INSURGENT MEXICO

New York & London: D. Appleton and Company, 1914. First Edition. Hardcover. Ink name and date on front pastedown; spine tips beginning to fray. Very Good in a Good example of the extremely scarce dustwrapper worn at the extremities with a few chips and nicks. The front panel is missing a 1-1/2" x 1/2" piece, and the crown of the spine and top of the rear panel have small losses; the publisher's price on the spine is covered by a sticker, browned and partly removed, with a few internal tape repairs. The pictorial front panel and printed back panel are reasonably bright. Gilt-decorated and lettered orange-red cloth in pictorial dustwrapper. From the dustwrapper: "A true story of the real Mexico. By a series of vivid pictures of the Mexican peons in war and peace, the author has tried to illuminate the character of the simple, generous, savage race that has awakened at last from its four hundred years' sleep and is attempting, through the revolution, to achieve for itself a place among the nations of the world." Reed had gone to Mexico in 1914 to cover Pancho Villa and the revolution for METROPOLITAN magazine. “His interviews and stories of the revolution (INSURGENT MEXICO) were so successful that Walter Lippmann was moved to remark that ‘with Jack Reed reporting begins’” (Kunitz & Haycraft, TWENTIETH CENTURY AUTHORS). “[Reed’s] best work is to be found in the non-fictional books where he brought reporting almost to an art form, in INSURGENT MEXICO, THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE, and the classic TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD” (Rideout, THE RADICAL NOVEL IN THE UNITED STATES, page 126), Reed's firsthand account of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. Perhaps the best known left-wing American journalist of the twentieth century; Reed was portrayed by Warren Beatty in the film REDS, nominated for twelve Academy Awards and winner of three, which centered on Reed's life, notably his romance with Louise Bryant, played by Diane Keaton, and his early death at 33 in Moscow. With a description and 1986 receipt from booksellers Waiting for Godot noting that "this is the first time we have seen the book in a dust jacket." (Inventory #: 021982)