Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - February - 2007 Issue
New Material from Bauman Rare Books
The Grand Canyon by Thomas Moran.
Here is an appropriate item for anyone with a spare $40,000 now that Super Bowl time has arrived. From a year ago, it is Super Bowl XL Opus. This monstrous work is filled with photographs and articles from noted sportswriters about the first 40 Super Bowls. Don't try to read this book in bed. Bauman notes that it weighs a massive 88 pounds. One more thing: it is signed by football stars such as Bart Starr, Joe Namath, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Roger Staubach, Emmitt Smith, John Elway, Tom Brady, and many more. In fact, it was signed by every living Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award winner. Item 158. A must for the serious football fan!
This book did not make Sinclair Lewis popular with all of the evangelists of his day, but it provided a cautionary tale for those too easily swayed by a commanding voice. The book is Elmer Gantry, about a womanizing preacher who uses his speaking ability to pull off his fraud. Though published in 1927, one might relate this tale to the careers of some recent preachers whose morals were exposed in a most painful fashion. Item 103 is a copy of Lewis' classic inscribed to Carmel Myers, a star of silent films whose career faded with the age of talkies. $8,000.
As a movie star, Ms. Myers undoubtedly must have seen Sunset Strip. Now you, too, can go back in time and visit the Strip. Item 138 is Every Building on Sunset Strip, by photographer Edward Ruscha. It is literally what the title says. An accordion fold-out, it opens to 27 feet in length, and displays every gas station, motel, parking lot, apartment, and everything else on that famed boulevard in 1966. $5,000.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a literary figure long before becoming the subject of song. In 1939, Montgomery Ward asked advertising copywriter Robert L. May to create a Christmas booklet to be given to children visiting their department store Santa. The result is the booklet of the same name, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Rudy has been guiding Santa's sleigh on foggy Christmas Eves ever since, though it took a song to garner recognition for the bright-nosed caribou. Item 249. $1,800.
Item 123 is a chromolithograph from Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of Arizona from Hermit Rim Road. In this case, a picture is worth a thousand words, so instead of further describing it, just click the thumbnail picture on this page to see it in full. $13,800.
Bauman Rare Books is found online at www.baumanrarebooks.com, telephone 212-751-0011.
