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Illustrated with thirteen plates including a frontispiece. First edition, first printing. Signed and inscribed by Ernest Hemingway to his cousin Ruth White Lowry on front free endpaper: "To Ruth. - This little monograph on Mr. Hoover's part in the Nurse Cavell scandal - with sidelights on his "relief" of Belgium - His connection with the sinking of the Lusitania and the abduction of Charley Ross are not made clear. … - E. H." Publisher's blue cloth, with paper label to spine lettered in black; lacking dust jacket. Very good or better, with a few light scratches to front board, very light toning to spine and label, rubbing to spine label (affecting "a" in "Strange"), tiny chip to bottom of label (text unaffected), corners slightly bumped, toning to endpapers, and some smudging to Hemingway's inscription. Overall, a unique inscription showing Hemingway's interest in politics. From the personal library of Hemingway's cousin, Ruth White Lowry. The Strange Career of Mr. Hoover Under Two Flags is a survey of Herbert Hoover's pre-presidential career, presented in a decidedly unflattering light and filled with accusations of corruption and other misdeeds. The book was one of a handful of smear books about Hoover published before the 1932 election, geared toward undoing his reputation as "The Great Humanitarian" and "The Great Engineer." The project began when opportunistic ex-policeman James J. O'Brien approached John Hamill with the idea for the book. After Hamill completed it, publisher Samuel Roth, who had been jailed three times for dealing in obscene literature, agreed to publish it under his William Faro imprint. In 1932, James J. O'Brien sued Hamill over profits from the book, and Hamill subsequently repudiated the book and signed an affidavit stating that "while the material gathered…for the book contained statements that were true in themselves, they were used in such a way as to lead to false conclusions concerning the President" (The New York Times, January 5, 1933). In Hemingway's inscription, he mentions the "Nurse Cavell scandal." Edith Cavell was a British nurse who was executed by Germans in German-occupied Belgium for helping Allied soldiers escape. Her execution became a source of outrage for the Allies and was heavily propagandized. In The Strange Career of Mr. Hoover, Hamill suggested that Hoover could have saved Nurse Cavell but failed to do so. This was one of the aspects of the book that Hamill later admitted was not true, with the above-mentioned New York Times article stating, "Hamill swore he learned nothing in Belgium to justify any inference that Miss Cavell's life might have been saved by Mr. Hoover, and said he had caused similar false inferences to be drawn from other statements in the book…". The tenor of the inscription in this copy seems to indicate that Hemingway disliked Hoover. Further proof may lie in Hemingway's incendiary "Who Murdered the Vets?" essay (1935), about the government's callousness toward the Bonus Army: while directed toward the Roosevelt administration, the gross mistreatment of the Bonus Army began under Hoover's leadership.
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