Autograph manuscript signed “Walt Whitman on the Poets.”. No place, [1885]

In this fascinating manuscript Whitman provides a newspaper with an article defending himself against attacks that he did not respect the great American poets of the day.

$7,500

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

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

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

Bust portrait of Whitman wearing a hat. New York, 1878

Boldly signed and dated 1879 by Whitman. Whitman observed of this delightful portrait, “It is one of my good-humored pictures. … This is strong enough to be right and gentle enough to be right, too: I like to be both: I wouldn’t like people to say ‘he is a giant’ and then forget I know how to love.”

$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

Catalogue of the celebrated collection of works of art and vertu known as “The Vienna Museum,” the property of Messrs. Lowenstein Brothers, of Frankfort-on-the-Main. London: Christie, Manson & Woods, 1860

This important volume is “the earliest photographically illustrated auction catalogue” (Gernsheim, Incunabula, 122). It contains 36 photographs on salted paper by Hermann Emden of Frankfurt.

$12,000

Strategikos in: Scriptores rei militaris [also with military works by Vegetius, Frontinus, and Aelian]. Rome: Eucharius Silber, 1494

First edition of Onosander’s Strategikos , also known as The General. This is “the earliest military treatise wherein so much stress is laid upon the commander’s duties, the morale of the troops, and the ethical side of warfare. It enjoyed much popularity in the Renaissance” (Sarton).

$12,500