THE THOUGHT-READING MACHINE [Signed by Author] Hardcover - 1942

New York: Harper and Bros.. Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket. 1942. First American Edition. Hardcover. 217 pages; Contents clean and secure in original brown cloth binding in dustjacket with some minor chipping at spine ends and corners. Bleiler -1978, p. 136. Inscribed and Signed by the author in the halftitle -- " To Garnett / A. Maurois" Inscribed to Garnett Gardiner Stackelberg. Garnett Stackelberg, a chronicler of international society for nearly 60 years and one of Washington’s last grande dames was born Garnett Butler in Nebraska -- smart and beautiful, but with limited financial resources. During the Depression, she had to drop out of Oregon State College, but in the summer of 1932, she visited a friend in Shanghai and secured a position with the U.S. Consulate. While in Shanghai, she married Dr. William Gardiner, a prominent Canadian physician. Garnett's close friend Helen Vanderbilt Frye said of Dr. Gardiner: "the man was rich as sin, their home filled with ivory, jade and pearls". The couple was an integral part of the expatriate colony’s luxurious lifestyle until December 1941, when Japanese troops invaded Shanghai and took control of their apartment building in the city’s European enclave. Garnett said: "life was wonderful, we had a 14-room penthouse and a houseboat. Everybody had a car and a chauffeur..... to say nothing of the good and faithful houseboys, cooks, and Amahs. If you were at one of the clubs, swimming or playing cards, you'd call the cook and say, 'we're going to be 12 for dinner' and then you'd go home at 8 p.m., and there would be dinner! Life was so easy and fascinating". For seven months, they were under virtual house arrest. In mid-1942, Dr. Gardiner was assigned to care for ailing American journalist J.B. Powell, who was to be released from a Japanese prison as part of a civilian exchange with Japanese prisoners held by the United States. The Gardiners accompanied Mr. Powell on a ship bound for Mozambique, where the exchange took place. The couple transferred to a Swedish liner that reached New York after two months. They divorced after the war. Mrs. Gardiner traveled nationwide speaking about China and her experiences with the Japanese occupiers. An old promotional poster described her as “a charming, natural, forceful feminine speaker.” She also began writing a syndicated column that appeared in many U.S. newspapers. Relocating in Washington, Garnett met Baron Constantine “Steno” Stackelberg at a British Embassy reception. Mr. Stackelberg was a descendant of a family of Teutonic Knights who once had possessed estates in Estonia when that country was part of the Russian empire. Stackelberg worked at the Commerce Department while Garnett Stackelberg chronicled the parties and public activities of Washington’s society hostesses, lawmakers and diplomats. She was accredited to the White House for many decades and covered state dinners from the Kennedy through the second Bush administrations, mingling with kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers and giving special attention to the elegance of the setting and the guests’ attire. She wrote about the city’s social life for the Times Herald, the Washington Star, the Miami Herald, the Oakland Tribune, the Baltimore News American, Dossier, Washington Life, and the Palm Beach Daily News. She frequently wrote about the diplomatic world and regularly led delegations of ambassadors to Palm Beach to attend charity balls and other events. [Washington Times Obituary, 2005] A French literature professor arrives as a guest lecturer at a fictional American university and quickly becomes friends with a physics professor who has invented a "psychograph" -- the titular thought-reading machine. When the machine goes on the public market, "life becomes more complicated and considerably funnier" (Newsweek, New York, May 30, 1938). .