Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography.

SCHWEITZER, Albert.

$3,000.00

Item Number: 140103

New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1949.

First edition, early printing of the Nobel laureate’s classic autobiography. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by Schweitzer on the recto of a photograph to Miss Margaret Lial and additionally inscribed and signed by him in French on verso and additionally inscribed by conductor and pianist Antonia Brico. The Dutch born conductor and pianist, Antonia Brico had an enduring friendship with Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the organ-playing doctor who practiced medicine in the wilds of Africa. The two shared a love of Bach’s music, and she detoured home from an engagement in Europe to visit Schweitzer in Africa in 1950. This copy was inscribed by Brico to music shop owner in Monterey CA, Margaret Lial, who arranged concerts in a hall above her shop where the two met. In July 1938, Brico was the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic. With a postcard photograph depicting a nursing care scene in Lambarene, in western Gabon, where Schweitzer’s hospital was built to treat tropical diseases. With a photograph of Brico conducting the Denver Orchestra in 1950, inscribed and signed by her on the verso and a two-page photostat Christmas letter from Brico outlining her travels, including her lecture on Schweitzer and being his guest at his French headquarters in Gunsbach, inscribed to Margaret Lial and signed at end, with envelope; an unsigned photograph portrait of Schweitzer; and several newspaper clippings related to Brico laid in. Near fine in a very good price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket illustration by Ann King. With a postscript by Everett Skillings. Housed in a custom slipcase. Uncommon signed and inscribed.

Schweitzer is celebrated around the world as a European pioneer of medical service in Africa, a groundbreaking philosopher and musical scholar, and a catalyst of environmental and peace activism. Yet people most revere Schweitzer for his dedication to serving others and his profound and influential ethic of reverence for life. For Schweitzer, reverence for life was not a theory or a philosophy but a discovery―a recognition that the capacity to experience and act on a reverence for all life is a fundamental part of human nature, a characteristic that sets human beings apart from the rest of the natural world. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life", becoming the eighth Frenchman to be awarded that prize. From 1952 until his death he worked against nuclear tests and nuclear weapons with Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn and Bertrand Russell.