Revolt: The Story of the Irgun.

BEGIN, Menachem .

Item Number: 60065

New York: Henry Schuman, 1951.

First edition of Begin’s classic first book. Octavo, original cloth. Inscribed by the author on the title page, “To Mrs. Marens- this book is dedicated with my warmest wishes. M Begin San Francisco Dec. 1970.” Very in a very good dust jacket with some unnecessary tape repair. Translated from the Hebrew by Shmuel Katz. Edited by Ivan M. Greenberg. Preface by Joseph B. Schechtman. Uncommon in the original dust jacket and signed.

Revolt traces the development of the Irgun from its early days in the 1930s, through its years of violent struggle in the Palestine Mandate against both British rule (the "revolt" of the title) and Arab opposition, to the outbreak of the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. It is also part autobiographical, tracing Begin's own political development. The political scientist John Bowyer Bell who studied both the Irgun and the Irish Republican Army recalled that many of the IRA men whom he interviewed in the 1960s had read The Revolt and admired it as a manual of guerrilla warfare. It was also studied by African National Congress Nelson Mandela after he went underground in 1960, and credited it as being among the books he used a guide in planning the ANC's guerrilla campaign against the apartheid government of South Africa.