Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.

MILGRAM, Stanley.

Item Number: 62022

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974.

First edition of the author’s classic work. Octavo, original cloth. The dedication copy, inscribed by Stanley Milgram to his Mother on the front free endpaper, “Dear Mom, This book would certainly not have been possible without you! With all my love to a wonderful mother, who is a wonderful grandmother too. Your son, Stanley 10 December 1973.” Milgram has drawn a picture of an angel below the inscription. Laid in is a note from Stanley Milgram’s brother attesting to this being in his mother’s collection. Fine in a fine dust jacket. An exceptional association. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

Between 1961 and 1964, Stanley Milgram carried out a series of experiments at Yale University in which human subjects were instructed to administer what they thought were progressively more painful electric shocks to another human being to determine to what extent people would obey orders even when they knew them to be painful and immoral. The experiments came under heavy criticism at the time but were ultimately vindicated by the scientific community. “Milgram’s experiments on obedience have made us more aware of the dangers of uncritically accepting authority,” wrote Peter Singer in the New York Times Book Review. Milgram's experiments on obedience to authority are considered among the most important psychological studies of the twentieth century. Basis for the motion picture The Experimenter, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Wynona Ryder.