Description
First edition of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene B. Sledge, in the publisher’s dust jacket.
Octavo, xvi, 326pp. Brown hardcover, title stamped in gilt. The first printing, with no additional printings on copyright page. Light dust remnant along top edge of text block, solid binding, a near fine example. Previous ownership inscription on the front free endpaper from a fellow Marine. Offsetting to endpapers, which is common with this book. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, $15.95 retail price on front flap, ISBN number on rear flap, chipping along top edge, two tape repairs to verso along closed tears, faint sunning to the spine, a very good example.
This memoir by E.B. Sledge, which recounts his time as a marine during World War II in the South Pacific, is considered one of the finest war memoirs ever written by a soldier. It began as notes that Sledge kept in his bible during the battles and which he sporadically wrote down after returning to the United States. This work, which went largely unnoticed when it was first published in 1981, has become an important first-person narrative of the Pacific theater. It was the inspiration for the HBO miniseries, The Pacific, and Ken Burns PBS series, The War.
