PRESENTATION COPY OF SKYWARD, INSCRIBED BY BYRD

BYRD, Richard E. Skyward. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1928. Octavo, original blue cloth, pictorial endpapers. $550.

Third printing, issued just one month after the first, with 23 double-sided photographic plates and photogravure frontispiece portrait of the aviator, warmly inscribed in the year of publication, "To William Tibben with best wishes, R.E. Byrd, N.Y. City, June 30, 1928."

Although he is perhaps remembered most for his later polar expeditions, Byrd was also a pioneer naval aviator. He explored 30,000 square miles of Greenland by air in 1925, made his much-celebrated and still controversial flight to the North Pole the next year and, in 1927, proved the viability of commercial travel by multiengine airplane with a transatlantic flight that ended in a dramatic, emergency off-shore landing. This book presents the future admiral's "firsthand remembrances of the early days of flying and the evolution of the airplane from flimsy constructions of cloth and wood to metal monsters of the skies. Byrd was there every step of the way, and no aviation collection is complete without his insights" (Library Journal). Published the same year as a signed limited edition of 500 copies. Without original dust jacket. Stated April, 1928 third impression, one month after the March, 1928 first.

Interior clean, tiny chip to lower corner of front free endpaper. Light rubbing to spine ends, cloth clean and fresh. A near-fine inscribed copy.