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Stated First Edition. Dr. Skinner was a bit stingy with his signature. Rarity and his renown have combined to make the small number of books he has signed very expensive. Once listed, this will be the Only signed copy of The Shaping of a Behaviorist for sale anywhere on the Internet. The simple inscription reads 'To Jill, with love, Fred.' Curiously, this will be the Only signed copy of any of his books for sale with the word 'love' in the inscription. Jill must've been Very Good (behavioralist humor?). Or have I uncovered a scandal? My educated guess on who Jill might be: Jill G. Morawski was, and is still, a professor of psychology at Wesleyan University where I purchased the book (her expertise: 'History of modern psychological sciences with focus on the scientific practices accompanying claims about the nature of subjectivity and the moral commitments of scientific psychology.'). She has written a book titled 'Alexandra Rutherford. Beyond the Box: B. F. Skinner's Technology of Behavior from Laboratory to Life, 1950s-1970s.' The covers of this book are very clean, the silver lettering on the front and spine nicely bright. As you can see in the last photo, something caused a fading of the black color at the bottom edge of the spine, no scuffing, just color fade. There is also a crease just below the lettering there. The cover edges are in excellent shape, no rubbing. Same goes for the corners. The page edges look very good. The top one is red. The middle and bottom ones are deckled or rough-cut. They did an excellent job. The binding of the book is excellent too, the pages nicely tight from cover to cover, the covers nicely tight as well. The pages are perfectly clean. Scrolling through, I'm not finding any soiling of any kind. I'm not finding any conspicuous creasing, no placeholder creases. There are no markings in the book. No attachments of any kind. And the author's signed inscription is the only writing be found anywhere. You can see the dust jacket in the first couple of photos. I've left out a photo of the rear cover which is in decent shape (a thin crease off the top edge) in order to provide a photo of the spine of the book (five photo limit). You can see in the other photos that there is some creasing/crinkling, particularly off the top edge of the spine, also a small loss off the front top edge just adjacent to the spine, and a couple of tiny edge tears. The flaps are in pretty decent condition. They have some toning off their top edges. There is a small top corner crease on the front flap. The rear flap has a thin crease coming up a ways from its bottom edge and a small tear off its inside edge. The jacket is Not price-clipped, not clipped at all. I've always had it in a fitted protective cover. The Shaping of a Behaviorist is the second of Dr. Skinner's three- volume autobiography. From the front flap: 'Here is B. F. Skinner writing about himself in the crucial years from 1928 to 1947-- the years when his career was assuming its ultimate importance. He begins with his time as a graduate student at Harvard and his early conviction that 'my fundamental interests lie in the field of Psychology, and I shall probably continue therein, even, if necessary, by making over the entire field to suit myself.' In counterpoint to the fascinating account of his professional achievements is the story of his personal life-- his marriage (after an assortment of ill-starred romances), his fatherhood (he abandons punishment and uses positive rather than negative reinforcement with his children) his friendships, his love of music and literature, the success (and the failures) in his long and complicated progress toward maturity. Dr. Skinner is one of the major controversial figures of our time. This book is extraordinary, both as intellectual history and human revelation.'.
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