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This inscribed first edition, first printing, of the fifth and penultimate volume of Winston Churchill s monumental history of the First World War presents a rare convergence of virtues; time, location, recipient, and condition are all noteworthy. Significantly, this copy was inscribed and dated in the year of publication in New York City to a politically prominent Jewish New Yorker on "Black Thursday" the day of the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. Churchill s inscription is inked in black in five lines on the front free endpaper: "Inscribed by | Winston S. Churchill | for | Henry Morgenthau | Oct 24. 1929".Condition is near-fine, the maroon cloth binding square, clean, bright, and tight. We note only a faint hint of the customary spine toning and trivial shelf wear to extremities, including three gently bruised corners. The contents are bright and clean, with no spotting and only mild age-toning. The untrimmed fore edges are immaculate, the top edges showing only very light shelf dust. The sole previous ownership mark in the book is a cryptic, ink-stamped "9(J)376" on the upper rear free endpaper verso, plausibly a personal library designation.Winston made a tour of the United States in the fall of 1929, among the purposes of which was promoting sales of this book. After spending time in Canada and on America s west coast, "Churchill returned to New York on October 24 where, for six days, he stayed at the flat of Percy Rockefeller [son of William Rockefeller, head of Standard Oil], completing his business arrangements and literary contracts. His return to the city coincided with the sudden collapse of the New York stock market the Black Thursday which ushered in the great crash. That night Churchill dined with Bernard Baruch on Fifth Avenue. He had gathered around his table, Churchill later wrote, forty or more of the leading bankers and financiers of New York, and I remember that when one of them proposed my health he addressed the company as Friends and former millionaires. " It seems certain that this is where Churchill signed this volume for Morgenthau.There is some question as to which Morgenthau, Henry Morgenthau Sr. (1856-1946) or his son Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1891-1967). On balance, the senior Morgenthau seems the likely recipient, but the junior is plausible.Father and son were both politically prominent New York Jews close to soon-to-be-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sr. would have been 73 years old at the time of the 1929 dinner and Jr. 38. Sr. was a Democratic Party financier, U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913-16, attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 (where he plausibly encountered Churchill), was involved in many international diplomacy and relief efforts, and would become a staunch supporter of FDR s New Deal. Jr. was a close friend of FDR and, in 1929, chair of then-Roosevelt s State Agricultural Advisory Committee and later, FDR s State Conservation Commissioner. He was later President Roosevelt s long-serving Secretary of the Treasury and an ardent supporter of the New Deal. He authored the Morgenthau Plan to demilitarize and deindustrialize post-WWI Germany a plan rejected in favor of the perceived necessity of a strong postwar Germany to stability in Europe.A quarter of a century before the Second World War endowed him with lasting fame, Winston Churchill played a uniquely critical, controversial, and varied role in the "War to end all wars". Then, being Churchill, he wrote about it. The World Crisis was originally published in six volumes between 1923 and 1931, with the first four volumes spanning the war years 1911-1918 and the final two volumes covering the postwar years 1918-1928 (The Aftermath) and the Eastern theatre (The Eastern Front). Unusual among Churchill s many published books, the U.S. first edition of The World Crisis initially preceded the British, making the U.S. the true first edition.The Aftermath addresses some of the complication.
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