On Thermonuclear War
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1960. First edition, first printing, with no later printing statement on the copyright page, in the original unclipped dust jacket priced $10.00. 9.5" x 6.25". 651 pp. Charts and tables. Publisher’s red cloth, spine lettered in silver between black rules. Very good in a very good jacket. Cloth bright and clean with only minimal wear at the spine ends; binding tight; text clean and unmarked. A few faint spots to the fore-edge and a small spot to the rear pastedown. Jacket shows light rubbing and soiling to the black front panel, light wear and small chips at the spine ends and corners, and toning to the flap folds and verso. Rear panel prints advance comments from Robert C. Sprague and Harrison S. Brown. Provenance: from the library of L. John Wood (1930–2026), Indianapolis attorney, chairman of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission (1970–76), longtime Indiana ACLU board member and national ACLU board member (1968–73), and counsel to the Indianapolis Public Schools board during the remedy phase of the city’s federal desegregation case. It carries his characteristic reading note on the rear free endpaper ‘11 January 1961, HBC,’ the date he finished book along with a several initial code. Kahn’s RAND-era treatise is one of the defining and most controversial books of the Cold War. Kahn insisted on thinking about the “unthinkable,” treating nuclear war as survivable and quantifying acceptable losses, fallout, shelters, and postwar recovery. His discussion of a hypothetical “Doomsday Machine” and his public persona helped inspire Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964). (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica)
First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good / Very Good. Item #UB-51676
Price: $95.00