Description:

JOHN F. KENNEDY
(1917-1963) Thirty-fifth President of the United States. Kennedy faced-down Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, re-invigorated NASA, and signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Assassinated November 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald. Extremely rare signed book, a signed first edition, first printing of Kennedy's first book, Why England Slept (New York: Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1940). xxx, 252 pp. 8vo., bound in illustrated red cloth with titled spine and in the original dust jacket. Boldly inscribed on the front blank flyleaf: "To Walter Cummings, Jr. with very best wishes - John F. Kennedy" beneath Cummings' bookplate, likely accomplished as President. Pastedowns lightly toned, top and bottom of spine slightly rubbed, some chipping and tears to dustjacket, else very good to fine condition. This political treatise is the published version of a thesis written by Kennedy while in his senior year at Harvard College. The book examines the failures of the British government to take steps to prevent World War II and is notable for its uncommon stance of not castigating the appeasement policy of the British government at the time, instead suggesting that an earlier confrontation between the U.K. and Nazi Germany could well have been more disastrous in the long run. As Ambassador to Britain, father Joseph Kennedy supported Chamberlain's policy of appeasement during the late 1930s, which may have skewed his son's thinking; Kennedy lived with his father in Britain at that time and witnessed the Luftwaffe's bombings of Britain first-hand. Walter J. Cummings, Jr. (1916 - 1999) was the son of Walter J. Cummings, Sr. a railroad-car manufacturer and the first head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation who served at the same time that Joseph P. Kennedy was head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The junior Cummings was a 1940 graduate of Harvard Law School and went on to become the youngest person ever to serve as Solicitor General. In 1966 Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, where he served for 33 years. One of his more notable decisions during his lengthy term on the bench was to order a retrial for the Chicago Seven after determining that the presiding judge was openly hostile to the defense. A superb association piece. This is the rarest of Kennedy's signed books, and while later printings appear in signed copies from time to time, this is the one of the only signed first printings we have ever seen come to market.

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July 22, 2011 11:30 AM EDT
Stamford, CT, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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