Cool Hand Luke

C5b. Very Good. Hardcover. Leather. 8vo. Published by Easton Press, Norwalk, CT. 2009. 304 pgs. Signed by Donn Pearce on the limitation page. Bound in full leather with raised bands to the spine. Decorated gilt stamped boards and spine with all edges gilt. Silk moiree endsheets with silk bookmark sewn into the binding. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. Out of his experiences working on a chain gang, Donn Pearce created Cool Hand Luke, the larger-than-life war hero--Good Guy Number One--turned drunkard, vandal, and convict. A blasphemer and "pretty evil feller" who "could work the hardest, eat the mostest, and tell the biggest lies." Luke's outsized feats of gambling and gluttony--he bets Society Red, a college man from Boston, that he can eat fifty eggs--and his harrowing escapes and recaptures are recounted by Dragline, who followed Luke in his last, fatal escape attempt and who basks in Luke's reflected glory. To the convicts left behind on the chain gang, Luke has become the hope of freedom and defiance that they dare not act upon themselves. Luke's refusal to "git his mind right" and submit to the sadistic discipline of the Walking Boss becomes part of their mythology of survival. EB; 8vo 8" - 9" tall .