The Manchurian Candidate.

CONDON, Richard.

Item Number: 137798

New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, 1959.

First edition of this brilliant, controversial novel, basis for the 1962 film adaptation, which has been called “the most chilling piece of cold war paranoia ever committed to film” (New York Times). Octavo, original half cloth. Association copy, with a full page inscription signed in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, “For Rosemary and Earl- with warm best wishes and appreciation- Dick Condon NY 3/25/59.” The recipient, was journalist Earl Wilson who ran the 6-days-a-week syndicated column, It Happened Last Night, which described the ins and outs of New York showbiz and night life, for which he daily stayed out until long after midnight with his wife Rosemary. He also wrote a Frank Sinatra biography that was published in 1976. Sinatra played the lead role of Captain Bennett Marco in the 1962 film version of the Manchurian Candidate. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Bernard Krigstein. A nice association, rare and desirable signed and inscribed.

First published in 1959, The Manchurian Candidate is Condon's riveting take on a little-known corner of the cold war, the almost sci-fi concept of American soldiers captured, brainwashed, and programmed by their Chinese captors to return to the states as unsuspected political assassins. Condon's expert manipulation of the book's multiple themes – from anticommunist hysteria to megalomaniacal motherhood – makes this one of the most dazzling, and enduring, products of an unforgettable time. The 1962 film bearing the same name was directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Janet Leigh; co-starring are Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, and James Gregory.