Item #871 Stranger Come Home. William L. Shirer.
Stranger Come Home

Stranger Come Home

Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1954. First Edition.

Octavo (8 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches; 209 x 141 mm), 369, [1] pages, in grayish-green cloth, titles in red to spine, in an unclipped dust jacket.

INSCRIBED on the front end paper in the year of publication to American novelist Nelia Gardner White (1894-1957): "To / Nelia Gardner White / in admiration / Bill Shirer / 1954."

It's supposedly fiction but it's very much about McCarthyism, which in the book is called O'Brienism, after an especially gross senator named O'Brien. The book is in the form of a diary in which a foreign correspondent returns to the U.S. and is accused of being a Communist and a spy. Shirer (1904-1993) was, of course, a famous foreign correspondent himself, writing "Berlin Diary" and "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich."

"Mr. Shirer's purpose is to show what happens to a man mentally, emotionally and physically when without justification he is accused of treasonable acts." (John Neff, The New York Times, May 30, 1954, page 66). The reviewer calls the book "highly absorbing [and] hair-raising at times."

CONDITION: Sunning to edges and spine, toning and offsetting to end papers, corners slightly bumped but internally clean and unmarked. The unclipped dust jacket shows some rubbing, soiling, a few small chips and tears, and some foxing to the verso. Jacket spine a bit faded. Overall, a Very Good copy. Item #871

Price: $375.00

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