I like all kinds of books, new ones, old ones, deluxe leather-bound, guilded-paged editions, beat-up paperbacks, clean-cut pages or deckle-edged pages. I have a soft spot for beat-up books even though they are inanimate objects.
In this case, there are grease or oil stains on the cover and pages and, putting on my detective hat, this probably means that some mechanic was reading this at some point. Because the book was published in the 1970s, I would guess that maybe someone who was actually in the war fixing things, who would be interested in Nimitz enough to read about him. Most people couldn’t care less about Nimitz regardless as to whether they should. Apparently he was important enough to name the current class of aircraft carriers after, so, maybe he was a big deal.
There were other books at the thrift where I bought this that were also beat-up quite a bit, complete with spider-webs and caked-on dust on top of the books (that happens a lot, where someone passes away and the family had to grab all of the ‘worthless’ books and haul them to the thrift.)
So, that’s my guess. I’ll never know. But I’m reading it now with the idea that a former vet read it before me and did so for a reason.
randyrydberg.org 