To Seek a Newer World

Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc.. Near Fine. 1967. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Autograph; Bound in navy blue full leather, blue cloth endpapers, gilt lettering at spine, with gilt compartment lines. Stated First Edition. Robert Kennedy Sr. had a small number of copies specially bound in leather as gifts for close friends and family. This copy is inscribed on the halfttle -- "Rowly / You worried you were not / going to receive a book. I waited / until the special edition arrived - / for you -- / and to Kay / Affectionately / Bobby / Christmas 1967" Kay and Rowland Evans had a particularly close friendship with Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. and his wife Ethel and their family. Rowland Evans was a provocative newspaper columnist, commentator and author who antagonized liberal politicians and championed conservative causes. Mr. Evans and Robert Novak began their work as columnists in the early 1960's, a time when newspaper columnists wielded outsize influence in national politics. The pair pioneered in transferring that influence to the medium of cable television with the political discussion program ''Evans & Novak'' -- carried on CNN from that cable network's beginning. Rowland Evans and his wife Kay (Katherine Winton Evans), also a respected writer and editor, were mainstays on the Washington social scene, hosting many memorable gatherings in their handsome Georgetown house -- to which flocked influential and remarkable people drawn from journalism, politics and general society over the decades from the 1960s to the 2000s. From the Reader's Companion to American History: "The sixties were a turbulent decade, and Robert Kennedy responded to that turbulence with unusual directness and sensitivity. He had evolved from the rigid prosecutor of a decade earlier into a popular leader who combined political realism with social idealism and passion with humor." "The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society." --- Robert F. Kennedy, 1966 ; Signed by Author .