Books

First Printing, 10,000 copies. Octavo (21.5cm); turquoise cloth, with titles stamped in gilt, black, and metallic red on spine, and author's facsimile signature stamped in gilt on front cover; dustjacket; [xiv],186,[8]pp. With a bookplate signed by the author tipped onto the preliminary blank. Spine ends gently nudged, hint of fading along the lower board edges, else a clean, Near Fine copy. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $5.95), sunned at spine and panels, showing modest shelfwear, a few tiny tears, and a very faint spot of soil to upper right corner of front panel; Very Good+. Vonnegut's most enduring work of fiction, a re-telling of his experiences during the bombing of Dresden, as well as a story of time travel. "Billy Pilgrim survives the Dresden firestorm as a POW, but subsequently becomes unstuck in time after being kidnapped by Trafalmadorians and caged with a blue movie starlet. Thus he learns that everything is fixed and unalterable, and that one simply has to make the best of the few good times one has" (Barron, Anatomy of Wonder4-578). Pieratt, Huffman & Klinkowitz AH1. 82370.

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1969.