A Journal of the McKinley Years.
Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1950. Hardcover. Small 4to. Green cloth with gilt lettering, pictorial price-clipped dust jacket. xxiv, 458pp. Frontispiece, illustrations. Near fine/good plus. Jacket is quite edgeworn and chipped, with discreet archivally-closed (on verso) edge tears, thus overall decent. Item #51912
Tight and attractive first edition of Dawes' last book, boldly inscribed and signed by him in blue ballpoint on Christmas Eve on front flyleaf: "For my friend James J. Nance / from / Charles G Dawes / Dec 24th 1950." Dawes died just four months after signing this (April 23, 1951) and signed copies are rarely seen. Dawes (1865-1951) was an astonishing polymath who went from Comptroller of the Currency under McKinley (1989-1901) to first director of the Bureau of the Budget under Harding (1921-22) to Vice President of the U.S. under Coolidge (1925-29) to U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom under Hoover (1929-31), filling in the gaps as a high-level banker, general, composer and musician-- and, oh yes, picking up the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for creating the Dawes Plan for World War One reparations. Nance, 1900-84, was a high-level business executive and industrialist who wore many hats, among them: vice president of Zenith Radio Corporation, CEO of the Studebaker-Packard Motor Car Company, vice president of Ford's Mercury Edsel Lincoln Division, and president and CEO of Central National Bank of Cleveland.
Price: $350.00