[ANARCHISM] ADAMIC, Louis

Dynamite: the Story of Class Violence in America [Inscribed 1st Printing]

New York: Viking Press, 1931. First Edition. First printing. Octavo (22cm). Red cloth boards, with applied paper title labels to spine and front cover; dustwrapper; 452pp. Inscribed on half-title: "To Mr. George Schmitter with best wishes," signed, undated but apparently contemporary with publication. Another hand has added initials and a date of 1934 beneath the inscription; a later owner has added a commercial bookplate to the dedication leaf (facing copyright page). The book is a solid, Very Good copy, lightly dusted at board edges but still quite sound and attractive. The jacket is price-clipped, sunned and worn, with extensive clear tape adhesions to verso (most of these have been removed by a professional conservator, the remainder stabilized, with a few tears professionally mended but no restoration). Good only, but a truly scarce example.

The very elusive first edition of Adamic's first book, a classic history of militant social movements in America and the equally militant methods used to suppress them, starting with the labor riots of 1877 and including the Haymarket Massacre, the Wobbly trials, the Homestead strike, the execution of Sacco & Vanzetti, etc. Adamic, a Slovenian immigrant to the U.S., would go on to publish a dozen or so works in his adopted language; as he states in his foreword to this work, he was "...not an active radical, nor a member of any labor union, but my sympathies are with labor; on the other hand, I do not habitually utter the word 'Capitalism' with a hiss..." Second and later printings abound, but In twenty-plus years of searching this is the first jacketed copy of the First Edition we have managed to get our hands on.

Price: $650.00

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