Bitter Harvest : The Great Betrayal and the Dreadful Aftermath (Signed and Inscribed)

London, UK: Blake, 2001. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. First edition, first printing. 434pp plus two sections of black and white plate illustrations. Signed and inscribed by Ian Douglas Smith, former Prime Minister of Rhodesia on the title page: To Michael, my respects and best wishes, I Douglas Smith. Black cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine (boards clean, sharp, square and robust). Internally neat, clean, bright and tight, barring a previous owner's name - Michael Shrimpton - on the front free endpaper. In its original, very good, dust jacket (a little bumped on edges). Dust jacket now protected in an archival quality mylar wrapper, fitted without the use of tapes or adhesives. In April 2000, Zimbabwean farmer David Stevens was abducted and driven deep into the bush, 75 miles from Harare. There he was shot, dead. This act of brutality was the culmination of the cynical machinactions of Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZanuPF party. To Ian Smith, it was the culminatino fo all evils of which he had forewarned. In this revealing and important historical document, SMith charts the rise and fall of a once-great nation and tells the remarkable story of the signing of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), bringing the story up to date by detailing the exercise of power by Mugabe to create a virtual dictatorship in Zimbabwe.