Harriman, Averell Harriman

AMERICA AND RUSSIA IN A CHANGING WORLD: A HALF CENTURY OF PERSONAL OBSERVATION [Signed]

Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, xix, 218 pages. In Very Good condition with a Very Good minus dust jacket. In full red cloth binding. Jacket is white with black lettering, wrapped in a new archival mylar sleeve. Jacket shows moderate age toning and shelving wear, with scuffing to covers and along joints/edges, wrinkling at the head and tail, and chipping/closed tears along the top edge. Price unclipped: "$5.95". Boards are very lightly rubbed along the edges and at the fore corners. Slight bumping to bottom fore corner of rear board and head of spine. Text block is lightly age toned, with faint smudging/soiling to top edge. Pencil marginalia through page 19. Inscribed on half title page by Harriman to Neil Sheehan: "For Neil Sheehan / both my thanks for helping to light the trust in Vietnam and all my best wishes. / Averell Harriman / Jan 27, 1971". Also includes a laid-in Christmas card, signed flat by Harriman in green ink ("Averell Harriman"). Shelved in Case 1 1/2.

1412861

Shelved Dupont Bookstore

Price: $2,000

NOTES

W. Averell Harriman was a prominent American diplomat and politician who, among other roles throughout his career, served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. A central figure in shaping Cold War foreign policy, Harriman was was deeply involved in the Vietnam War during the Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administration. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Bright Shining Lie, Neil Sheehan described the role his reporting played in informing Harriman's policy advice in Washington: “We did not realize that our dispatches had been arming Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman in their attempt to persuade Kennedy to authorize the overthrow of Diem and his family.” The inscription in this copy, thanking Sheehan for his time in Vietnam, points to this connection between the two men and their work.

Second Story Books is honored to offer this item from the personal collection of Neil and Susan Sheehan. Neil Sheehan (1936–2021) and Susan Sheehan (born 1937) were a distinguished husband-and-wife team whose careers helped define American literary journalism in the second half of the twentieth century. Neil Sheehan, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The New York Times, is best known for his role in bringing the Pentagon Papers to public attention and for his landmark book "A Bright Shining Lie", while Susan Sheehan built a parallel reputation as a leading voice at The New Yorker, crafting deeply reported narrative nonfiction on subjects ranging from mental health to social institutions, earning her own Pulitzer Prize in 1983. Their longstanding ties to major publications, particularly The New Yorker, placed them at the center of an influential cultural and intellectual network, and the books from their library carry added provenance through this close connection to the magazine’s editorial and artistic community.