The Year of August: A Novel of Intrigue

New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Very Good in Very Good- dj. (c.1943). possible 1st. Hardcover. [good solid copy, top corners bumped, moderate soiling to top/bottom edges; jacket shows wear at edges/corners, considerable age-toning, 3/4" chip at top of front panel (not affecting text), splitting and minor paper loss at hinges]. Wartime novel about the attempt to foil a plot against the U.S. Government -- not by enemy saboteurs, but by home-grown capitalist reactionaries whose hatred of FDR and the New Deal is so extreme that it leads them to construct an elaborate plot to sabotage the next Presidental election -- no matter who wins! -- by claiming election fraud on the part of the winning party, the idea being that Congress would then delegate governmental powers to a commission of military and civilian leaders, who would then proceed to (a) win the war in short order; and (b) organize capitalism on an international scale. It's interesting to note the jacket blurb claim that the book contains episodes "that rank with the best Alfred Hitchcock has ever offered" -- an indication of how rapidly (since the director had at that point been in America for only a few years) the public came to associate his name with a certain type of "suspenseful" storytelling. (Or maybe it was just a shameless ploy, on the part of the publisher, to promote a movie sale -- which apparently this book never achieved.) .