A catalogue is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get. That’s especially true of this catalogue. Basketball has its March Madness; Tavistock has its March Miscellany. Sure, you can probably count on some Dickens, maybe a nursing item or two. But you’ll also encounter new and unexpected treats, not found in any other box of chocolates. Enjoy!
They say you should give gifts that you would want to receive yourself. So, herein, 40 items that particularly strike our fancy, and will hopefully strike yours, as well. Happy holidays!
History of human society is primarily composed of actions & behavior by people, often acting in concert, many times not. And most of what we today know about human history comes from those individuals who record it as it happens, whether intentionally through such means as a diary, or indirectly, such as later inferences made from printed material & other remnants of the era being studied. A oft expressed lament of modern historical scholars is the lack of such documentation from the ‘comman man’, especially in the early modern period. Such, hopefully, will not be the concern of scholars centuries hence, as more folk of the common variety, during the last two centuries, did keep records… print, visual & written. Herein, you will find such material. Records documenting ‘normal' people, going about ‘normal' activities, but please do not confuse ‘normal' with uninteresting. Item 10 are the comprehensive diaries of a late 19th C. man involved in, amongst many other activities, silver mining in Colorado; no. 7 the archive of a significant player in World War II; you’ll find many wonderful photograph albums that record & document everything from boat building, to telephone infastructure, to a California rodeo. So here we offer history. Enjoy.
In these days of internet bookselling, with thousands of booksellers listing millions of books for sale, it is said to be successful in such a competitive environment, one must routinely offer 1. the cheapest copy, or, 2. the best copy, or, 3. the only copy. Here at Tavistock Books, we prefer, when able, to pursue the 3rd option as our primary business paradigm, for, by definition, the 3rd tenet encompasses the first two. Here then is our Summer list, which is comprised of 30 items, each of which is the only copy currently offered on the market.* Or, borrowing Peter Howard’s slightly more emphatic expression, “Find Another!”
