Myths After Lincoln

New York: The Press of the Readers Club. Very Good in Good dj. (c.1941, 1929). First Edition Thus. Hardcover. [book is only lightly shelfworn, with an attractive circular bookplate on the front pastedown, and the front endpaper and pastedown are filled with a former owner's lengthy handwritten note (see description); the jacket is a little ragged across the top edge, where there have been numerous internal tape-repairs, and there is some vertical creasing along the right edge of the front panel]. Reissue of a book originally published in 1929, with a new introduction by Carl Sandburg, and incorporating "new evidence brought to light" about John Wilkes Booth in the intervening years. A compendium (and debunking) of the many myths, legends, rumors, conspiracy theories, etc. that had attached themselves to Abraham Lincoln in the years following his assassination, the book reportedly sold only 3,000 copies in its initial printing (and indeed, copies of the original Harcourt, Brace edition are mighty scarce today). This particular copy is imbued with a unique charm by a former owner's lengthy and heartfelt handwritten note on the front endpaper (continuing on the front pastedown) that begins with "This is the book that started it all!!", and goes on to tell the story of how his discovery of this book, when he was baby-sitting for a next-door neighbor in 1952, led to a lifelong interest in Lincoln, resulting in his gathering of "a library of 100 Lincoln books & 100's of Lincoln articles & artifacts." .