American Mahogany Butler’s Desk from the Holmes family home at 296 Beacon Street, Boston. American, ca. 1830

Justice Holmes’s butler’s desk from the family home on Beacon Street.

$22,000

Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882

Presentation copy inscribed by the author and artist Celia Thaxter: “Mary Mapes Dodge with much love. Illustrated by Celia Thaxter 1882.”

$22,000

DNA The Secret of Life. [New York: Knopf, 2003.]

Presentation copy inscribed by James Watson to Francis Crick and his wife: “For Francis and Odile from Jim 27 November 2002.” This is the dedication copy, with the printed dedication stating “To Francis Crick.”

$20,000

Genes, Girls and Gamow. Oxford: University Press, 2001

First edition. A tremendous presentation copy inscribed by James Watson to Francis Crick: “For Francis from Jim.”

$20,000

Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. Evanston: Library of Living Philosophers, 1949

FIRST EDITION. One of 760 numbered copies signed and dated by Einstein.

$18,500

The Second World War. London: Cassell, 1948-1954

FIRST ENGLISH EDITIONS. Signed and dated by Churchill in the first volume.

$18,500

Important Pair of Daguerreotypes: Black Caregiver with White Baby and the Child’s Parents. Talbot County, Maryland or Texas, c. 1853

This striking pair of daguerreotypes evokes the complex relationships between enslaved people and their enslavers in the American South, especially between white families and the trusted women who cared for their children.

the pair: $18,500

Autograph letter signed to [Fanny Kellogg]. Down, Beckenham, Kent, April 13, 1879

Darwin discusses the hereditary transmission of behavior and a vivid example of the phenomenon from the opening chapter of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

$18,000

Autograph note signed to Robert Watt with original albumen print photograph. No place, July 16, 1874

Mark Twain the humorist. Samuel Clemens sent this delightful humorous note with the accompanying half- length standing portrait of the debonair author.

$18,000

Photo Album Operation Greenhouse. Hollywood, California: United States Air Force Lookout Mt. Laboratory, [1951]

This rare album documents Operation Greenhouse, the first series of tests in the nascent American thermonuclear weapons program. The four tests were performed in April and May 1951 at the Enewetak Atoll of the Marshall Islands. Following the Soviet Union’s successful test of an atomic bomb in August 1949, the United States made the controversial decision to proceed with the development of thermonuclear weapons. These fusion weapons (the “Super” or hydrogen bomb) would be orders of magnitude more destructive than the fission weapons used against Japan.

$17,500