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Beals, Carleton and Walker Evans. The Crime of Cuba. J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia/London, 1933.

Price: US$75.00 + shipping

Description: Black cloth over boards with silver lettering; 441 pp.; 65 unnumbered pages; 31 illustrations. Publisher description: Draws on the account of World War II French political novelist and court interpreter Louis Guilloux, who witnessed general Patton's example-setting executions of seventy American troops, many of whom the interpreter believed were condemned because of their race. No story of World War II is more triumphant than the liberation of France, made famous in countless photos of Parisians waving American flags and kissing GIs, as columns of troops paraded down the Champs Elysees. Yet liberation is a messy, complex affair, in which cultural understanding can be as elusive as the search for justice by both the liberators and the liberated. Occupying powers import their own injustices, and often even magnify them, away from the prying eyes of home. One of the least-known stories of the American liberation of France, from 1944 to 1946, is also one of the ugliest and least understood chapters in the history of Jim Crow. The first man to grapple with this failure of justice was an eyewitness: the interpreter Louis Guilloux. Now, in The Interpreter, prize-winning author Alice Kaplan combines extraordinary research and brilliant writing to recover the story both as Guilloux first saw it, and as it still haunts us today. When the Americans helped to free Brittany in the summer of 1944, they were determined to treat the French differently than had the Nazi occupiers of the previous four years. Crimes committed against the locals were not to be tolerated. General Patton issued an order that any accused criminals would be tried by court-martial and that severe sentences, including the death penalty, would be imposed for the crime of rape. Mostly represented among service troops, African Americans made up a small fraction of the Army. Yet they were tried for the majority of capital cases, and they were found guilty with devastating frequency: 55 of 70 men executed by the Army in Europe were African American -- or 79 percent, in an Army that was only 8.5 percent black. Alice Kaplan's towering achievement in The Interpreter is to recall this outrage through a single, very human story. Louis Guilloux was one of France's most prominent novelists even before he was asked to act as an interpreter at a few courts-martial. Through his eyes, Kaplan narrates two mirror-image trials and introduces us to the men and women in the courtrooms. James Hendricks fired a shot through a door, after many drinks, and killed a man. George Whittington shot and killed a man in an open courtyard, after an argument and many drinks. Hendricks was black. Whittington was white. Both were court-martialed by the Army VIII Corps and tried in the same room, with some of the same officers participating. Yet the outcomes could not have been more different. Guilloux instinctively liked the Americans with whom he worked, but he could not get over seeing African Americans condemned to hang, Hendricks among them, while whites went free. He wrote about what he had observed in his diary, and years later in a novel. Other witnesses have survived to talk to Kaplan in person. In Kaplan's hands, the two crimes and trials are searing events. The lawyers, judges, and accused are all sympathetic, their actions understandable. Yet despite their best intentions, heartbreak and injustice result. In an epilogue, Kaplan introduces us to the family of James Hendricks, who were never informed of his fate, and who still hope that his remains will be transferred back home. James Hendricks rests, with 95 other men, in a U.S. military cemetery in France, filled with anonymous graves. -- WorldCat. Good (Ex-Library with bookplates and stickers; ifc and on ffep; boards are worn generally, overall; textblock edges are toned/scuffed/smudged/foxed; interior is very clean and clear; binding appears solid.)

Seller: Mullen Books, ABAA, Marietta, PA, U.S.A.

Carleton Beals. The Crime of Cuba. J.B. Lippincott, 1933.

Price: US$125.00 + shipping

Condition: Very Good

Description: With photographs by Walker Evans. 3rd printing. Covers have some shelfwear.

Seller: Moe's Books, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Carleton Beals; Walker Evans. The Crime of Cuba. J. B. Lippincott Company, 1933.

Price: US$150.00 + shipping

Condition: Very Good

Description: First edition. Very good or better. Clean and bright. Pencil signature, else unmarked. 31 aquatone illustrations from photographs by Walker Evans.

Seller: Open Boat Booksellers, Amherst, MA, U.S.A.

Beals, Carleton. The Crime of Cuba. J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1933.

Price: US$175.00 + shipping

Condition: Very Good

Description: No markings. Light general wear to covers. Photographs by Walker Evans.

Seller: Manchester By The Book, Manchester-By-the-Sea, MA, U.S.A.

Beals, Carleton. The Crime of Cuba. J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1933.

Price: US$175.00 + shipping

Condition: Very Good

Description: index, 441p. plus 31 black and white photos by Walker Evans at the end. Original black cloth. 23 cm. A few light scratches in upper right corner of front cover. Ends of backstrip rubbed. No jacket.

Seller: McBlain Books, ABAA, Hamden, CT, U.S.A.

Beals, Carleton. The Crime of Cuba. J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1933.

Price: US$250.00 + shipping

Condition: Very Good

Description: index, 441p. plus 31 black and white photos by Walker Evans at the end. Original black cloth. 23 cm. Two raised diagonal creases marks visible near top of backstrip (which also has some modest spotting). Two gentle cover bumps. No jacket.

Seller: McBlain Books, ABAA, Hamden, CT, U.S.A.

Beals, Carleton, 31 Aquatone Illustrations From Photographs By Walker Evans. The Crime Of Cuba. J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1933.

Price: US$250.00 + shipping

Condition: Near Fine

Description: 441 Pp. + 31 Full Page Photographic Plates At End With Text On Facing Pages. Black Cloth Stamped In Silver. First Printing. Near Fine, All Silver Complete And Brilliant, No Marks.

Seller: Arroyo Seco Books, Pasadena, Member IOBA, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A.

Beals, Carleton. The Crime of Cuba. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1933.

Price: US$350.00 + shipping

Condition: Near Fine

Description: Original publishers boards with silver titles and design. Lacking the scarce dust jacket. 31 plates, 28 from photographs by Walker Evans.

Seller: J. Mercurio Books, Maps, & Prints IOBA, Garrison, NY, U.S.A.

Beals, Carleton (Walker Evans, photographs). The Crime of Cuba. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1933.

Price: US$425.00 + shipping

Condition: Very Good

Description: Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1933. (8.75 x 6 in, 22.5 x 15.3 cm). First edition, 3rd printing, curiously wearing a 2nd printing dust jacket (stated). 31 black and white "aquatone" (photogravure) photographs by Walker Evans made in May and June of 1933. Each plate numbered and titled on the opposing otherwise blank page. From Gilles Mora and John T. Hill's "Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye" (Abrams, 1993, p. 78) "The book, to be called 'The Crime of Cuba', was intended as a violent criticism of the North American capitalist interests that protected a regime of terror established on the island by the dictator Gerardo Machado. / Beals and Evans met only once. The only condition that the photographer insisted upon was the right to select the images to be published and their order of appearance. / Offered hospitality by Ernest Hemingway, Evans reacted with high enthusiasm to the experience of a totally new culture and visual environment. / The thirty-one photographs reproduced give only a limited view of the full reportage. With their human dimension, they counterbalance the strictly economic or historic character of the facts related by the author of the book, Carleton Beals. / In spite of his short stay in Cuba, the pictures contain the best of Walker Evans and constitute a seminal work." Original cloth covered boards with original printed and photographically illustrated dust jacket adhered to the covers and paste-down endpapers (topstain a bit dull, previous price and owner signature dated 1935 in ink on ffep. Internally clean and quite nice (beginning with the 8th photograph plate and through to the rear free endpaper the fore-edge of each page is lightly creased, effecting each full bleed image, but not so much as to distract the eye to a great degree. This issue increases to the last, that measuring 7mm in from the edge and 50mm in length). Original dust jacket compete and presentable (small .5cm circular loss to upper near fore-edge, a few short closed tears, minimal chipping at heel and crown, laminate loss and lifting in areas). Please note: the dust jacket is attached to the book covers and endpapers. [Reference: Roger Kingston, Walker Evans in Print: An Illustrated Bibliography, 1995, No. 5, p. 21.] Despite the lengthy list of faults, a handsome copy with the rather uncommon dust jacket.

Seller: William Gregory, Books & Photographs, Kenosha, WI, U.S.A.