Protect and Defend.

VALENTI, Jack. [William Safire].

$175.00

Item Number: 133043

New York: Doubleday, 1992.

First edition of this work by the award-winning author.  Octavo, original half cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the fly-leaf, “To Helen and Bill dear, dear loving friends. Read – enjoy! Jack Valenti.” The recipient, William Safire was an important American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter and a close friend of the then Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin. Safire joined Nixon’s campaign for the 1960 Presidential race, and again in 1968. After Nixon’s 1968 victory, Safire served as a speechwriter for him and Spiro Agnew. He authored several political columns in addition to his weekly column “On Language” in The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until the month of his death and 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 near fine dust jacket. Jacket illustration by Daniel J. Brown.

Drawing on more than thirty years in Washington's inner circle, former White House Special Assistant Jack Valenti has written a sizzling election-year thriller about the price of virulent ambition in the high-stakes world of Washington politics, where heroes are flawed and the game is played for keeps. "Valenti blows the dome off the Capitol - as only an insider can" (Kirk Douglas).