"THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF": VERY RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF FDR'S INAUGURAL ADDRESSES, INSCRIBED AT CHRISTMAS 1943 BY PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TO HIS FRIEND HAROLD D. SMITH, DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF THE BUDGET

ROOSEVELT, Franklin D. Inaugural Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Washington, D.C.: (U.S. Government Printing Office),1943. Slim quarto, original half ivory vellum, black morocco spine label, marbled boards, top edge gilt, uncut; pp. 24, $28,500.

Limited edition, number 34 of only 100 copies, an exceedingly rare presentation/association copy, warmly inscribed by FDR to the director of the United States Bureau of the Budget, "For Harold D. Smith from his old friend Franklin D. Roosevelt. Christmas 1943." This is one of FDR's famed Christmas Books, privately printed at his own expense.

This rare presentation/association copy of Roosevelt's Inaugural Addresses features FDR's first three Inaugural Addresses. The volume begins with that of March 4, 1933, when Roosevelt spoke to a desperate nation in those now-immortal words—"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In a firm and reassuring voice, "Roosevelt spoke for 15 minutes—brief as inaugural addresses go, but the words were memorable, exceeding even Lincoln's magnificent second inaugural in their immediate impact… The effect of the speech was electrifying" (Smith, FDR, 302-3). As Russell Baker has noted, although "few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933…What so many observers failed to grasp before 1933 was that Roosevelt… was a great politician, and to be a great politician is no small thing" (New York Review of Books).

Inaugural Addresses further contains Roosevelt's Second Inaugural Address of 1937, when he became the first president to be inaugurated into office in January, and his Third Inaugural Address of 1941, when he spoke of even greater "perils never before encountered," and told the nation: "For this, we muster the spirit of America… We do not retreat." Limited edition of only 100 copies: one in a tradition of privately printed Christmas Books that Roosevelt published "at his own expense… the FDR Christmas Books are prime collector's items… nearly all of them were distributed exclusively to close friends of the family… difficult to obtain today" (Halter 193-4). Without original acetate and slipcase. Smith, a career civil servant, served as the director of the United States Bureau of the Budget (now the OMB) from 1939-1946, at a time when the federal government, and its spending, expanded enormously. Smith died shortly after the war at the age of 46; his widow donated his papers to the FDR Presidential Library.

Fine condition.