Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House, 1995.
Price: US$22.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Inscribed by author on half-title page. The binding is tight, corners sharp. Gilt lettering to cover and spine. Top edge shows minor wear. Head of back strip is partially unglued. Dust jacket shows very light scratching and rubbing, in a mylar cover.
Seller: Chaparral Books, Portland, OR, U.S.A.
Norman Mailer. Oswald's Tale. Random House, 1995.
Price: US$25.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: Signed by the Author on the half-title page. price- clipped jacket.
Seller: Brooklyn Rare Books, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A.
Norman Mailer. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (Signed). Random House, New York, 1995.
Price: US$30.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: A VG+ book in a NF dust jacket. First Edition (stated)/ First Printing (with full number ending in "2" which at the time accompanied with "First Edition: indicated a first printing). SIGNED and briefly/personally inscribed by Mailer directly on the first blank page. Book has a light dirt smudge at top page block (likely erasable) else clean, unmarked and square. Jacket has light shelf wear else fully intact, bright and clean with no markings or tears. A mostly solid copy over all.
Seller: A Boy Named Crow, Van Nuys, CA, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman [SIGNED]. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House, New York, 1995.
Price: US$35.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Hardcover with DJ, 791 pages plus additional sections for appendix, glossary of names, acknowledgments, notes and bibliography. Signed by the author, "To Sue Bleakie", on the mock title page. No date on title page, copyright 1995. Stated First Trade Edition. Black DJ with black and white cutout photograph illustration on cover, photo of author on back cover; in very good condition, no marks or tears. DJ in protective plastic sleeve, small white sticker with typed word "signed" on plastic cover at base of spine. Black quarter cloth with gold lettering on spine, black paper covered boards. Light foxing on end pages and page edges. Book is overall in very good condition, pages are clean and unmarked, binding is tight and strong. Extra shipping will be required for international and priority shipping because of the size and weight of this book.
Seller: Riverby Books, Fredericksburg, VA, U.S.A.
Norman Mailer. Oswald's Tale. Random House, New York, 1995.
Price: US$36.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: Random House, New York, 1995. A near fine, signed, collectible copy of this novel by this National Book Award nominated and Pulitzer award winning author. First Edition, First Printing, as designated by First Edition printed on and (as per Random House identification procedures from that era) the number line beginning with 2 on copyright page. A near fine, signed hardcover copy, black covered boards, black cloth covered spine with gold lettering. Book is square and solid, spine is tight. Wear on bottom board edges from typical shelving, corners bumped. Pencil erasure marks on front free endpaper. Not ex-library, no previous owner markings, book plates, or remainder marks. Author signature only on half title page in black ink. Bright, unclipped dust jacket ($30.00 price intact) encased in protective dust jacket cover.Shipped in well-padded box.
Seller: Brothers' Fine and Collectible Books, IOBA, Humble, TX, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House 1995-04-25, US, 1995.
Price: US$38.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 791 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page.ftc Record # 465721
Seller: Monroe Street Books, Middlebury, VT, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale An American Mystery. Random House, New York, 1995.
Price: US$50.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: 791p + appendix/notes, octavo. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. Signed by Mailer on title page.
Seller: Old New York Book Shop, ABAA, Atlanta, GA, U.S.A.
Norman Mailer. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House, 1995.
Price: US$50.00 + shipping
Condition: As New
Description: Like new with DJ. Inscribed by Norman Mailer on half title page. 791 pp with appendix and bibliography. Mailer used only secondary interviews and sources to write his massive Oswald book. He did go to Russia to interview friends of Oswald's in Minsk. The first Oswald author that I am aware of. Mailer was something else. An establishment patsy in a convoluted way.
Seller: Sawgrass Books & Music, Decatur, GA, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House, 1995.
Price: US$50.00 + shipping
Description: 791, xxxvii pages. A biography of Lee Harvey Oswald. First trade edition (first printing). Spine a bit pushed at the top thus a near fine copy in a fine dust jacket. Inscribed by the author on the title page: 'For John / Cheers / Norman Mailer.'.
Seller: Eureka Books, Eureka, CA, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House, New York, 1995.
Price: US$108.00 + shipping
Description: Presentation signed by the author on the half title page. Bound in publisher's original quarter black cloth and black boards with the front cover and spine stamped in gilt.
Seller: James & Mary Laurie, Booksellers A.B.A.A, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House, U.S.A., 1995.
Price: US$113.85 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: Fine Book & Near Fine Jacket, clipped, Signed 1st print in protective cover
Seller: Dallas Surplus Stacks, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale : An American Mystery. Random House, Incorporated, 1995.
Price: US$120.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: Signed by Norman Mailer on the half title page. No highlighting, underlining, margin notes, or former owner's name.
Seller: J. C. Burris, Bookseller, Plantation, FL, U.S.A.
Price: US$166.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: 1ST EDITION/1ST PRINTING STATED hardcover book NEAR FINE/dustjacket NEAR FINE brodart covered, SIGNED by author NORMAN MAILER
Seller: ODDS & ENDS BOOKS, Sherwood Forest, CA, U.S.A.
Norman Mailer. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House, 1995.
Price: US$175.00 + shipping
Condition: As New
Description: With full and correct number string on the copyright page. Signed "Norman Mailer" on title page in black ink. Signed in person, at the Free Library of Philadelphia "Great Conversations" event, signing and lecture.
Seller: Harry Freedman Books, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. New York: Random House, 1995.
Price: US$250.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: Octavo, black boards and cloth lettered in gilt; unclipped pictorial dust jacket. First edition, first printing. A presentation copy, inscribed to Suzanne Pleshette and Tom Gallagher: "To Suzanne and Tom, cordially, Norman Mailer," on the front endpaper. The noted actress Pleshette, who starred as Emily Hartley on "The Bob Newhart Show," married Texas oilman Gallagher in 1968. A gorgeous copy with a distinguished provenance.
Seller: North Star Rare Books & Manuscripts, Sheffield, MA, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. OSWALD'S TALE: An American Mystery. Random House, New York, New York, U.S.A., 1995.
Price: US$350.00 + shipping
Condition: New
Description: Signed by famed literary lion (and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize) Norman Mailer on title page in black fountain ink. "MARVELOUS . . . BREATHTAKING." --The New York Times Book Review "MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination through the flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notably by Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. But neither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literary imagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . . Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy's death but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one that remains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lack of resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-life than any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . Vintage Mailer." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us our clearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages you are utterly absorbed." --Detroit Free Press "MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . . EXTREMELY LUCID . . . Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . [He] has found a way to make the dry bones of KGB tapes and his own interviews stand up and perform. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection." --Robert Stone Mint, new, unread, first edition , first printing, in new, mylar-protected dust cover.Very scarce signed title, especially in this condition. *Packed carefully and shipped in a box to insure arrival in pristine condition. {Not remainder-marked or price-clipped} L166
Seller: Joe Staats, Bookseller, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale; An American Mystery. Random House, New York, 1995.
Price: US$350.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: [16], 791, [1], xxxvii, [3] pages. Appendix. Glossary of Names. Notes. Bibliography. Signed by the author on the half-title page. Minor edge and DJ soiling. Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 - November 10, 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and liberal political activist. His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early and wide renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction as well as the National Book Award. His best-known work is widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In over six decades of work, Mailer had eleven best-selling books in each of the seven decades after World War II-more than any other post-war American writer. In 1955, Mailer and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper from Greenwich Village. Mailer wrote 12 novels over a 59-year span. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery is a 1995 non-fiction book by Norman Mailer. It amounts to a detailed biography of Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963), the assassin of US President John F. Kennedy. The book includes an exhaustive examination of Oswald's movements over the years, and particularly in the months, leading up to Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, and Oswald's own death two days later. The Oswald that Mailer depicts is a single-minded and vain individual convinced of his own destiny and importance who suffers a series of defeats, and who killed the President in a desperate search for achievement. When Oswald returns to Dallas in 1963 with his wife and daughter, he still has dreams, and is still frustrated and unhappy. His April 1963 assassination attempt on General Edwin Walker, a John Birch Society supporter, shows him acting out his belief that he is an instrument of history in the months leading up to November 22, 1963.
Seller: Ground Zero Books, Ltd., Silver Spring, MD, U.S.A.
Norman Mailer [Joan Didion]. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House, 1995.
Price: US$750.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: An association copy, not signed but from the library of Joan Didion, renown author of such works as The Year of Magical Thinking, Play It as It Lays, The White Album, and Slouching Toward Bethlehem. A bookplate affirming this provenance is on the front free endpaper. Mailer and Didion are both considered key progenitors of "New Journalism" or creative nonfiction, and Mailer and Didion are further linked by the often political emphasis of their writing. A near fine book with a touch of soiling to quarter cloth of the lower boards and a stray blue streak on the lower portion of outer text block face. In a near fine jacket with rubbing an offsetting to rear flap, which was used at one point as a bookmark. // Wood (+) River (=) Books specializes in ecology, natural history, nature writing, the environment, and environmental literature, with a special passion for association copies and notable inscriptions. We also have a distinct interest in contemporary essay and invite you to explore our other Joan Didion offerings.
Seller: Rural Hours (formerly Wood River Books), La Grande, OR, U.S.A.