About this Item
Stated 'First Printing, 1967.' Signed and inscribed by Mr. McPhee on the title page. The inscription reads 'for Phil Quigg who-- like me-- could never have imagined this one, John McPhee, 11/1/67.' Phil W. Quigg lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut (one town over from me) when I purchased the book a good number of years ago. Mr. Quigg was also an author. Among his books, A Pole Apart: The Emerging Issues of Antarctica; America The Dutiful: An Assessment Of U. S. Foreign Policy; and Africa: A Foreign Affairs Reader. He was managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine for 15 years. Both he and John McPhee were Princeton graduates. You can see the covers of the book in the photos. They are exceptionally clean. I don't see any soiling. The only cover imperfection is thin color fading at the top edges and spine ends. The gilt lettering on the spine is nicely bright. The cover edges are in solid shape, no rubbing. The top ones are a slightly lighter blue. The corners are in very good shape. I don't see any soiling on the page edges. The book is very solidly bound from cover to cover with nicely tight pages throughout and nicely tight covers as well. The inside covers and end papers are a light green. There all very clean and free of wear. The pages are exceptionally clean. Scrolling through, I'm not finding any instances of soiling. I don't see any conspicuous creasing, no turned-down corners or placeholder creases. There are no markings. No attachments of any kind. And the author's signed inscription is the only writing to be found anywhere. You can see the dust jacket in the first few photos. I have always had it in a fitted protective cover. Given all the white color I would say it's quite clean with only one or two slight and light spots of soiling. There is what appears to be a pen jag off the top edge of the front. There are no tears on the jacket. The flaps are in quite solid shape, one teeny tiny nick off the top edge of the front flap. The flaps are perfectly clean. The jacket is NOT price-clipped, not clipped at all. From the dust jacket: 'This book was first conceived as a short magazine article about oranges and orange juice, but the author kept encountering so much irresistible information that he eventually found that he had in fact written a book. It contains sketches of orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers, orange packers, early settlers on Florida's Indian River, the first orange barons, modern concentrate makers, and a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida who may be the last of the individual orange barons. McPhee's astonishing book has an almost narrative progression, is immensely readable, and is frequently amusing. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles, because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too?with elements in it that range from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a custom of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.' From Harper's Magazine: 'A surprising book. You come to the end and say 'But I can't have read a whole book about oranges.' It's a delicious book, in a word, and more absorbing than many a novel.'. Seller Inventory # 005491
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Bibliographic Details
Title: Oranges (Signed First Printing)
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
Publication Date: 1967
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition
