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Percy L. Cochran (Lower Twin Lakes, Rathdrum, Idaho; printed by College Press, College Place, Washington), Published 1963. Hardcover, 250 pp.; 24 cm; First Edition (stated "First Edition, Limited"); frontispiece photographs of the author and his grandchildren, cartoons by Madeline Wood and Ben Pedrick, photograph of the author's gate sign. INSCRIBED and signed by the author in blue ink on front free endpaper, dated 2/29/64.
In Good condition, no dust jacket. Yellow cloth-covered boards, blue lettering on front cover and spine; mild to moderate shelf and edge wear with some scuffing and soiling to covers and along hinges, a hint of color loss along hinges, and a bit of nicking to cloth at corner tips. Binding tight. Oil-like stain at lower margin of pp. 15-20, heaviest at pp. 18-19. Printer's crease at lower corner of pp. 131-132, folded during binding and extending beyond fore-edge. Printed leaf with "Appendix" and "Bibliography" mounted on rear pastedown. Pages otherwise unmarked. Self-published, cracker-barrel history of the United States from Eric the Red to John F. Kennedy by a retired Inland Northwest businessman, begun in the 1930s and finished, he writes in the preface, as he approached 74 and was "tired, lazy, and terribly messed up with arthritis." Fourteen chapters of wisecracking history give way to the author's own conservative commentary on Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy, ending with a critique of federal spending, taxes, immigration and civil rights in the language of the day. Pasted to the rear pastedown, a mock appendix explains that the Montana banker friend who was to write it is unavailable, being held in the state prison at Deer Lodge; the "bibliography" was misplaced; and a closing note, added as the book went to press, reports Kennedy's assassination. Includes a photograph of the author's Lower Twin Lakes ranch gate, signed "The New Frontier Phantom Utopia." Cochran's typescript and his correspondence with publishers are held by Washington State University's Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections. Contents: Preface; Setting the Stage; America Is Settled; Colonial Life; Revolutionary War and First Four Presidents; America Grows Up; America Moves West; Lincoln; Grant to McKinley; From T.R. to F.D.R.; F.D.R.; F.D.R. (Continued); Truman; Eisenhower; J.F.K.