A lavish, large-format survey of the Philippine archipelago, produced at the height of the Marcos government's international image campaign and clearly conceived as a showpiece. The volume includes well over a hundred color photographs by Larry Secrist and Jeffrey Aas, organized by region — Luzon, the Visayas, Mindanao, Palawan, and..... More
A superb, three-volume limited edition set, produced to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the monumental and legendary "grand edition" of 1877–1883. Number 0149 of a strictly limited printing of 1,000 copies. Father Manuel Blanco’s seminal Flora de Filipinas (originally published in 1837) remains the most important and comprehesive botanical work..... More
Extremely rare first edition of this highly original and insufficiently known work on mechanics, which recent scholarship by Camerota and Hellbing has shown to be the most important such work in the generation between Guidobaldo and Galileo. Highlights include the revolutionary view that the true science of motion is the..... More
Second edition, a virtual reprint of the first and an internally superb copy of this classic in experimental science, giving important accounts of experiments conducted by among others Torricelli in the Accademia del Cimento — “the first report from what we would now call a research laboratory” (Middleton)—including experiments in..... More
First edition of the most detailed eighteenth-century biography of Galileo, “particularly important and authoritative because Nelli had discovered Galileo’s papers and had at his disposal an impressive collection of sources” (The Cambridge Companion to Galileo). Nelli’s 18th century biography stands as a comprehensive feat which would not be equaled in..... More
First edition of a text providing new applications for logarithms, the new computational tool by Napier that Cavalieri had recently introduced in Italy. Cavalieri opens by solving 16 problems in planar and 10 problems in spherical geometry, followed by a set of axioms and definitions. Having laid the groundwork, he..... More
A very rare official register of preachers active in Paris and its suburbs during the Advent of 1685—a definitive “who’s-who” of the clergy in Paris during the Grand Siècle. Entries are organized by city sector (e.g., “En la Cité”, “Au Fauxbourg S. Germain”, “En l’Université”), then subdivided by specific parish..... More
Very rare second edition (first, 1568) of this early attack on the Jesuits, written as part of a wider tug-of-war between the Protestants and the Catholics over the right to the teachings of St. Augustine. It provides an early Protestant reaction to the Jesuits’ use of print in polemical disputes..... More
Very rare first German edition (Latin 1721) of the earliest printed work devoted to the Cathedral of St. Stephan, the most important medieval building in Vienna, issued the same year the Vienna Diocese was promoted to an archdiocese by Innocent XIII. This illustrated work provides a detailed history of the..... More
Very rare first edition of Argenti’s detailed eyewitness account of the religious turmoil resulting in the destruction in 1603 of the Jesuit College in Claudiopolis, Transylvania (modern-day Cluj-Napoca, Romania) by hostile Protestant forces. A manuscript of this letter is housed at the Biblioteca Vacelliana in Rome. In the present letter..... More
Rare augmented first edition of this history of early Christian pilgrimage to Rome by the Jesuit scholar Pietro Lazzeri (1710-80). Lazzari’s painstaking study catalogues the motives for Roman pilgrimages undertaken both by famous individuals and as part of popular movements, from the apostolic rush to the imperial capital in the..... More
First edition of the first printed work devoted to the Cathedral of St. Stephen, the most historically important medieval building in Vienna. St. Stephen’s Cathedral had its origins as a Roman basilica (dedicated in 1147). Repeatedly burnt and rebuilt, it was enlarged in the 14th century by Duke Rudolf IV..... More
Extremely rare first and only edition of this abbreviated encyclopedia of Church history from the first century to the end of the eighteenth, with special focus on saints and heretics. Each chapter begins with a five-part list of major figures and events within that century—popes, heretics, councils, ecclesiastical writers and..... More
A fine and very genuine copy of the rare first edition of Pablo José de Arriaga’s meticulous account of the Indians of Peru at the turn of the 17th century. Intended as a manual to help clerics identify and eradicate native “superstitions”, the work is filled with minute details describing..... More
Rare edition of this standard Jesuit textbook on astronomy, “the first to accuse Copernicus not only of having presented a physically absurd doctrine but also of having contradicted numerous scriptural passages” (DSB), written by Christoph Clavius, the “Euclid of the sixteenth century”. Using John de Sacro Bosco’s account of the..... More
First edition of this Italian ethnographic work on the Indigenous peoples of North America. The first section focuses on the funerary rites and ceremonial dances of the Choctaw, Otoe, Oconee, Esselen, and Yoki tribes. Of special interest is Grossi's meticulous account of a three-day funeral for a Yoki chief, which..... More
Second Italian edition of Édifices construits à St.-Pétersbourg, originally published in 1810 by the Imprimerie du Senat-Dirigéant in Saint Petersburg. The Italian version of part I of this edition first appeared in 1821 and was published by Paolo Antonio Tosi in Milan. This 1843-44 edition is notable for including a...... More
First Italian edition in book form of Benjamin Franklin’s pamphlet describing the invention of his new stove, originally published by Franklin in 1744 as An Account of the new-invented Philadelphia Fireplaces. The work includes a foldout engraving copied after the engraving of Franklin’s first edition, illustrating airflow through the flue..... More
Rare incunable by the first printer in Bohemia, in a contemporary (and very possibly Czech) binding. According to the Czech National Library, seven works were printed by Bohemia’s earliest printer, active in Pilsen from about 1475 through 1479 and referred to as the “Printer of the ‘Statuta synodalia’” by the..... More
First edition of this illustrated description of the remarkable cabinet of curiosities collected by the Danish polymath, Ole Worm (1588-1654), a physician, linguist, naturalist, and a professor of medicine at the University of Copenhagen. Worm amassed an expansive collection, housed in his “Museum Wormianum”, consisting of an assortment of bizarre..... More
First edition of Wilbur Wright’s (1867-1912) second report concerning his and his brother Orville’s flying experiments, published, like their previous paper of 1901, in the Journal of the Western Society of Engineers in August 1903. Following their earlier trials of 1901, Orville Wright constructed a wind tunnel that the brothers..... More
First edition, with watermarks dated 1796, of “one of the basic works on Turkish costume, which has provided the prototypes for numerous other illustrative material” (Atabey). Dalvimart’s vivid plates primarily depict the vibrant attire of the ruling classes and their servants, but they also showcase traditional garments—especially those worn by..... More
First and sole edition of this encyclopedic guide to the thermal waters and baths of Porretano, in the vicinity of Bologna in the Reno River valley, and a popular spa to this day. One of the most lavishly produced of 18th century Italian guides, the illustrations, maps and plans might..... More
First edition. Bound last is Vandelli’s dissertation is on worms. Although it is now commonplace to dissect the earthworm in school biology classes, in 1758 this subject had not yet been sufficiently studied in laboratories. Vandelli was an early student of the lowly worm. The first of the three monographs..... More
Rare edition of Cordus’ famed Dispensatorium, one of the first official pharmacopoeia of Western Europe, here with added commentary by Pieter van Coudenberghe and Matthias de l’Obel, alongside Rondelet’s treatise on theriac, an antidote to snake venom. In 1542, at the age of 27, Valerius Cordus (1515-1544) wrote his Dispensatorium..... More