Inscribed to Stephen Jay Gould
Ancient Light: Our Changing View of the Universe
Publication: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. First Edition.
Notes: A brief survey of the history and science of cosmology, inscribed to the evolutionary paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.
170 pages.
SOURCE: This is from one of the big purchases I negotiated when I owned Eureka Books, in Eureka, California (I sold the store after I moved to Portland and it is still going strong under the ownership of a former employee). Stephen Jay Gould's Harvard office library was looking for a new home about ten years ago. The custodian of the books—some 10,000 volumes—asked two book dealers if they'd be interested and both of them said to talk to me. Negotiations went on for a year or more until one day, all of a sudden, they were on a tractor-trailer headed for Eureka. We cadged a forklift from a nearby auto mechanic and offloaded the pallets into the alleyway behind our warehouse space. Sorting Gould's books was a major undertaking, but going through unsorted books is probably my favorite part of bookselling and something I don't get to do much of anymore. This is one of the very last books from that collection that remained uncatalogued. Bookselling can be a very slow process.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing, with a numberline ending in 1). A near fine copy in a very good dust jacket that is bumped at the corners. This copy came from the Harvard office library of the National Book Award-winning science writer, Stephen Jay Gould, who was also one of the most influential theorists of evolution of his generation. It is inscribed, "To Steve, with warm wishes, Alan. August 1991." A posthumous bookplate marking the provenance is affixed to the front pastedown.
Item No: #364108
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