Thursday, February 21, 2008

Used bookstores put people in touch with their history!

An exciting thing happened today! Remember the First Edition I showcased just last entry -- Black Man in the White House: A Revealing Diary of the Eisenhower Administration by the first Negro Presidential Aide in History, by E. Frederic Morrow?

Well, today Mr. Morrow's goddaughter came into the shop and bought said First Edition!



Carole Landrum was out for a jog, and was quite tickled to spot Black Man in the White House in our window. She tells me that her godfather invited her parents to Eisenhower's Inaugural Ball. She also mentioned that she now regrets having disposed of her parents' books -- there was a copy of this very book among them, of course. But now she has her very own First Edition once again!

(I hope I'm getting all the details right! Ms. Landrum, please feel free to call or email and correct me if I've got anything wrong!)

Thanks to Ms. Landrum for being a good sport about taking her photo, and for telling me the story of why she was interested in this book!

1 comment:

Diggitt said...

My local out-of-print bookseller showed me a little gem he considers unsaleable. It's a copy of W.E.B. DuBois's Souls of Black Folk, personally inscribed by DuBois to Kenneth Clark (who lived here in this village). Clark then inscribed it to his daughter. The bookseller had bought a batch of books from the Clark house and not long after, his building was significantly damaged by fire, and this book suffered major water damage. So pages are stuck together--it wasn't a great edition of the book to start with and--as I said, he considers it unsaleable. So sad.