[Mahan, Dennis Hart]:

$2,750 · Offered by William Reese Company

[SUMMARY OF THE COURSE OF PERMANENT FORTIFICATION AND OF THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE OF PERMANENT WORKS, FOR THE USE OF THE CADETS OF THE U.S. MILITARY ... The first edition of this scarce and greatly impactful military manual from West Point's lithographic press, with the ownership inscription and notes of Robert Johnston, a future Confederate colonel and member of the first class to use this textbook. West Point's lithographic press was one of, if not the earliest in America to print books entirely by lithography, in this case textbooks for their students, beginning in the 1830s. The faculty at West Point were following the example of Britain's Royal School of Military Engineering and, more explicitly, of the French artillery academy at Metz, each of which produced fully lithographed manuals of their own in the 1820s. Captain Dennis Hart Mahan, first in the West Point class of 1824 and author of the present textbook, became a mathematics and engineering instructor immediately after his graduation, and received specialized training during an extended visit to the great military academies of Europe. At Metz, Mahan saw firsthand the value and utility of the Academy's considerable output of illustrated training manuals and textbooks. He returned to West Point and introduced the same practice, hiring a European lithographer to work on the school's internal press to produce textbooks for the use of students and staff.Published in 1850 (though likely printed in late 1849), this is the

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