Description:

Folio, 13.25 x 9.75, 111 pp. Publisher: Desert Magazine. Ed Ainsworth. 1960, Second edition. Original orange cloth, lettered in gilt. Foreword by Carl Schaefer Dentzel. Illustrations and plates throughout from drawings and paintings (some in color) by various artists, and photographs of them.

Condition:Very good hardcover, lacks original dust jacket. Inscription Ainsworth in ink on the half-title page. Homemade dust jacket on book, not elegant but did its job of protecting the book from 1960 on.

About the book:An important work on the artists who captured the sublime beauty of the Californian and Southwestern deserts, including Maynard Dixon, Nicolai Fechin, Carl Eytel, Don Perceval, John Hilton, and others.

Added item: Invite card or postcard from Palm Springs area art exhibit around the same time as the publication of the book.

About the author:(From UCLA online library resource) "Edward Maddin Ainsworth was born in 1902 in Waco, Texas; attended Texas A & M and UCLA; worked for newspapers in Waco, Texas, San Pedro and Bakersfield, California, and Atlanta, Georgia, before coming to work at the Los Angeles Times as a copyreader in 1924; progressed from city editor to state editor, editorial page editor, assistant to the managing editor, and eventually became a columnist; author of column, On the Move; member, Board of Governors, Los Angeles County Museum; member, Zamorano Club, Death Valley 49'ers, and E Clampus Vitus; wrote several books on California and the West and also contributed to various magazines; married Katherine Lake, chief librarian in Monrovia, California, 1931; died in 1968."