The Caine Mutiny
by Wouk, Herman
- Used
- Fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Fine/Very Good
- Seller
-
Templeton, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Doubleday, 1951. Book. Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. Doubleday, 1951. Hardcover. Book Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition, First Printing with "First Edition" printed on the copyright page. An attractive First Printing dustjacket with "The City Boy" first issue point printed on the back panel. This original dustjacket has the $3.95 price present on the front flap with wrinkles (now smoothed out) along top and bottom of front, back cover and spine; fold on back cover, two tiny chips at bottom and top front with 3" closed tear on front, wear to the edges. The book is in fine condition with slight shelf wear to bottom edges. Front paste down map has minor remnants of a previous owner book plate.The binding is tight with no cocking or leans. The text block and pages are tight and square..
Synopsis
For the Broadway play, see The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. The Caine Mutiny is a 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and deals with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships. The mutiny of the title is legalistic, not violent, and takes place during a historic typhoon in December 1944.
Reviews
On Oct 5 2010, Pby5dumbo said:
Forget about the movie, except that as far as it goes, the characterizations, casting and motivations of players are fairly faithful to the story. In print, The Caine Mutiny is the story of the coming of age of Willie Keith, who barely figures in the movie at all. The Pulitzer-winning novel of 1952 is nothing less than the best fiction ever about the U.S. Navy and the best novel of World War II. By any reckoning, it's Herman Wouk's best work.Life aboard the Caine is mostly tedious and uncomfortable, as the little destroyer-minesweeper escorts convoys through hot expanses of ocean to featureless, desolate destinations. The citizen-sailors of the wardroom exhibit commendable conscience and care for the crew as they develop into seasoned watchstanders. The coffee is hot and strong, the food entirely unremarkable. They receive and decode Navy message traffic, written in realistic Navy telegraphese. (I had to look up the word cognizant when I first read this book, in the eighth grade.) Willie Keith's abiding memory of this time is being awakened routinely in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, the Caine's operational record builds a case for the captain's incompetence and unfitness to command. The typhoon that precipitates the actual mutiny is hisotrical, and the Navy did lose ships in it. The reader will come out the far end of the episode with no doubt that Steve Maryk saved the ship and the captain was not in control of himself, much less the ship, at the peak of the storm.Maryk, a C student from a state college and career fisherman, grapples with the arcane concepts of psychology without the professional tools to evaluate them, egged on by the novelist Tom Keefer, who turns out to be the real villain of this story. Be sure to take note of Keefer's performance as commander of the Caine. Meanwhile, Willie's scorching romance with Mae Wynn, whom any reader can see is intended to be his mate for life, works its way through stormy waters, mostly of Willie's making. It's been adequate to hold the attention of women readers for three generations, in the otherwise entirely masculine contexts of this novel.Wouk's portrayal of the Navy and the Caine are dead on target. His characters are fully developed; it would be impossible for a reader not to care for them. The narrative workmanship in characterization, setting and action is economic, precise, and well paced. This is not just a Navy story, it is a great contribution to the entire body of American literature. I re-read it often.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Winding Road Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 000039
- Title
- The Caine Mutiny
- Author
- Wouk, Herman
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Publisher
- Doubleday
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1951
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Keywords
- Fiction
Terms of Sale
Winding Road Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Winding Road Books
Biblio member since 2019
Templeton, California
About Winding Road Books
Specialize in Psychology, First Editions, Speculative Fiction
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Text Block
- Most simply the inside pages of a book. More precisely, the block of paper formed by the cut and stacked pages of a book....
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Plate
- Full page illustration or photograph. Plates are printed separately from the text of the book, and bound in at production. I.e.,...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Copyright page
- The page in a book that describes the lineage of that book, typically including the book's author, publisher, date of...
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...