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Listen, Hans — Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson
Houghton Mifflin Company · Boston · 1942
First Edition · First Printing
The Book:
The first edition, first printing of Dorothy Thompson’s Listen, Hans, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1942. The book collects Thompson’s wartime broadcasts directed by shortwave to listeners inside Nazi Germany, in which one of America’s most prominent anti-Nazi journalists addressed an imagined German listener named Hans about dictatorship, responsibility, propaganda, and the possibility of a Germany beyond Hitler. This copy retains its original publisher’s cloth and original pictorial dust jacket.
Condition:
Very Good+ in a Very Good− original dust jacket. The book remains square, clean, and firmly bound. A previous owner’s adhesive bookplate is present inside the front cover, with a small pencil price on the front blank and pencil numerals on the rear blank. The price-clipped jacket retains strong color and presentation but shows rubbing, several small tears and chips, and concentrated wear and paper loss at the spine ends. No restoration is observed.
Story Of The Book
Dorothy Thompson aimed her voice across the Atlantic and addressed Nazi Germany as though one human conscience might still be reached inside it.
Broadcast by shortwave in 1942, the talks collected in Listen, Hans spoke directly to Germans living inside a dictatorship saturated with censorship and propaganda. Thompson challenged the political obedience and historical myths that had helped make Nazism possible while refusing to assume that every German listener had surrendered the capacity for individual judgment.
That distinction was essential to her argument. Totalitarianism depended upon making the state’s version of reality seem unavoidable. Thompson answered by addressing the individual behind the regime—asking listeners to think beyond propaganda, recognize responsibility, and imagine a political future after Hitler.
Radio carried the words across the border. This book made them permanent.
Why It’s In The Collection
Listen, Hans belongs in Consigned to Darkness because it represents free expression being deliberately projected across the informational boundaries of a totalitarian state.
Thompson was not writing retrospectively about Nazi propaganda. These broadcasts were delivered during the Second World War, while Hitler remained in power and Nazi Germany was actively controlling what its citizens could hear, read, and know.
This 1942 first printing therefore preserves the broadcasts as a publication-event object: an American journalist using mass communication to challenge authoritarian propaganda in real time and appealing directly to the individual conscience of people living under dictatorship.
Collection Categories: Anti-Totalitarianism · Anti-Authoritarianism · Propaganda · Censorship · Free Expression · Political Dissent · Journalism · World War II · Publication-Event Object
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Authentication Evidence
Title page identifies Listen, Hans by Dorothy Thompson and bears the original Houghton Mifflin Company imprint and 1942 publication date.
Copyright page records the 1942 copyright by Dorothy Thompson Lewis.
Copyright page identifies The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, consistent with the original Houghton Mifflin publication.
No subsequent-printing, revised-edition, or later-issue statement appears in the volume.
Institutional catalog records identify the 1942 Houghton Mifflin publication as the original edition.
Specialist bibliographic descriptions consistently identify copies with the corresponding 1942 Houghton Mifflin and Riverside Press characteristics as first editions.
Original publisher’s cloth binding is present.
Original pictorial dust jacket is retained.
Front jacket flap is price-clipped, preventing direct verification of the original publisher’s price.
Jacket design, typography, publisher information, and physical construction correspond to documented first-edition jackets.
No evidence of book-club manufacture, rebinding, facsimile dust jacket, or restoration is observed.
Observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as the 1942 Houghton Mifflin first edition, first printing.
Dorothy Thompson
Houghton Mifflin Company · Boston · 1942
First Edition · First Printing
The Book:
The first edition, first printing of Dorothy Thompson’s Listen, Hans, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1942. The book collects Thompson’s wartime broadcasts directed by shortwave to listeners inside Nazi Germany, in which one of America’s most prominent anti-Nazi journalists addressed an imagined German listener named Hans about dictatorship, responsibility, propaganda, and the possibility of a Germany beyond Hitler. This copy retains its original publisher’s cloth and original pictorial dust jacket.
Condition:
Very Good+ in a Very Good− original dust jacket. The book remains square, clean, and firmly bound. A previous owner’s adhesive bookplate is present inside the front cover, with a small pencil price on the front blank and pencil numerals on the rear blank. The price-clipped jacket retains strong color and presentation but shows rubbing, several small tears and chips, and concentrated wear and paper loss at the spine ends. No restoration is observed.
Story Of The Book
Dorothy Thompson aimed her voice across the Atlantic and addressed Nazi Germany as though one human conscience might still be reached inside it.
Broadcast by shortwave in 1942, the talks collected in Listen, Hans spoke directly to Germans living inside a dictatorship saturated with censorship and propaganda. Thompson challenged the political obedience and historical myths that had helped make Nazism possible while refusing to assume that every German listener had surrendered the capacity for individual judgment.
That distinction was essential to her argument. Totalitarianism depended upon making the state’s version of reality seem unavoidable. Thompson answered by addressing the individual behind the regime—asking listeners to think beyond propaganda, recognize responsibility, and imagine a political future after Hitler.
Radio carried the words across the border. This book made them permanent.
Why It’s In The Collection
Listen, Hans belongs in Consigned to Darkness because it represents free expression being deliberately projected across the informational boundaries of a totalitarian state.
Thompson was not writing retrospectively about Nazi propaganda. These broadcasts were delivered during the Second World War, while Hitler remained in power and Nazi Germany was actively controlling what its citizens could hear, read, and know.
This 1942 first printing therefore preserves the broadcasts as a publication-event object: an American journalist using mass communication to challenge authoritarian propaganda in real time and appealing directly to the individual conscience of people living under dictatorship.
Collection Categories: Anti-Totalitarianism · Anti-Authoritarianism · Propaganda · Censorship · Free Expression · Political Dissent · Journalism · World War II · Publication-Event Object
———
Authentication Evidence
Title page identifies Listen, Hans by Dorothy Thompson and bears the original Houghton Mifflin Company imprint and 1942 publication date.
Copyright page records the 1942 copyright by Dorothy Thompson Lewis.
Copyright page identifies The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, consistent with the original Houghton Mifflin publication.
No subsequent-printing, revised-edition, or later-issue statement appears in the volume.
Institutional catalog records identify the 1942 Houghton Mifflin publication as the original edition.
Specialist bibliographic descriptions consistently identify copies with the corresponding 1942 Houghton Mifflin and Riverside Press characteristics as first editions.
Original publisher’s cloth binding is present.
Original pictorial dust jacket is retained.
Front jacket flap is price-clipped, preventing direct verification of the original publisher’s price.
Jacket design, typography, publisher information, and physical construction correspond to documented first-edition jackets.
No evidence of book-club manufacture, rebinding, facsimile dust jacket, or restoration is observed.
Observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as the 1942 Houghton Mifflin first edition, first printing.