Seabirds: an identification guide

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988. Hardcover. Foreword by Roger Tory Peterson. Small 4to. Ivory cloth with grey spine lettering, pictorial dust jacket. 448pp. Extensive illustrations (many color), numerous maps, map/text endpapers. Fine/very good. Faint jacket wear only, with spine lightly sunned. Handsome and tight reprint edition of what the jacket front panel describes as "A Complete Guide to the Seabirds of the World 1600 Birds Painted in Full Color 324 Distribution Maps." The well-known ornithologist, artist, author and exploration guide beautifully inscribes and signs the half-title page in black ink "For Bob & Ibby Malott / In memory of our voyage to Antarctica / together. May the visions of penguins, / icebergs and glaciers be with you both / forever. / Peter Harrison." Below this another distinguished guide and one of the first women to reach the South Pole going by the land route, Shirley Metz, also signs boldly. On the facing blank leaf yet another noted Antarctic guide inscribes and signs in black ballpoint: "It has been / wonderful to share / Antarctica with you / both. May our paths cross / again soon. All the best. / Larry Hobbs / 18 January 1991 / Paradise Bay." (One other guide inscribes and signs this page, but is unidentified.) Laid in is a leaflet for Harrison's "Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Lithographs" and also an order form on which he pens, "thank you for / your order / Peter Harrison." Recipient "Bob" is Robert Malott (1926-2018), noted Chicago civic/business leader, CEO of FMC Corporation, Republican politico and philanthropist -- his ownership name appears on front flyleaf.