Early publication (in German) on anthropogenic global warming by Swedish scientist and Nobel laureate (1903) Svante Aarhenius, “On the heat absorption by carbon dioxide and its influence on the temperature of the Earth’s surface.” This work follows an 1896 paper (“Ueber den Einfluss des Atmosphärischen Kohlensäurengehalts auf die Temperatur der Erdoberfläche”) in which Arrhenius, building on the work of Samuel Pierpont Langley and several others, first calculated the increase in Earth surface temperature caused by increases in industrial carbon production. Formulated in an attempt to explain the ice ages, Arrhenius’ calculations omitted certain factors necessary for accuracy — and, based on the rate of carbon production in his time, he expected warming to take hundreds of years — but his work remains the first attempt to measure the greenhouse effect. Originally published in Annalen der Physik earlier that same year, this edition is often mistakenly referred to as an offprint. In fact it is the first separate appearance, published by the Översigt af Kongliga Vetenskaps-Akademiens Förhandlingar (Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences). Rare. OCLC only seems to locate the journal appearance.

$1,500

Advertised on the (scarce) front cover label as “An Answer to ‘The Birth of a Nation’” and published in the same year Griffiths’ film was released, THE PROBLEM is perhaps the earliest artistic response to that film. Its status as an explicit answer is attested only by the fragile original dust jacket — not noted, and perhaps never seen, by many scholars of the period. Contemporary with NAACP protests, preceding John Noble’s answer film “The Birth of a Race” by three years, and Oscar Micheaux’s “Within Our Gates” by five, Gilmore’s novel — a star-crossed romance of mislaid identity, set against the heroism of black soldiers in the Spanish-American War — offers a comprehensive thematic rebuke to the violently segregationist message of that film and of the novel that inspired it, Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman.

Few of the author’s biographical details are known. Gilmore (ca. 1870-1930), a Rochester native and Philadelphia resident, was also the author of the self-published “Masonic and Other Poems” (1908) and includes three more of his poems in this volume: among them, “Everywoman,” a sentimental allegory. Gilmore is known to have submitted at least one story (rejected) to W.E.B. duBois’s The Crisis, whose literary editor, Jessie Fauset, wrote briefly and dismissively in 1916 that THE PROBLEM had “the usual difficulty that we are too near realities to write beautifully about them.” Gilmore was also a playwright; copyright records indicate that he issued THE PROBLEM as “a military drama in four acts,” also in 1915. No records of performance or publication were located for the dramatic version.

THE PROBLEM leavens its high melodrama with a sternly didactic historical catalogue of African-American military prowess, from Crispus Attucks through the individual battles of the Civil War: “It was a negro soldier who hauled down the Confederate flag, and it was negro soldiers who assisted in quenching the fires which had been started when the Confederates evacuated the city, thus saving the helpless citizens…much loss and suffering.” The plot turns on the love affair between Sergeant Henderson, a black soldier, and Freda, the pinnacle of Southern womanhood, a foundling believed to be white.

The novel is replete with classical and literary allusions both subtle and unsubtle: In a pivotal scene, the wounded Henderson confesses his love for Freda, infuriating her eavesdropping white foster brother, who fumes: “Can this woman, whom I loved in my childhood, be as Desdemona, that loved Othello for his brave deeds?” Grant reverses Dixon’s/Griffiths’ racist tropes: while Sergeant Henderson is a gentleman by nature and disciplined by training, his thwarted white rival devolves into animalistic savagery when a woman of his class dares to prefer another: “like a wild animal held in leash”, his civilized veneer is no match for his “hot Southern temperament.”

Gilmore represents traditional hierarchies of gender and class without apparent subversion: Freda is virtuous, which is to say weak, docile, and dutiful; non-American ethnicities are gently disparaged; military imperialism is unchallenged. But the novel’s conservatism is as ironic as it is conventional: outfitting the heroine with the unearthly purity of Dixon and Griffiths’ ideal of white womanhood gives Gilmore’s “Answer” its sharpest edge.

The novel is discussed at considerable length in Jennifer James’ A Freedom Bought with Blood: African American War Literature from the Civil War to World War II; James notes the coinciding date of the novel and the release of Birth of a Nation, but makes no mention of the author’s deliberate connection between the two — a connection only noted on the label of the rare original dust jacket. The novel’s specific qualities as a direct and intentional response to the film are not reproduced or noted in later reprints and have therefore not received critical attention, if indeed they are known.

A fine copy of a rich and historically important novel by an undeservedly obscure author, in active dialogue with perhaps the most notoriously racist cultural production of the twentieth century.

$3,000

Promotional brochure advertising the lectures of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Widely known for her literary achievements and political activism, Gilman was also a successful speaker and public intellectual who relied heavily on her lecture engagements for regular income in the 1890s and decades following. Introduced here as “One of the world’s foremost women,” the brochure text cites William Dean Howells on her “genius,” noting his selection of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” as one of America’s greatest short stories; other glowing endorsements call her “the Prophet of Women, a smiling Isaiah,” and one quoted press review goes so far in its praise as to deny that Gilman was “controlled by hysteria, nor governed by momentary impulses.”

The advertised areas of Gilman’s expertise include ETHICS, ECONOMICS, EDUCATION, THE WOMAN QUESTION, THE CHILD, and GENERAL SUBJECTS — and a range of subtopics therein: Men, Women and People; Economic Independence for Women, Homekeeping vs. Motherhood, The Power and Duty of Women, and numerous others. Gilman was available for single lecture engagement, full courses, or for the most dedicated “A Gilman Week,” a six-day subscription course of two-hour discussion lectures. Issued by the Pond Bureau, which also managed the lecture tours of Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, and other notables. Cover features a portrait of Gilman reproduced from a photograph by Bianca Conti of San Francisco. An important piece of ephemera concerning a prolific writer whose two literary masterpieces have often overshadowed her equally influential work as thinker, speaker, and social reformer.

$450

Dynamic photo of Jack Stachel addressing a crowd of angry lettuce pickers and activists, in early 1930. As recounted in THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STRIKES IN AMERICAN HISTORY: “One strike […] was the farm workers’ strike of January 1930 in Imperial Valley, California. On New Year’s Day 1930, hundreds of Mexican and Filipino lettuce workers in Brawley, California, participated in a spontaneous work stoppage over wage cuts and unbearable working conditions. Within a week, 5,000 farm workers joined […] turning the Imperial Valley strike into an important struggle.” Though not noted on the photograph, it came to us attributed to Seema Weatherwax. Weatherwax, a Russian-born photographer, began her career with The Film and Photo League and was a lifelong activist for leftist causes and the image is clearly taken by a skilled cameraperson: Stachel looms large above the crowd, who hold signs that read “We demand stop to deportation of militant foreign born workers” and “Murdere by Imperial Valley Lettuce Growers.” Vivid testament to the long fight for workers rights.

$250

An important samizdat pamphlet clandestinely printed by female resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Slovenia to celebrate International Woman’s Day (March 8th, 1944). Published in the Gorenjsko region close to the current Austrian border (the Karawanks are a mountain range there), the text details the history of the holiday (which has its roots in early 20th century socialist and suffrage movements) and how it was celebrated by Yugoslavian women during the war. It also calls for unity among the women who fought both fascist and Nazi occupation, as well as oppression from traitors within their own country. The text ends with a warning to such enemies to fear the judgement of every defiant woman and wife. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia granted universal suffrage for women the following year, in 1945, and the daring actions of female printers like those represented here undoubtedly helped contribute to this effort. The Slovenian press was severely suppressed during occupation, especially texts in the Slovene language, and publications such as this are therefore rare. OCLC locates only one copy of this title, in Slovenia. An inspiring testament to feminist, resistance, and anti-fascist movements during the war.

$1,250

Broadside issued by the provisional Governing Board (Junta Patriotica) to the people of Caracas, dated two days after the January 23, 1958 coup deposing Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez (see text and translation below). Immediately following the news of Perez Jimenez’ flight to the Dominican Republic, known supporters of the fallen regime were singled out for looting, retaliation and attacks; this handbill orders an immediate halt to these activities and condemns them as criminal. The provisional government, led by Admiral Wolfgang Larrazabal, would hold power until Romulo Betancourt’s election as president of Venezuela in December of 1958.

Text reads: “La Junta Patriotica – Que ha luchado y continuara luchando por los intereses del pueblo y por sus derechos ciudadanos, hace saber que los saqueadores son enemigos del pueblo y que los instigadores a robos, incendios y ex-agentes de Seguridad, que estan fuera de la Ley y tanto esta Junta como lod trabajadores y las Autoridades los consideran como vulgares delincuentes” [trans: “The Patriotic Board / which has fought and will continue to fight for the interests of the people and for their civil rights, makes it known that the looters are enemies of the people and that the instigators of robberies, fires and ex-Security agents, who are outside the Law and both this Board: its workers and the Authorities consider them as common criminals.”].

$250

Watercolor study, possibly for a potential mural, from noted social realist, WPA painter, and muralist Edward Laning (1906-1981). The painting features a Goodwin’s Department Store display being arranged by a window dresser, with hurried interracial city crowds passing in the foreground. The smiling mannequins in the window are contrasted with seriousness of the window dresser and the everday worry of the passersby – the promise of commerce vs. the reality of life for the working class. Goodwin’s was an infamous anti-union establishment and was also hostile to the poor and working class, notoriously eschewing both layaway and credit programs — a natural subject for Laning who was occupied with such themes for the entirety of his career. Laning’s work is at the Whitney, Smithsonian, Met, and perhaps most famously at the NYPL, where his large mural in the McGraw Rotunda remains one of his masterpieces.

$1,250

Autobiographical account of Modisane’s early life in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, a center of black South African cultural life until its destruction by demolition and the forced removal of its inhabitants, followed by rezoning as a whites-only suburb. Modisane worked as a journalist, jazz critic, and actor in Sophiatown until the late 1950s, when he left South Africa for England in order to escape the oppression of the apartheid government (which would ban BLAME ME ON HISTORY upon its publication). Inscribed to Stanley Mosk, the former California Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice (1964-2001) who wrote several landmark decisions on civil rights and racial discrimination. Mosk was influenced by a trip to South Africa in the 1960s, and his letters about the politics and legal systems of the African countries he visited were published in The Los Angeles Daily Journal (Braitman and Uelmen 142). A significant association between these two civil rights activists and writers.

$450

A pair of pins from the march on the Pentagon to protest the war in Vietnam in 1967. Printed by the Fifth Ave Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, the pins promote not just the march, but an attemt to levitate the Pentagon and “exorcise the evil within,” organized by Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. The levitation stunt was a precursor to the theatrical activism and politicisation of the hippie movement by the Yippies, the group founded by Hoffman and Rubin later in 1967.

$125

Infamous image of a personified Justice and Statue of Liberty being graphically assaulted by a gang of laughing police officers, under the eye of an American eagle. By the artist best known for his iconic woodcut of a clenched fist, an enduring image of the New Left used by anti-draft protestors, Black Panthers, and others. This image was also distributed in a better-known, larger poster that was described at a 1968 House Un-American Activities Committee hearing as “one of the most vile, obscene pieces of literature that I have seen disseminated in San Francisco” by Examiner reporter Edward S. Montgomery.

$200

Extensive run of over two hundred and fifty issues of the influential Black Panther Party newspaper. Published from April 25, 1967 through September 1980, the BLACK PANTHER INTERCOMMUNAL NEWS SERVICE “was always ahead of any other publication in analyzing the issues and concerns that affected the black community and all oppressed people” (Stan Oden, “Power to the People”). Serving an information source for the Party’s political actions, ideology, and community “Survival Programs,” the BPINS newspaper also reported on coalition activities, other activist causes, and national and international news. Production and distribution of the newspaper continued through a sustained campaign of harassment and sabotage by the FBI, and at the height of its run, BPINS was printed on a Black Panther Party-owned press in editions of several hundred thousands of copies. Under the art direction of Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, whose work is regularly and prominently featured throughout the run, BPINS also helped define the visual vocabulary and style of both black pride and black power. This collection spans the full decade of the 1970s, from Volume 2, No. 24 (1969) through Volume 19, No. 8 (1979), and includes more than half of the issues published. The largest and most representative collection of this important document of the counterculture we’ve encountered.

$22,000

Charles Kenyatta (also known as Charles 37X and Charles Morris) was for three years Malcolm X’s bodyguard, and was present in the Audubon Ballroom when X was assassinated. After X’s death, Kenyatta founded the Mau Mau Society of Harlem, which was dedicated to alleviating rampant crime and drug dealing in that neighborhood. These activities, however, led to several assassination attempts, including one in June 1969 shortly before the printing of this collection of short essays on topics like forced bussing, communism, demographics, the black power movement (“Black Man: Dig Yourself”), drug dealers (“The Neutral Zone”), as well as a reproduction of a 1969 New Yorker article by Renata Adler focusing on Biafran independence. OCLC does not locate the title.

$375

Educational portfolio on the history of nonviolent leftist social movements. Includes historical texts on such efforts in India, Norway, Latin America, Czechoslovakia, and Italy, along with theoretical texts by Camus, Chavez, and others on Communitarian Socialism and nonviolent direct action strategy, all printed on variously colored paper. Kehler, the editor, is a pacifist activist who was arrested in the year of this portfolio’s publication for draft dodging. An important document of activism and education at the height of the antiwar movement.

$375

A fierce (likely unpublished) diatribe against Judge Julius Hoffman, or as the “… Panthers called him ‘Adolph Hitler Hoffman,’” who presided over the “Chicago 8” trial of Yippies Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale — who were charged with various federal offenses in the wake of the 1968 Democratic Convention. The judge is described by “William Yippie” as being a “cartoon of a man [a] ‘magoo […] who talked as if his larynx was made of sandpaper.” It quotes extensively from the court transcript, including many requests by Rubin to go to the bathroom (with the title derived from a water saving campaign slogan used in the New York area during the drought of 1965). From the start, the article (if article it is) outlines a dire political scenario: “By now most everyone has an idea of the repression that’s going on in Amerika. Fascism! Bummer! Genocide! Horrow [sic] show! “ It is however done with a great deal of satirical detail, for example: “He [Ed Sanders] brought him [Hoffman] to his feet when he revealed to during a cross examination that the Yippies had planned for ‘dawn ass washing’ and a giant ceremony at Soldier’s field in which “Hubert Humphrey would confess to Allen Ginsberg his secret preference for anal intercourse.” Provenance, internal evidence, and paper size all suggest British origins, but we find no trace of “William Yippie,” either online or in OCLC. Nevertheless, a vivid take on this landmark trial and distinctly American countercultural movement from a likely British sympathizer.

$750

Advertises the second year of this Yippie-affiliated 4th of July protest; verso includes text describing the previous year’s event, which drew “25,000 freeks to the Washington Monument, completely paralyzing ‘Honor America Day,” and was a “stoned success.” Also includes a discussion of Lee Otis, former leader of the Houston SNCC, who was sentenced to 30 years in jail for “allegedly handing 1 joint to an undercover pig.”

$300

Official publication of the Philadelphia Earth Week Committee, produced as a program for and memento of the first Earth Week. Organized in response to Senator Gaylord Nelson’s call for a national environmental teach-in, plans for an Earth Day expanded to include a full week of activities and events, including a public performance by the Broadway cast of “Hair” and speeches by Allen Ginsberg, Ralph Nader, Lewis Mumford, Senator Edmund Muskie, Ian McHarg, Alan Watts, and Frank Herbert (“We’re all human beings on one Spaceship Earth.”)

Among the magazine’s contents: an interview with Ginsberg by David Fraser, followed by a previously unpublished poem; Ralph Nader on ecotactics; Lewis Mumford’s introduction to the Natural History Press publication of Ian McHarg’s “Design With Nature”; a transcript of a confrontation between student press delegates and then-Secretary of the Interior Wally Hickel, and the Earth Day “Declaration of Interdependence.” With full schedule of the week’s events and speakers (including Ira Einhorn for the April 22 opening ceremony; his name does not, however, appear in the list of Earth Week Committee members.)

Illustrated throughout with photographs and artwork.

$300

Poster commemorating the first Earth Day, with a striking and spare drawing of trees signed “S. Palmer 1970” and the Ron Cobb-designed “Ecology” flag. Printed with a quotation by M.L. Hartwell: “The Earth is the setting for mankind’s first act. If we devastate her, where will we stage our final performance?” Labelled #1 in the Earth Day Series.

$250

First issue of this biannual publication providing “sources for knowledge and tools relating to life.” Inspired by Stewart Brand’s WHOLE EARTH CATALOG, the magazine was intended to provide knowledge on a wide variety of topics, with an emphasis on outdoorsy activities and similar hobbies. Includes guides and bibliographies on geodesic domes, buying Caribbean real estate, finding buried treasure with metal detectors, cooking with natural foods, raising chickens, making pottery, and even lists sources for gun and weapons catalogs. Also prints book reviews submitted by readers on topics including new age literature and environmentalism. No copies located by OCLC.

$175

Broadside advertising speakers John Seed and Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman, wilderness folksinger Cecilia Ostrow, and two films: “GIve Trees a Chance” and “The Cracking of Glen Canyon Damn.” Beginning in its early years, Earth First! organized touring road shows, blending educational presentations and socially conscious entertainment with practical workshops on civil disobedience tactics and resources.

Founded in 1979, Earth First! presented a radical alternative to mainstream environmentalist groups, moving in the 1980s from policy proposals and publicity campaigns to direct action campaigns of organized civil disobedience. In 1985, Foreman published “Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkey Wrenching,” and the following year co-founder Howie Wolke would be incarcerated for six months for eco-sabotage. By the 1990s, philosophical and personal differences among members would eventually lead to the departure of Foreman along with several other longtime members. Scace and ephemeral document of this influential if controversial environmental advocacy group.

$400

“Uncompromising Nonviolent Resistance in Defense of Mother Earth!” First edition of this radical book of advice for the radical environmental activist on conducting rail blockades, tree sits, critical mass bike rides, hunt sabotage, and other “miscellaneous deviltry” and monkeywrench operations. With a nonviolence training outline and guide to maintaining personal safety when confronting authorities. Signed by Dave Foreman, Earth First! co-founder. By the time of the manual’s publication, Foreman was no longer affiliated with the group, though he continued to be an environmental activist and organizer; a scarce signature in an uncommon first edition of this influential but controversial work of environmentalism.

$375

Collection of newsletters, pamphlets, stickers, handbills, and ephemera from ACT UP San Francisco and its offshoot, ACT UP Golden Gate. In 1990, Act Up Golden Gate split off into a separate chapter reflecting differences in focus: AUGG planned to concentrate on treatment and treatment access, while AUSF would focus on broader social issues. The two chapters were initially cooperative, but by 1994 ceased working together. ACT UP/Golden Gate would later rename itself Survive AIDS in order to fully disassociate itself from its former partner, as AUSF moved away from the mainstream medical consensus on HIV treatment throughout the 90s.

This difference in messaging between the two activist communities is evident in the included materials: handbills from ’88 and ’89 protest FDA delays in drug approvals and demand greater access to experimental treatments, and AUGG materials continue to do so throughout the span of the collection. AUSF publications from 1990 onward, however, increasingly oppose the medical and pharmaceutical establishment much more broadly: one card warns: “DON’T TAKE THE HIV TEST!” Project Inform’s Martin Delaney is a promoted community speaker on a 1988 flyer issued by the unified ACT UP chapter, pre-rupture; but a few years later, an AUSF handbill crudely collages hypodermic needles over his face (“MARTY SEZ: TAKE YOUR PILLS!”) and declares on the verso that “Project Inform, as paid drug company representatives, has shown incredible contempt for the health and well-being of people with AIDS.”

Post-split, AUSF’s positions came to encompass strong support for legalizing marijuana, opposition to animal research; opposition to use of the Western blot test for HIV; opposition to the promotion of certain forms of treatment and pharmaceutical companies; and, ultimately, denial of HIV as a cause of AIDS. A pamphlet for the ACT UP medical marijuana dispensary describes this position as their “challenge to the HIV hypothesis;” this item is undated but cites a 1997 study.

Other dated material spans the years from 1988 to 1995, with a few undated pamphlets from later in the ’90s. Notable items include a satirical “ACT UP ENQUIRER,” issued by the Golden Gate chapter, a National Enquirer-style parody newspaper mixing joke headlines with semi-serious, angry articles: e.g., “Government reports show WOMEN DON’T EXIST!!”, a piece attacking the CDC and NIH for excluding women from drug trials. References to the Bush Sr. administration date this publication between 1990 and 1993. Also included are five issues of AUSF’s newsletter issued in 1989-90. Contents include calls to direct action and organizing, local and national reporting, and memorials to the deceased.

As the ’90s proceed, AUGG documents its actions and accomplishments with pride, defining its “serious work” against the ACT-UP “stereotype” of “loud and destructive” arrest-prone troublemakers: “Gone are the days when ACT UP was the fringe. We’re now the mainstream in AIDS work.” But even so: “And yes, when the situation merits it, we get loud and we get arrested.” A valuable primary-source snapshot of activist evolution and response to changing circumstances and obstacles from the height of the AIDS crisis.

$650

Original photographs documenting the April 25, 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, one of the largest protests in American history and the third major march for LGBT rights (the first of the three to include bisexuals in the official title; a vote to add “transgender” failed to pass with a sufficient majority). Among the organizers’ demands were an end to legal and military discrimination, a massive increase in funding for AIDS research, and secure reproductive rights.

Thompson’s subjects include: the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, marching in gorgeous architectural hats; a supportive family group; a poster for DC’s Whitman Walker health clinic; an ACT UP die-in with “Silence Still Equals Death” posters; a group of military men and women headed by a soldier in uniform, trailed by a reporter and proudly waving a flag; and a shot of a California leather continent, with one visible jacket reading “SF Dyke Daddy” and another bearing a patch from Los Angeles’ Avatar Club. Thompson exhibited his photographs of the March at San Francisco’s Castro Country Club in July of ’93. A striking group of images documenting the passion and activism that would endure through the coming decades.

$1,250

Artist’s book consisting of approximately 1kg of waste packaging originally used for assorted consumer goods. With a handwritten explanatory postscript and an original cover drawing of a man feeding a duck (“Ente” is German for duck, but can also mean ‘hoax,’ a borrowing from the French ‘canard.’) Epigraph reads: “Was draussen drum ist, wie auch drinnen drin” (What’s on the outside is in the inside). Voss credits himself as editor (“Herausgegeben von Jan Voss & Co.) of this self-published work. As the rear cover text explains, publication began in 1989 as a continuing unlimited edition; date of this copy’s publication is thus necessarily approximate. This copy is numbered 20, a relatively early example, and the discarded packaging constituting the book’s pages all appears decidedly ’80s (e.g. the cardboard reliquary that once held the legendary Sword of Omens from Thundercats.) The back cover also indicates that copies could at one time be ordered through Boekie Woekie, an Amsterdam artists’ bookstore co-founded by Voss in 1986 as an artists’ collective, then specializing exclusively in handmade and self-published or small-press artists’ books. At least 34 copies of Dokumente were produced, each unique. OCLC locates only one holding (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).

$300