Treasure Hunting

It's a little known fact that my secret dream career is being a rare book hunter (shut up, it's cool).


I'm one step closer. Heather and I went and looked at some used books this weekend, and I picked up a neat-looking copy of Norman Mailer's first novel The Naked and the Dead.

It's set in the Pacific theater of World War II and it's been called the best novel to come out of World War II, and possibly any war. I love All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, so we'll just have to see about that. But it looked old and had a cool dust jacket, so I picked it up.

Anyway, when we got home, I took a look at the publishing info, and it made me do a google search of "first editions". This came up...

Mailer, Norman THE NAKED AND THE DEAD Imprint: Ny / Toronto, Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1948 Edition: First Edition; Second Printing Binding: Hardcover Collectible or RARE; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 721 pages; He concentrated on writing and published his first book, The Naked and the Dead, in 1948 at the age of 25. As of 1981, 250,000 copies sold in hard-cover 3,000,000 copies sold in paperback. Translated into 16 different languages. A beautiful copy in DJ with very slight wear to corners, book clean throughout except for lightly penciled dealer's notation on FEP. Original black cloth, lettered in white. Dust-jacket designed by Karov with photograph of Mailer by G. Maillard Kesslere. 1st edition, 2nd printing (no seal on copyright page). Second issue dustwrapper with "$4.00" price on front flap, Fine in Fine dust jacket Stock number: 26720. $US 274.95

Looks a little something like this...


Woo-hoo! I checked out all the info on the publishing page, turns out it's a 1st edition, 2nd printing.

Not bad for $2.00...