Manchild in the Promised Land

NY: The Macmillan Company. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1965. Third Printing. Hard Cover. First Edition, Third Printing (stated). Publisher's full red cloth, gilt and black lettering on spine, top edge red, fore-edge deckle. "Manchild in the Promised Land" is one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time. This thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown's childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African-Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s. When the book was first published in 1965, it was praised for its realistic portrayal of Harlem -- the children, young people, hardworking parents; the hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and numbers runners; the police; the violence, sex, and humor. The book continues to resonate generations later, not only because of its fierce and dignified anger, not only because the struggles of urban youth are as deeply felt today as they were in Brown's time, but also because the book is affirmative and inspiring. Here is the story about the one who "made it," the boy who kept landing on his feet and became a man. Claude Brown was born in New York City and grew up in Harlem. At age seventeen, after serving several terms in reform school, he left Harlem for Greenwich Village. He went on to receive a bachelor's degree from Howard University and attended law school. He also wrote a book called "The Children of Ham" in 1976. "Manchild in the Promised Land" evolved from an article he published in "Dissent" magazine during his first year at college. He died in 2002 at the age of 64. . Covers moderately sunned along top edges, former owner's signature and date (1965) on ffep, otherwise unmarked, tight, square, and clean. The unclipped dust jacket, Now in Mylar, is mildly chipped and reflects an old damp-staing on a corner of the rear panel only. VERY GOOD/VERY GOOD. . 8vo 8" - 9" tall. 415 pp .