The Dance of Death

Hans Holbein the Younger

Facsimile edition of the original 1538 French edition, featuring 41 woodcuts of Death popping in on merchants, kings, court ladies, countesses, nuns, sailors and so on, with his grim little warnings.
“The Merchant’s wealth’s a worthless thing,
Of others, won by lies, the spoils;
But Death will sure repentance bring,
Snaring the snarer in his toils.”
Not a lot of plot, but the limber skeleton of Death carries the show admirably. GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 146 pages
Illustrated

Essential Writings of Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“For anyone who seeks to understand the 20th century, capitalism, the Russian revolution, and the role of communism in the tumultuous political and social movements that have shaped the modern world, the essential works of Lenin offer unparalleled insight and understanding. Taken together, they represent a balanced cross section of his revolutionary theories of history, politics and economics; his tactics for securing and retaining power; and his vision of a new social and economic order.” Includes “What Is To Be Done?,” “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” and “The State and Revolution.”

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 372 pages

London Labour and the London Poor: Volume 1

Henry Mayhew

Extraordinary document of Victorian London, told from the bottom up, by a literary gadfly and one-time editor of Punch, the British humor magazine. “The image of London that emerges from Mayhew’s pages is that of a vast, ingeniously balanced mechanism in which each class subsists on the drippings and droppings of the stratum above, all the way from the rich, whom we scarcely glimpse, down to the deformed and starving, whom we see groping for bits of salvageable bone or decaying vegetables in the markets. Such extreme conditions bred weird extremities of adaption, a remarkably diverse yet cohesive subculture of poverty. Ragged, fantastic armies, each with its distinctive jargon and implements, roamed the streets: ‘pure-finders’ with bucket and glove, picking up dog dung and selling it to tanners; rag-gatherers, themselves dressed in the rotted cloth they salvaged, armed with pointed sticks; bent, slime-soiled ‘mud-larks,’ groping at low tide in the ooze of the Thames for bits of coal, chips of wood, or copper nails dropped from the sheathing of barges… The rapid, wrenching industrialization of England (London’s population trebled between 1800 and 1850) was breeding a new species of humanity, a rootless generation entirely environed by brick, smoke, work and want.” Hundreds of first-person narratives, told in the vernacular of the workers themselves. Puts Dickens to shame. GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 494 pages
Illustrated

The Warsaw Ghetto in Photographs: 206 Views Made in 1941

Edited by Ulrich Keller

These 206 rare photos recreates ghetto life during the early years of World War II—the internal ghetto administration, ghetto police, children, street scenes, worship, etc. “The crowd is largely composed of shocking caricatures, of ghosts of former people, of wretched rags and miserable ruins of past humanity…”

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 160 pages
Illustrated

Absolutely Mad Inventions

A.E. Brown and H.A. Jeffcott Jr.

What drives people to not only think of such outlandish things, but to go the trouble of patenting them? Included are a privy seat that consists of rollers that will throw to the ground anyone attempting to stand upon it, pince-nez-style safety goggles for a fowl, and a humane device to attach a bell to the necks of rodents “thereby frightening the other rats and causing them to flee.” In case of conflagration, there are fire- escape suspenders with a cord attachment, which allow the wearer to remove the cord and lower it to the ground in the hope that someone can pass up a rope. For a hot summer’s day, there’s a rocking chair with bellows so “the occupant may, by the act of rocking, impel a current of air upon himself.” Also included are edible stick pins, chewing-gum lockets, mechanical clothes pins, a bait trap for tapeworms, devices for producing dimples and shaping upper lips, and many more. Almost 60 inventions, all with the original illustrations as submitted to the patent office. Originally collected and published in 1932 as Beware of Imitations. TR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 125 pages
Illustrated

Science and Music

Sir James Jeans

Originally published in 1937, this book by a “noted British scientist” explains music, especially Western orchestral music, in terms of sound curves and vibrational theory. Topics covered include: transmission of sound, resonance, free vibrations of a string, harmonic synthesis, acoustics of pipe organs, the Pythagorean scale, “music of the future” and the “threshold of pain.” SS

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 258 pages
Illustrated

The Complete Books of Charles Fort

Charles Fort

These four fascinating books are the legacy of iconoclastic philosopher and supreme skeptic Charles Fort. Written between 1919 and 1932, they are full of curiosities, contradictions, anomalies and the kind of data that was and is conveniently ignored or simply suppressed by mainstream science. Gleaned from 27 years of full-time research conducted at the New York Public Library and the British Museum Library are reports from periodicals, scientific journals, newspapers and numerous manuscripts covering such wild phenomena as pre-UFO flying objects, rains of frogs, falls of fishes, selective weather, strange creatures and other rejected data. Fort was a true cynic whoconsidered most scientists pompous and wrote “I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject matter for beliefs.” An essential reference for the beginner and seasoned Fortean alike. BW

Publisher: Dover
Hardback: 1 pages

Contemporary Polish Posters in Full Color

Edited by Joseph Czestochowski

Polish graphic artists are slightly mad, judging from the 46 plates in this book (dating from 1961 to ’77). And they’re brilliant enough to have the Muzeum Plakatu, near Warsaw, dedicated to their work. Bold colors, punchy dynamics, hand lettering and symbolic use of human body parts characterize the painterly Polish style. Some trends are evident: a whimsical trace of Surrealism à la Monty Python, a bright grasp of contemporary Pop Art; and a visceral feel for Dadaesque Psychedelia, a subversive quality not found in the American Fillmore posters of the same era. GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 48 pages
Illustrated

Erik Satie

Rollo H. Myers

From the author’s preface: “I believe this book to be the first extended study in English of one of the strangest personalities in the whole history of music. Stranger still is the fact that, in spite of the absolute uniqueness of Satie, both as a man and a musician, to the vast majority of people in this country, including musicians, he is still little more than a name… As to his music, of even the few score or so of musicians who may have a nodding acquaintance with it, probably only a very few have ever paused to consider whether the composer was anything more than a musical humorist with a marked penchant for leg-pulling… I hope in these pages to be able to convince even the most skeptical that the true significance of Satie is to be sought on a very much higher level than certain of his works might suggest, and that his importance as a pioneer in contemporary music in general, and the influence he has had upon some of the greatest composers of this century in particular are far greater than is generally supposed.”

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 150 pages
Illustrated

Houdini on Magic

Harold Houdini

This book is a collection of rare, firsthand material written by Houdini. The first section deals exclusively with handcuffs and restraints. Houdini was so closely associated with these devices early in his career that he advertised himself as “Harry Handcuff Houdini.” Nearly every other page is packed with great illustrations including the master in action, secrets revealed, handbills and dozens of bizarre skeleton keys, picks and locks. One chapter presents Houdini’s fascinating portraits of other great magicians in history. Here we meet such eccentrics as Dr. Katterfelto, “one of the most interesting characters in the history of magic. Magician, quack doctor, pseudophilosopher.” An article covers fraudulent spiritualists and mediums that Houdini dauntlessly crusaded against as a debunker. Included are instructions for 44 stage tricks. CS

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 277 pages
Illustrated