The Plot Against America.

ROTH, Philip [William Safire].

Item Number: 127626

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.

First edition, early printing of Roth’s award-winning novel. Octavo, original boards. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “For William Safire – With all my best wishes – Philip Roth Jan 2005.” The recipient, William Safire, was an important American author, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He joined Nixon’s campaign in the 1960 Presidential race, and again in 1968. Following Nixon’s 1968 victory, Safire served as a presidential speechwriter for both Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. He was a frequent guest on Meet The Press, describing himself as the voice of “libertarian conservatives” and authored several political columns, most notably his weekly column “On Language” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until the month of his death in 2009. He authored two books on grammar and linguistics: The New Language of Politics (1968) and what Zimmer called Safire’s “magnum opus,” Safire’s Political Dictionary. Safire later served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1995 to 2004 and in 2006 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Milton Glaser. With a printed copy of Safire’s review of the book tipped in. An exceptional example.

In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ Prize for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme. “An epic built–painstakingly, passionately, nearly perfectly–of the small structures of the particular. . . . Roth is at the peak of his powers, and he may have more for us yet" (The Times).