Condition Continued: No attachments of any kind. And the signed inscription is the only writing to be found anywhere.
You can see the dust jacket in the first few photos. It's in nice shape. I've always had it in a fitted protective cover. I don't see any tears. There is some minor spotting on the outer edge of the front. Otherwise, little to no wear. The flaps are in very nice shape. There are a few specks off the rear flap's top edge. The jacket is NOT price-clipped, not clipped at all.
Simon And Schuster, New York, 1963. Hardcover in Dust Jacket. Written by Margaret Halsey. Stated First Printing, First Edition. Signed and inscribed by the author on the front end paper. The inscription reads: 'For Bill Spencer-- with all good wishes-- Margaret Halsey Stern'.
Margaret Halsey's first book, With Malice Toward Some, won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. The New York Times described her as a 'witty writer with an acute social concern, [and] was compared her to Dorothy Parker and H. L. Mencken.'
'Several of her books were controversial or took on controversial subjects. She wrote two books inspired by her experiences volunteering as a hostess at the racially-integrated Stage Door Canteen in Times Square: a novel, Some of My Best Friends Are Soldiers, and Color Blind: A White Woman Looks at the Negro. The latter was banned in Georgia and favorably reviewed by Margaret Mead.The Pseudo-Ethic: A Speculation on American Politics and Morals was a defense of Alger Hiss.'
From the dust jacket: 'In this new book, the author proposes an adventurous reply to a basic question of our time: What happened to the American conscience? Commercialism and corruption, on which so much has been written, are only her starting point. She seeks to show how and why we experienced a decline in ethical standards. The turning point, as she sees it, came during the McCarthy period with the Hiss-Chambers case. It became all right to lie if you were fighting Communism, and soon it was all right to lie period. Thus emerged a 'pseudo-ethnic' which has gradually corroded our standards of behavior in many areas of life. Miss Halsey then sets forth a provocative and surprising thesis as to why the moral breakdown occurred when it did. She also suggests what can be done about it now. This is the heart of the book, and its most challenging aspect. Her ideas will not please all readers. But many will react with feeling 'this book says what I have been thinking'. And says it with elegance, humor and lack of pomposity for which her writing is so widely admired.'