The American Builder’s Companion; or, a new system of architecture particularly adapted to the present style of building in the United States of America. Boston: Etheridge and Bliss, 1806

First edition of the second book by Asher Benjamin, America’s first great writer on architecture.

$10,000

Signed photograph of Watson and Crick with their three-dimensional model of the double-helix DNA molecule. Anthony Barrington, 1953, printed later

Signed by Watson and Crick in the white lower margin. The discovery of the structure of DNA was the cornerstone event in modern genetics and biology and one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time.

$9,500

Teletype covering the Normandy landings on D-Day. Associated Press, 5 and 6 June 1944

First announcement of the D-Day landings, perhaps the most important event of the 20th century.

$9,500

Two 16 mm films of the first Russian and the first American to walk in space. No place, 1965

Films of the space walks of Aleksei Leonov and Edward White.

$9,500

Collection of eight autograph letters signed to Paul Hamilton Hayne. Cambridge, 1872-1880

This is a fine series of letter from Longfellow, the most celebrated and popular poet in America, and Paul Hamilton Hayne, the most famous southern poet of his era. In the first letter Longfellow tells Haynes that the promised volume of poems has not reached him. He assures the South Carolina poet that “this is of no great consequence, as you know already my opinion of your writings.”

$9,000

Economics: An Introductory Analysis.. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948

First edition of the greatest and most influential modern economics text-book. Inscribed by Samuelson for Eric Roll. Roll, professor of economics and later chairman of S. G. Warburg & Co., wrote the classic History of Economic Thought (1938, 4th ed., 1973).

$8,500

Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers. Washington, February 27, 1961

PRE-PUBLICATION RARITY. “The classic paper published in Nature that started it all” (coseti.org), this is the founding work of optical SETI. This pre-publication form is dated more than a month before the article’s publication in Nature. For years SETI research focused on radio transmissions, but the development of powerful lasers has made Optical SETI (OSETI) a highly promising area of research. Townes’s prescient proposal is even the more remarkable given the very limited power of masers and lasers at the time this paper appeared.

$8,500

A Collection of Three Reports on the Treasury’s Receipts and Expenditures. Philadelphia: Childs and Swaine, 1790-1793

A collection of rare Treasury reports on the finances of the United States during its earliest years.

3 items: $8,500

Autograph manuscript “On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners.”. No Place, ca. 1869

$8,250

The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. With the precedent Passages, and Actions, that contributed thereunto, and the happy End, and Conclusion thereof by the King’s blessed Restoration. Oxford: Printed at the Theater, 1702-1704

FIRST EDITION. A magnificent set of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, “the most valuable of all the contemporary accounts of the Civil Wars. … His characters are not simply bundles of characteristics, but consistent and full of life, sketched sometimes with affection, sometimes with light humor” (DNB).

$7,800