Landmark Books in All Fields
ItemID: #109490
Cost: $6,000.00

To Seek a Newer World

Robert F. Kennedy

INSCRIBED BY RFK TO DAVID ORMSBY-GORE, KENNEDY FAMILY INTIMATE AND AMBASSADOR FROM GREAT BRITAIN

KENNEDY, Robert F. To Seek a Newer World. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967. Octavo, original navy cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $6000.

First edition of Robert Kennedy’s collection of essays outlining his vision for America’s future, published less than seven months before his assassination, inscribed by him on the half title to David Ormsby-Gore, a long-standing Kennedy family intimate friend and Ambassador to the United States from Great Britain during the Kennedy administration: "For David with the highest regard of his friend Bob Kennedy."

"The sixties were a turbulent decade, and Robert Kennedy responded to that turbulence with unusual directness and sensitivity. He had evolved from the rigid prosecutor of a decade earlier into a popular leader who combined political realism with social idealism and passion with humor" (Foner & Garraty, 614), all qualities informing this collection of essays, which grew out of Kennedy's travels and experiences as Attorney General and as a Senator, and which address such topics as the youth movements, race relations in America, nuclear arms and Vietnam. This copy is inscribed to David Ormsby-Gore, Lord Harlech and Ambassador from Great Britain to the United States during the Kennedy administration. Ormsby-Gore was a Kennedy family intimate and personal friend of JFK of long standing, beginning when Kennedy's father was Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Ormsby-Gore's appointment as Ambassador to the United States from Great Britain was done at Kennedy's request; Ormsby-Gore and his wife Sissie were some of John and Jackie's closest friends and confidants during the White House years, both being constant visitors at the White House, more regarded as friends than anything else. He was also central to much of the international politics of the Kennedy Era, and played a vital role in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis. The relationship between Kennedy and Ormsby-Gore was exceptionally close; according to a biographer of Jacqueline Kennedy, after JFK's assassination Jackie felt that "of all the people who had been close to Jack, David had been, next to Bobby and herself, the one who had been 'the most wounded' by his death" (Leaming, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, 154).

Dust jacket with wear to spine ends, mild creasing. A near-fine copy with important provenance.

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