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 foxing along leaf ends, solid binding. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, $15.95 retail price on front flap, ISBN number on rear flap, touch of wear along margins, short closed tear along front panel, bright illustrations, a very good example.
From the library of fellow marine Harry M. Spoor (1926-2014), with notes about his service in Okinawa, China, and later Korea, on the endpapers.
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.
