Amid These Storms.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932. First U.S. edition, only printing. Hardcover. This is the finest jacketed example of the U.S. first edition, only printing we have encountered.
Published in Britain as Thoughts and Adventures, this is one of the few Churchill first editions for which the U.S. edition features a different title than the British. The U.S. first edition text was photo-reproduced from the British first edition, but everything else about the edition differs markedly from its British counterpart. The bright red-orange coarse cloth binding of Amid These Storms matches the style of the 1930 U.S. first edition of A Roving Commission but the dust jacket for Amid These Storms is strikingly unique. It features a full-length photo of Churchill in Flanders in 1916, wearing his French Poilu's helmet. This image appears on both the spine and front face. The orange color on the dust jacket and the red-orange binding proved exceptionally prone to sunning. Further, both the coarse cloth binding and the white fields of the dust jacket proved quite susceptible to soiling. Jacketed copies are scarce and truly bright copies are a rarity; most copies look like they spent time in the trenches with Churchill.
This copy is gorgeously clean, better than near fine, in an impressively bright and complete dust jacket. The red-orange cloth binding is not only square and tight with sharp corners, but also vividly bright, both the gilt and hue undimmed, the coarse cloth improbably clean. The contents are nearly as impressively bright, with no previous ownership marks and no spotting. The otherwise clean untrimmed fore edges show only mild age-toning and the top edges just a little shelf dust. The unclipped dust jacket retains the original “$3.50” front flap price and shows only fractional loss at the flap fold and spine extremities. The orange spine panels are as bright as we have seen, with only barely discernible color shift between the faces and spine. The jacket is also uncommonly clean, the white panels showing only trivial hits of soiling. Wear is minor, primarily confined to tiny chips, wrinkles, and closed tears to the jacket’s perimeter. While not perfect, this jacket is likely as good as it gets - a markedly clean, substantially complete, and beautifully bright example. The dust jacket is protected with a removable, clear, archival cover.
Churchill's collection of 23 engaging essays on an incredibly wide variety of subjects has been called "The broadest range of Churchill's thought between hard covers" and reflects the two qualities that so characterize Churchill's life - a remarkable breadth of both mind and life experience. The content ranges from personal and political musings to prescient speculation on the future. The original front flap blurb encapsulates – as far as is possible – the wide range of the chapters within: “These true stories concern such things as the tides that make a politician change his mind; the domination of chance in human lives; the cartoonists who mocked Churchill; the chances and events that occurred while he was in the trenches; phases of the war seen from intimate participation with the high commands; flying experiences in 1912; the Irish; the future; and contemporary change." In a 31 May 1932 letter to his publisher about the book, Churchill characterized his book thus: "...although there is no one single theme, it has some of the best things in it I have ever written."
Reference: Cohen A95.2, Woods/ICS A39(ba), Langworth p.158. Item #007230
Price: $2,250.00