About this Item
Birds: Words and Birds by Robert Jay Lifton. Stated First Printing (along with number line to 2, which is singularly how Random House indicates a first edition, first printing). The book is signed and inscribed on the first front end paper. The inscription reads 'For Dave and Evey, Bird people of long standing. With much love,' and then a drawing of a bird which is his signature. At the top of the page the bookseller I purchased the book from penciled 'inscribed to David + Evelyn Riesman.' That would be David Riesman the renowned sociologist and educator whose 1950 book The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character 'quickly became the nation's most influential and widely read mid-century work of social and cultural criticism catapulting its author to the cover of Time magazine in 1954, making him the first social scientist so honored.' Lifton and Riesman were good friends. Said Lifton: "I had been at Harvard for number of years and I became a close friend to David Riesman, a great sociologist who was the first American faculty person to be an adviser to an antinuclear group. And we formed a little newsletter that he mostly wrote, talking about the American shelter-building craze and some of the absurdities of strategic declarations about fighting and winning nuclear war.' Robert Lifton, who wrote books titled Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima; History and Human Survival: Essays on the Young and the Old, Survivors and the Dead, Peace and War, and on Contemporary Psychohistory; The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide; ALSO had it in him to write a humorous (dry, of course) cartoon book. It was published in 1969, the year after his Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima was published, and won the National Book Award in the Sciences. Not surprisingly his cartoons, while funny, regard serious subjects like Life, Bombs, and Prejudices. Example: one bird asks 'What is the best preparation for post-attack recovery?' The other answers 'Pre-attack restraint.' The pages are unnumbered. You won't be cheated, though. I counted 46 cartoons. The first one, which precedes the title page, is likely self-directed: the two birds face one another, their beaks are intertwined, actually (meaningfully) they share one beak. Above the bird on the left is the word 'Genius'. Above the bird on the right the words 'Vulgar Imitation.' You'll have to buy the book to decide which is the more accurate. If you do, you'll be getting a book in very good condition. As you can see from the photos, the covers are very clean and have very little wear (a couple of tiny nicks and tiny spots of rubbing at the bottom corners). The lettering and design on the front cover and spine look perfect. The book is solidly bound from cover to cover with nicely tight pages and covers (the covers do bow out just a little bit). The covers are clean. I'm not seeing any creasing. There are no markings. No attachments. And with the exception of the author's 'signed' inscription, no one has written their name or anything else anywhere. The dust jacket is in solid shape. There's a tiny tear off the top edge of the spine, a very small one off the top edge of the front flap. There is a speck-sized loss at the bottom corner of the front flap. Both flaps do have vertical creasing. The jacket is clean. It is NOT price-clipped, not clipped at all, and I've had it in a fitted protective cover for as long as I've owned the book. The author's Wikipedia profile begins with the words 'Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory.' Check out the rest of it. A pretty remarkable career. Seller Inventory # 002207
Contact seller
Report this item
Bibliographic Details
Title: Birds (Signed) (Inscribed to renowned ...
Publisher: Random House, New York
Publication Date: 1969
Binding: Hardcover
Illustrator: Robert Jay Lifton
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition
