Raptis Rare Books is pleased to partner with the Florida Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art for the first event in our 2019-2020 Lecture Series with a book-signing featuring the new work: The Drawings and Paintings of Coral Gables and Rome: Thomas A. Spain. Edited by Steven Fett and Edgar Sarli, The Drawings and Paintings of Thomas A. Spain presents the most extensive collection of Spain’s work to date. Especially known for his drawings of Rome, Spain’s extensive and brilliant collection of work focuses on the relationship among monuments, rather than the objects the ..read more

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the Father of the Nation of India, Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. A national holiday in India, the day is celebrated worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. Born on October 2, 1869, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, and called to the bar at age 22. He moved to South Africa in 1893 where resided for 21 years and adopted his still evolving methodology of Satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or nonviolent protest, for the first time in the wake of the Boer War. Rare engraving of one of the most ..read more

One of the most influential economic treatises of the twentieth century and Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises’ single most important work, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, first appeared 70 years ago, in September of 1949. First Edition of Human Action; inscribed by Ludwig von Mises Human Action was first published by the Yale University Press in 1949 and later that same year in London by William Hodge and Company. The German-language predecessor to Human Action, titled Nationalökonomie: Theorie des Handelns und Wirtschaftens, first appeared in 1940. Human Action was not a ..read more

American entrepreneur, animator, and film producer Walt Disney is arguably the most important figure in the history of animation. A national cultural icon, his innovative spirit and vision revolutionized the genre of animated cartoons, making them a major part of mainstream popular entertainment. Born in Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood, Disney began his animation career in 1919 as an apprentice artist at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio where he worked for a year before starting his own business, Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists, with fellow animator Ub Iwerks. Rare first edition Little ..read more

We have recently been featured in Travel and Leisure Magazine in an article detailing some of the best “secret” things to do in Palm Beach. Palm Beach is a wonderful travel destination, and if you are considering visiting, this article highlights some wonderful things to do, so we thought we would share this with you. The Best ‘Secret’ Things to Do in Palm Beach, Florida, According to a Local Whispered secrets. Massive fortunes. Marked graves off Worth Avenue and sequestered public gardens; billionaires and heiresses and presidential retreats … this is Palm Beach, and there’s no place in the ..read more

Matthew Raptis was recently interviewed by Ted White of ABC WPBF 25 News speaking on a new form of security implemented at Raptis Rare Books by CSI Protect. “Ted White: A Palm Beach business is the first in the state to get a unique crime fighting tool. A tool aimed at exposing criminals. This is not your ordinary book store on Worth Avenue on Palm Beach –  It’s a multimillion dollar worth of rare books and we want to prevent any future occurrences of theft. Well, we have a 2nd full edition of Shakespeare 1632, values at half $1 million. There’s 40 to 45 copies known. The book store is also t ..read more

Billed as “an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music”, the Woodstock music festival was held August 15-18 1969 and attracted an audience of over 400,000 to Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York. One of the biggest rock festivals of all time and a cultural touchstone for the late 1960s, the festival was one of the definitive events in the history of Rock and Roll and the phrase “the Woodstock generation” has become part of the common lexicon. Tributes to the festival began almost as soon as the festival concluded and it influenced an entire generation of musicians. Thir ..read more

Prolific American author Toni Morrison published 11 novels, 9 works of non-fiction, 5 children’s novels and received over 30 awards throughout the course of her career including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by Barack Obama, in 2012. Born on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison became a Catholic at the age of 12 and took the baptismal name Anthony (after Saint Anthony), which led to her nickname, Toni. She attended Howard University for her undergraduate studies, earned a Master of Arts from ..read more

American novelist and social activist James Baldwin was born today, August 2nd, in Manhattan in 1924. The literary master’s deeply personal and provocative stories examined both the African American and homosexual experience when neither identity was accepted by American culture. His works would come to galvanize the nation and give a passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement and his influence on the development of a number of fellow emerging African American authors was unprecedented. First edition of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain; signed by him A native of Harlem ..read more

Saturday July 20th marks the centenary of the birth of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Born in Auckland, New Zealand on July 20th 1919, Edmund Percival Hillary made his first climb at the age of twenty, reaching the summit of Mount Olliver in the Canterbury Region of New Zealand. Hillary first encountered Everest, the summit of which he would become the first man to conquer, as part of the 1951 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition led by English Himalayan mountaineer Eric Shipton. The expedition reconnoitred various possible routes for cli ..read more