JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I was cataloging some WWI material today and came across this book–again.  I thought I had placed it in with the early mimeograph/reprographic materials but then there it was, with the WWI pamphlets.  But then it struck me that I had seen it in that mimeo collection–and so I decided to check out my associative memory and, oh weird joy of weirdness, there was another copy of the work. Generally this would be rather uncommon with my stock since so much of it is really fairly obscure and scarce, but this one is exceptionally odd because it seems already to be near-unique.  

The book is History of the Second Division (Regular) AEF. Text. -AND- History of the Second Division (Regular) AEF, Notes., and reads “Copyright 1936, The Second Division Historical Committee, Major General Preston Brown, Chairman”.  The work stands in two tall (13.5×8″)  volumes, a chunky 282+156pp; each page contains about 550 words, giving the work a length of about 250,000 words.   

This is evidently an earlier version of a work that would be popularly published in 1937 as the The Second Division, American Expeditionary Force in France, 1917-1919, by J.W. Wright (text) and Oliver L. Spaulding (Notes), as the work above and this share the same copyright number. The authors are not identified in this work, and for its year of publication there are no copies located in the OCLC/Worldcat.