Leonard Gardner. 
 
Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1969. Hardcover in a jacket. Octavo. Shelf wear and a little tanning on jacket edges. Scuffing on the spine's back panel.  A little sunning and a few bumps along the top of the boards. A faint chip on the spine on the F in Fat City. A bit of impression on the corners of the boards but not enough to create chipping or exposure. Dark top stain. A few light smudges on the endpaper. Except for some fading to chapter numbers at the beginning of some of the chapters, text is clean. 183 pages. Very good. Signed. 
 
It seems there are a million books like Fat City. That is, underdog novels, long championed by few, about underdogs. But there aren't any books like Fat City. That's because it was the book that inspired them all, and none of them are half as good. This signed second printing returns you to before Gardener's novel was a cult classic and was just another good looking and well designed publication from an ambitious young writer. 
 
"Ernie rose, and when the bus roared into the depot he was standing at the head of the aisle. He came lightly down the steps into balmy air and diesel fumes, and feeling in himself the potent allegiance of fate, he pushed open the door to the lobby, where unkempt sleepers slumped upright on the benches."