The Plot to Seize the White House

New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc.. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1973). First Edition. Hardcover. [minor shelfwear, very slight bumping to lower tips, tiny tear at right edge of front endpaper; the jacket has some internal dampstaining, with just a tiny bit of bleed-through staining at the yellow lettering on the jacket's front panel]. (B&W photographs) An account of a bizarre and still-disputed episode of American history: a purported plot, in 1933, to stage a genuine coup d'etat to take over the U.S. Government and render Franklin D. Roosevelt a sort of puppet. The plotters, supposedly a shadowy group of Wall Street financiers and other wealthy right-wing types (whose primary interest was the reinstatement of the gold standard), made a fatal mistake by recruiting retired Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler to lead a military attack on Washington, D.C., with the intention of capturing FDR. Butler, instead, crossed them up and exposed the plot. A Congressional committee subsequently conducted an investigation and issued a report, but no criminal charges were ever filed, and a curious lack of attention (or, in some cases, open hostility) by the press led to a kind of unofficial curtain of silence being drawn over the whole affair. The book has been reprinted in recent years, but the original edition is quite uncommon. .