simon schusteer new york (3 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Printing. Remainder stamp bottom edge.

Hard Back. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Printing. 269 Pages Indexed. No marks or stamps to this unread book with flawless interior text pages.The $25 jacket flap price is unclipped. This book is the story of the American clipper ship Hornet, which went down in flames in 1866, casting its crew adrift for forty-three days on the open ocean. The Hornet disaster was once one of the country's most infamous naval disasters. the crew of which barely survived for six weeks on ten days of rations and shoe leather, drifting 4,300 miles in a single lifeboat as they all slowly weakened and became delirious or mad. The ship had left her home-port of New York in January 1866, and embarked on a routine voyage to San Francisco around Cape Horn. She enjoyed an exceptionally smooth passage until the morning of May 3. On that day, the first mate went below to draw some varnish from a cask and accidentally set the cask afire. Within minutes the entire ship was engulfed. The ship's company of thirty-one men escaped into three small boats, set adrift in the Pacific Ocean to watch helplessly as the burning Hornet sank beneath the waves. Their ordeal was harrowing. Half of the Hornet's crew disappeared; the survivors were stalked by sharks and waterspouts, desiccated by heat, driven mad by lack of food and water. Soon the social divisions in the boat erupted into class war. The crewmen accused the captain of hoarding food, water, and even gold, and they plotted mutiny. With no hope left they planned cannibalism and on the day they were to draw straws, they reached Hawaii. By chance, a young, little-known Samuel Langhorne Clemens was in Hawaii. He wrote an account of the voyage that would make the crew famous, and Mark Twain a household name. Drawing on extensive primary sources, including survivors' diaries and letters, as well as newspaper accounts and Twain's reporting, Jackson has created a gripping narrative of the horrors and triumphs of men against the sea. Contents in 13 Chapters: The Picnic Cruise, Dead Reckoning, The Doldrums, Chimeras, The Stalking Sea, The First Parting, The Second Parting, Alone, The Theft, The American Group, Delirium, The Lottery, The Island. Plus Preface, Prologue A Fire at Sea, Three Appendices - Daily Position of the Hornet's Longboat, The Hornet's Crew List and Glossary, Notes, and Bibliograpohy.

First Edition. Octavo. Author's second book and signed by the author. 220pp., He has been compared to Hemingway, Fitsgerald, Faulkner, Updike and others, yet he is really distinguished by a wildly inventive comic vision, but a felicity of style and maverick energy that are absolutely his own. According to Edward Abbey McGuane is a real comic cool crazy cat. A fine copy bound in brown cloth stamped in black depicting three bats, spine lettered and stamped in black, top edge yellow, in unclipped pictorial dust jacket is near fine with just a bit of darkening to spine. Very nice.