THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

First edition, first printing. Publisher's original dark blue cloth with titles in gilt to the upper board and spine. With a tissue guarded portrait frontispiece and 11 tipped in maps printed on ten pages of fine paper. Top edge gilt. Pages mostly uncut. A near fine copy, the binding square and tight with a little bumping to the spine tips and corners. The cloth and gilt, bright and fresh. The contents, with a few isolated spots to the endpapers, are otherwise clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. An attractive example.

The author's second book, and first work on geopolitics. 'The Valor of Ignorance' is a controversial study of military strategy, America defence and the growing tension in the Pacific. Homer Lea (1876-1912) was a frail, five-foot-tall hunchback whose poor health contradicted the scale of his ambitions. Despite being an unlikely candidate for military life, he became a self-taught military strategist, adventurer and geopolitical thinker, eventually serving as a trusted adviser to Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen. In this book, Lea warned of a future war between the United States and Japan, describing a Pacific conflict that closely resembled the Japanese attacks of 1941. Though initially dismissed by much of the American public, the book attracted serious attention among military figures and also found an enthusiastic readership in Japan. His books, although little known today, were cult classics in the first half 20th century. A third book, 'The Swarming of the Slav', which predicted a Russian attempt to dominate Europe, was planned but remained unfinished at the time of his death, aged just 35.