Between the Covers

Hardcover. Small black three-ring binder. Quarto. Binding is very good with wear to the edges and the bottom front joints starting. Contents very good with reading wear at the ring holes and some modest toning and offsetting. Contains roughly 350 densely-typed pages, both recto and verso, with occasional ephemera mounted throughout. More than 150,000 words, and appears complete. An extraordinary vernacular history of the outbreak of World War II. Though the title page suggests a diary covering only a brief period, the project seems to have quickly outgrown Bacon's original intentions. From the German invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939) through the bombing of Pearl Harbor, for more than two years Bacon records the latest news and developments from Europe and elsewhere.
Summarizing (and sometimes transcribing) both radio reports and newspaper headlines, Bacon writes clearly and with a strong narrative, often deftly juggling multiple developments throughout the world. Bacon’s father appears to have been a prominent Quaker from the Philadelphia area, which may account for his obsession with the war. He attended Haverford College from 1920-23. Curiously, the Haverford yearbook contains this remembrance of Bacon: "[B]y no means the least marvelous of his accomplishments is his uncanny ability to sit down at a typewriter and tear off unlimited numbers of theses at the terrific rate of nearly a thousand words per hour."

An intriguing day-to-day account of the war by a Philadelphia pacifist.

Item #397729