That’s right, I am having a book giveaway. But it’s not what you think. When I say “a book giveaway,” I mean one book.

Of course, there is a story.

Back in my college years at Kutztown University, downtown in a back alley was “Mountain Bummie’s Bookstore and Furs.” He traded in used books and animal pelts. In my memory, Bummie (Baumgartener) was a weather-beaten man—hard to say how old he might have been—and he spoke in the regional Pennsylvania Dutch accent. Where he got his books for resale, I don’t know, but I believe if I had looked hard enough, I could have found a Gutenberg Bible.

Being a poor college student, I didn’t have the disposable income required for unbridled purchases and had to put items of interest back on the shelves. One of those I now wish I hadn’t. Imagine a hardcover book with the usual spine, but inside were only a few pages. It bore a floppy appearance with the unfulfilled spine, yet it had obviously been made that way. Confused, I let it go.

What it was was a traveling book salesman’s sample. In the nineteenth century, as many books were sold by traveling salesmen as were sold in bookstores, probably more. Known as the subscription method, a salesman could carry a number of these samples. The customer could see the quality of the binding, how thick the book would be, and read a sampling of the writing. If they purchased the book, two things happened. One: the publisher knew exactly how many copies to produce. Two: the purchaser’s name would appear on a list in the back of the book. How many of us still love seeing our names in print? I believe all of Mark Twain’s books were sold on subscription, certainly Huckleberry Finn.

I held one of those sample books in my hand and put it back.

One of the treasures I did buy was a peddler’s edition of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in German, printed in Philadelphia in 1809. Think nineteenth-century mass market paperback. The book is small, with an unadorned cover (although still intact after more than two hundred years), and completely marred by someone who, with a red felt-tipped pen, wrote “1809” on the first blank page. Here is the title page. You can see some of the red in the illustration where it bled onto this page.

Another book I purchased, coming back to where I started this blog, was this.

Why I got it, I no longer remember. I don’t recall having any interest in China. It is a travel guide to Peking, filled with descriptions, suggestions, photos, foldout maps, and advertisements. One of the maps, tucked into its own little pocket at the back of the book, is this.

I will give this book to the person who needs it most. I suspect there is detailed information that may not be available anywhere else, at least not distilled in such a fashion, for someone writing about this period or who has a historical interest. It is written largely in English, meant for Western travelers, and is 237 pages plus. I know this book is worth a couple of hundred dollars on the market, but I want it to go to a good home.

Make your case.