Records of the Town of Hyde Park by ROOSEVELT Franklin D - 1928

1928. First Edition . Signed. ROOSEVELT, Franklin D. Records of the Town of Hyde Park Dutchess County. Edited by Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Dutchess County Historical Society. Collections of the Dutchess County Historical Society Volume III. Hyde Park, New York: 1928. Tall quarto, original brown cloth. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $4000.Signed limited first edition, number 35 of only 100 copies inscribed by FDR, of this very scarce 1928 history of Hyde Park also edited by him, the place where, as president, he dreamed of returning—“All that is in me,’ he would say, ‘goes back to the Hudson.’”""Franklin Roosevelt presided over our nation as no other chief executive of the 29th century."" Born in Hyde Park in 1882, FDR's family home, ""leaders of the Democratic Party in the Hudson River sent an emissary to Hyde Park to recruit him to run for a seat in the state house"" in 1910—marking the beginning of his political career. In 1928, the year this work was published, Roosevelt entered and won the race for governor of New York. His ""term as governor of New York made his a front-runner for the presidency in 1932"" (Encyclopedia of the American Presidency, 432). Later, as president, ""FDR would sometimes muse about that distant day when he would leave the cares of the presidency behind. 'All that is in me,' he would say, 'goes back to the Hudson.' He dreamed, he said, of returning to Hyde Park, the family seat in Dutchess County, to tend his trees, start a newspaper, maybe serve as what he called the 'moderator' of the United Nations —but only if he could work mainly from home"" (Los Angeles Times). In this very scarce limited first edition of Records of the Town of Hyde Park, edited and inscribed by FDR, he notes, in his foreword, that this work was ""undertaken for two reasons. First, to preserve for future the local history which exists for the most part only in original manuscript form and may at any time be lost or destroyed. Second, to encourage other town in our County of Dutchess to carry out similar tasks."" To presidential collectors and bibliophiles, this limited edition, one of only 100 copies signed by FDR, is a foundational volume. Without scarce dust jacket. Text fresh and clean, inner hinges expertly reinforced, only light edge-wear, minor fading to gilt-lettered boards.