The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America.

First edition of the author's Pulitzer Prize-winning work. Octavo, original half cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the title page to fellow author Peter Matthiessen, "For Peter Thank you! with warm regards Louis Menand." From the library of National Book Award-winning author Peter Matthiessen with his bookplate to the front free endpaper. The recipient, Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014), was an American novelist and nonfiction writer whose work is distinguished by its fusion of literary craft, ethnographic observation, and environmental consciousness. A cofounder of The Paris Review, he produced influential books such as The Snow Leopard (1978), which won the National Book Award, and Shadow Country (2008), which received the National Book Award for Fiction, making him the only writer to win the prize in both nonfiction and fiction categories. Matthiessen was also a committed environmentalist and a Zen Buddhist practitioner, and these commitments shaped his writing’s sustained attention to wilderness, cultural encounter, and spiritual inquiry. Near fine in a near dust jacket. Jacket design by Susan Mitchell. An exceptional association copy.