Description

“OUR MISSION, COMRADES, IS TO AVOID DETECTION?”: FIRST EDITION OF THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, SIGNED BY CLANCY IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION

CLANCY, Tom. The Hunt for Red October. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, (1984). Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of Clancy’s first novel, signed and dated “10/4/84” by him on the half title.

Insurance agent Clancy’s first novel and the first fiction published by the Naval Institute Press, The Hunt for Red October became a surprise best-seller and became one of President Reagan’s favorite books; he called it “the perfect yarn.” Clancy based his book on interviews with intelligence officers and extensive research in publicly available sources; however, at a White House lunch in 1985, then-Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr., told the author, “If you were a naval officer, I would have you court-martialed because of all the classified information in your book” (New York Times). “Breathlessly exciting” (The Washington Post). First edition, published by the Naval Institute Press and printed in Annapolis, with neither statement of edition nor series of numbers on copyright page, no price on dust jacket and six blurbs on rear panel. Book with crease to front free endpaper, dust jacket fine.