Easton Press leather edition of James A. Michener's "Chesapeake," a COLLECTOR'S editions, Illustrated by Alan Phillips, published in 1989. Bound in burgundy leather, the books have camel tan French moire silk end leaves, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in FINE condition. James A. Michener, who lived from 1907-1997, wrote more than 40 books.  Born in NYC, he was adopted by a Quaker family in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  Michener graduated from SWARTHMORE COLLEGE where he played basketball. He later traveled and studied at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In "Chesapeake," Michener depicts a number of characters within family groups beginning in 1583 with American Indian tribes warring and moves to English setters thorugh the 17th century, and continues until Voyage fourteen in 1978. Michener discusses land appropriation, tobacco farming, indentured servants, religious persecution, slavery, pirate attacks, the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Fugitive Slave Act, under the sponsorship of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, Emancipation, with the final major event being the Watergate scandal of 1972-1974. In the Introduction, Michener says as a young man of twenty studying at Swarthmore College a fellow classmate whose family owned a rugged sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay asked me to accompany him. In the Acknowledgements, Michener cites Lawrence McCormick and Richard Springs who took him on small-boat excursions to the headwaters of the river.  He cites Ron Vavra who introduced him to the Canada goose.  Michener cites Dickson Preston who shared with him his memorable discoveries relating to Frederick Douglass and to Dorothy Pittman who convened some of her black neighbors to talk with him. In Voyage Two, the reader is introduced to Captain James Smith, a short, choleric, opinionated little man with a beard and a fiery temper who assembled seven daring gentlemen in London.  Smith was twenty-six, difficult, vain, unbearably ambitious. Because of his arrogance and vile temper, Captain Smith fared poorly in Jamestown where he was jailed for attempted mutiny, captured by the Indians, and was near death in the hands of Powhatan. In the last chapter, Michener writes:  "Incessant waves which eleven thousand years ago had delivered detritus to this spot, causing an island to be born, had come back to retrieve their loan.  The soil they took would be moved to some other spot along the Chesapeake . . .until that predictable day when the great world-ocean would sweep in to reclaim the peninsula, where for a few centuries life had been so pleasant." 865 pages---RARE BOOKS.  I offer combined shipping.