London: Printed for Charles Mearne, and are to be sold by Henry Bonwick, 1684. First edition, second issue. Presentation copy, inscribed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to McGeorge Bundy on front free endpaper: "McGeorge Bundy / Senior Debating Prize / Groton School-1936 / from Franklin D. Roosevelt". 12mo. (iv), 215, (7) pp. Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece portrait of Brown by P. Vandreban. Full contemporary speckled brown sheep, ruled in blind, black morocco spine label, stamped in gilt, front board detached, boards and extremities scuffed and moderately worn, wear at spine ends; red speckled edges; book-plate of American Orientalist and philologist Fitzedward Hall on front paste-down; prize book-plate on verso of front free endpaper, signed by Groton School headmaster Endicott Peabody; scattered spotting to text; scattered wear along fore-edge; in cloth slip case. ESTC R9918; Pforzheimer 109

A fine presentation copy, inscribed by President and Groton alum Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) 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 founder and headmaster Endicott Peabody (1857-1944), 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."

Born in Boston and educated at Yale, Bundy served in World War II as an intelligence officer, and afterwards taught United States foreign policy at Harvard. He entered public life in 1961 when he was appointed special assistant for national security affairs by President Kennedy. He became a trusted advisor to the President, and was involved in all of Kennedy's major foreign policy decisions, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and crucially, the escalating war in Vietnam, in which he advocated for increased American intervention. Following Kennedy's assassination, he was retained in his post by President Lyndon B. Johnson, where he continued to promote increased American intervention and bombing in Vietnam. He officially resigned from Johnson's administration in 1966, and went on to serve as president of the Ford Foundation until 1979, and then as professor of history at New York University until his death.