Printed and Manuscript Americana

Austin: The Alcalde Press, (1964). First edition. Presentation copy, inscribed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to McGeorge and Mary Bundy on title-page: "To Mary and Mack Bundy--/ With appreciation / Lyndon B. Johnson". 8vo. Illustrated with photographic reproductions. Original full red calf, stamped in gilt, rubbing to upper and lower spine, front and rear boards soiled; all edges trimmed; pictorial endpapers.

One of a very small number of specially bound copies in a full leather binding that were presented as Christmas gifts by President Johnson to his colleagues and close friends for Christmas 1964. 

This copy inscribed to McGeorge Bundy (1919-96). Part of a family with roots in education and public service, McGeorge Bundy served as a young intelligence officer in World War II. After graduate work, he became a professor of Government at Harvard, and later served as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences there. From 1961-66 he was the National Security Advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He was involved in many of that era’s major foreign policy decisions and controversies, including the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the sharply increasing U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam. From 1966 to 1979 he served as president of the Ford Foundation, where his team led work supporting civil rights, the national expansion of public television, environmental action, ethical investing, and international development and cooperation. As professor of history at New York University from 1979 until his death in 1996, he studied and wrote about the history of nuclear weapons, becoming a forceful advocate for global arms control.

According to RBH, this is only the second copy in this rare presentation binding to come to auction in the past 40 years.