Printed and Manuscript Americana

Philadelphia: Printed for Mathew Carey by Lang and Ustick, 1796. First edition. Presentation copy, inscribed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on front blank to McGeorge Bundy: "The Junior Debating Prize / Groton School 1934 / To McGeorge Bundy / from Franklin D Roosevelt". 12mo. 16, 13-58, 79-118 pp. Illustrated with 19 engraved folding maps by William Barker, Joseph H. Seymour, and Amos Doolittle. School prize binding of quarter marbled brown calf over light brown printed tree "calf" paper-covered boards, decorated in blind and in gilt, Groton School insignia in gilt on front board; all edges trimmed; matching tree "calf" endpapers; book-plate on front paste-down, signed by Groton founder and headmaster Endicott Peabody; title-page toned; light offsetting from plates. Evans 30161; Howes C-137; Phillips 1364; Sabin 10856

A fine and very rare presentation copy of the first edition of the first American pocket atlas. Inscribed by President and Groton alum Franklin D. Roosevelt to McGeorge Bundy (1919-96), United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Gifted to Bundy as a debating prize while a student at the Groton School, in Groton, Massachusetts. Roosevelt attended Groton from 1896-1900, and was a close personal friend with headmaster Endicott Peabody, who has also signed. Roosevelt would later famously recall, "as long as I live, the influence of Dr. and Mrs. Peabody means and will mean more to me than that of any other people next to my father and mother."

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.

Complete copies are rare to auction; according to RBH, only four other complete copies have appeared at auction since 1915.