Description
Signed first edition of The Passing Of The Great Race by Madison Grant.
Octavo, xxi, 245pp. Blue gray covers, title in gilt on spine, title with gilt emblem on front cover. First edition with Scribner’s Device on copyright page. Some soiling to cloth, toning to spine. Stain on pages 81-82. Top edge gilt, but faded. Complete with two foldout tables, a chronological table and four foldout color maps of Europe. Signed by the author on the front free endpaper: “With the compliments of Madison Grant. Oct. 22 – 1916.”
First published in 1916 by American eugenicist Madison Grant, this work expounds the theory of Nordic superiority and argues for aggressive eugenic programs. This book was translated into German in the early 1920s and published by J.F. Lehmann Verlag. It was part of a collection of 50 odd books that were produced by Lehmann and offer the “building blocks” for what history would come to know as the Nazi party. Lehmann was an early supporter of Adolf Hitler, with gift inscriptions in other books from Lehmann to Hitler noting the important “building blocks” that these publications represent. (Ryback, 110) In a note from Hitler to the author in 1929, Hitler thanked Grant for writing the book, calling it “his bible.” (Black, 2003, p. 259)
