Peleliu Landing.
El Paso: Carl Hertzog, 1945. 4to. [iv], 34 pp. 10 full-page plates after drawings by Lea. Marine Corps green herringbone cloth, pictorial endpapers from a photograph by Lea.
Complete with the eight-page Life Magazine color insert laid-in (in envelope).
De Luxe Edition, no. 90 of 500 copies. SIGNED by Lea.
Inscribed (not by Lea) to the Norwegian book dealer Tryggve Møller: “For Tryggve Møller – on the occasion of his first visit to Texas. Here is a book written by a Texan, presented by a Texan, and here presented to you in Texas. May you soon return. Dallas Texas June 17th 1948”.
A fine copy!
As a war correspondent for Life magazine, Lea was present for the first 32 hours of the Marine’s assault on Peleliu Island. His text and sketches brilliantly capture the terror and shock experienced by the Marines in those first few critical hours. Hertzog’s choice of type face, paper and binding is integral to Lea‘s narrative and sketches and one finds it difficult to imagine that one could stand without the other. Certainly this work must be counted as one of Hertzog’s greatest achievements, who later commented about the book: “The most daring, exciting, and innovative volume produced in Texas to that time.» Katherine Simmons said of this masterpiece: ‘All the agony and shock of the Marine landing on Peleliu Island are in Lea‘s narrative. The black and white of the sketches he drew ‘before my hand steadied’ are stark and poignant beyond the paintings he later made from them for Life magazine….’