Booth Colonel Waller (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. 1st Edition. First Edition (NAP). Signed and inscribed by the author on the blank front end paper. The inscription reads 'For Bob Wohlforth, with best wishes, Wally Booth, 3 May 1975'. I purchased the book many years ago in Ridgefield, Connecticut, the town next to mine where Mr. Wohlforth lived. As you can read below the two men make strange bedfellows. The book is in very decent shape. The covers are very clean, the black lettering on the spine very bright. The cover edges and corners look very good, no rubbing. The top page edge has some tan spotting, speck-sized bits of it just peek over the top page edge. The spine does have a significant forward lean (see photos). However, the book is very solidly bound with nicely tight pages throughout and nicely tight covers as well. The inside covers and end papers have some tanning, the text pages are in excellent condition, very clean (one tan spot at one margin), no creasing, no markings, no attachments, and no writing other than the signed inscription. The jacket is in decent condition, minor wear, some light toning on the front and back, more so on the spine. The flaps are in solid shape, a little more toning, a few spots, one teeny tiny edge tear. The jacket is NOT priced-clipped, not clipped at all. I have it in a fitted protective cover. There are only two other signed copies for sale, both at much higher prices. From the dust jacket: 'Mission Marcel-Proust is a story of clandestine operatives during World War II. With the exception of a brief account of training and preparations in England, its scene is France. The author, who commanded the mission, develops his tale with the high-spirited immediacy of actual involvement and the book progresses with the fascinating details that bring these figures and events of history to life.' Also from the dust jacket: 'In 1941 Colonel Waller B. Booth volunteered for what was to become the Office of Strategic Services. In World War II he served as an undercover agent in Spain and North Africa and planned for and participated in clandestine operations in Europe and Southeast Asia.' 'Robert Wohlforth was a journalist, novelist, government investigator, and publisher. He attended Princeton University and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1927. He served for a short time as an officer of the 18th Infantry, but was unhappy with the military and soon resigned. In 1934 he wrote 'Tin Soldiers,' an unflattering novel about cadet life at West Point. A New York Times review of the novel observed: 'Mr. Wohlforth says he resigned from the army in 1928. It is obvious from the internal evidence of his novel that it had to do with his distaste for the martial life. An individualist, he must have hated the routine of West Point, even in his relatively free upper-class-years.' Wohlforth also wrote a series of reminiscences for the New Yorker, called 'My Nickelodeon Childhood,' recounting his experiences as a boy helping his father operate one of the first movie theaters on the New Jersey shore. In 1934 he joined the staff of the U.S. Senate's Nye Committee, which spent several years investigating the 'merchants of death,' as the munitions industry was then called. This led to his appointment in 1936 as secretary of the La Follette Committee, which conducted a three-year investigation of labor spying, strike breaking, and other civil liberties violations that affected labor unions. In 1939, President Roosevelt appointed Wohlforth to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. When World War II broke out, he headed the War Division, which investigated an international web of economic connections among Nazi-run firms. He continued to work for the Justice Department until 1952, when 'he was forced out of government employment by the McCarthyite witch hunt of the period,' his obituary said. Wohlforth had worked in government with people who were later identified as communists or Soviet sympathizers.'. Inscribed by Author(s).

8vo., First Edition; olive cloth, backstrip lettered in black, a near fine copy in unclipped dustwrapper. A PRESENTATION COPY FROM THE AUTHOR WITH HIS SIGNED HOLOGRAPH INSCRIPTION ON FRONT FREE ENDPAPER. EXTREMELY SCARCE.