Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1966. Item #1490

8vo. 215 x 150 mm., [8 ½ x 6 inches]. xix + 361 pp., including Appendices: Bibliographical Notes and an Index. With one black and white illustration facing the title page. Publishers’ red cloth over boards with gilt lettering on the spine; and an illustration stamped in blind on the front cover; fore-edges deckled; top and bottom edges cut smooth; unclipped jacket. Book is Good: fading along the head of the spine; moderate soiling and shelf wear; occasional notes, underlining, and markings in black pen throughout the text block; otherwise in fairly good condition. Jacket is Good; chipped at the head, foot and edges of the spine as well as along the top edge of the front and back covers; moderately faded on the spine; minor soiling and shelf wear.

First Edition. Belden Paulson (b. 1927) is an American political scientist and activist who dedicated a large part of his early career to serving Italian refugees in Italy after the end of World War II. In 1961, after completing his assignment as a special consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Rome, Paulson went to live in an Irish Augustinian monastery near Genazzano which, at the time, was a communist stronghold within the country. It was there that he met Athos Ricci, a local ex-communist organizer. Together they wrote The Searchers, a social history of the town’s involvement with communism based on extensive interviews with its residents. It aims to explain the attraction to leftist ideologies among rural Italians by understanding their despair and disillusionment with the political and social systems available to them.

Price: $65.00