteorologist and astronomer Frank H. Bigelow (1851-1924), grew up in Concord, Massachusetts and was educated at the Episcopal Theological School in nearby Cambridge. During the 1870s and 80s he served two stints as assistant astronomer at the Argentine National Observatory at Cordoba, where many of these measurements were made, and also worked as a professor of mathematics at Racine College, as assistant in the National Almanac Office in Washington D. C., and as a professor of meteorology at the National Weather Bureau.
  
  Neatly written on graph paper, each entry in this manuscript is laid out as a grid with the columns headed by elevations. The rows are labelled with a variety of mathematical formula that often relate to each other as they descend the page, “T₁ - T₀” followed by “log T₁ - T₀”, or “T” followed by “log T” then “Log T₁ - T₀” and “Log (Log T₁ - T₀)”. There are also rows where work is presumably checked (check) and various rows are added together (summ). Unfortunately, we cannot locate a guide to the symbols used here, making it difficult to determine exactly what Bigelow was studying. Prose notes occasionally appear, however, and seem to indicate that his measurements were connected with heat and possibly solar activity. “Since z increases upwards the (-) sign indicates loss of heat energy from level to level outwards... The evidence is strongly against the theory that absorption is proportional to the density or path length...” “The assumed (E₁ - E₀) solar near surface seems to require special modification because the p values are impossible...”.
  
  As well as meteorology, Bigelow studied the solar corona, aurora, and terrestrial magnetism, and it may be in pursuit of these subjects that the present ascensions were made. It is also unclear whether Bigelow or a colleague actually went up in the balloons, or whether they were uncrewed weather balloons which had first been used in the late 1890s by the French meteorologist Léon Teisserenc de Bort. We suspect the former, as results are given for multiple elevations during each flight. Unusually, within the manuscript the flights are bound entirely out of date order, and it’s unclear whether this was an accident or a way to highlight or connect certain results. This manuscript would benefit from attention by an informed cataloguer or scholar, in connection with similar materials....Cordoba - Argentina 1911 - 1913. Europe and United States. 1906-1911.
  

• Folio (352 x 215 mm), single leaves oversewn in sections onto sawn-in cords. 196 page manuscript in black and red ink and pencil, rectos only. Leaves numbered in blue crayon. Contemporary quarter black skiver, black pebble-grain cloth, titles to spine gilt, marbled endpapers, graph paper leaves. Spine professionally relined and reattached to text block by Bainbridge Conservation, binding rubbed and worn, particularly along the spine, endpapers and blanks tanned, contents a little toned, a few contemporary ink blotches. Very good condition.

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