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First edition book: About Zionism: Speeches and Letters by Professor Albert Einstein, Translated and Edited with an Introduction by Leon Simon. First American edition. NY: Macmillan, 1931. Hardcover bound in the publisher's dark green cloth, 4.75 x 8, 94 pages. Einstein's writings are broken up into three sections: "Assimilation and Nationalism," "The Jews in Palestine," "Jew and Arab." In very good condition, with a bit of dampstaining to the extremities of the textblock, and a fleck of paper loss to the rear hinge.
From Simon's introduction: "Professor Einstein, some of whose scattered speeches and letters on Zionism and kindred questions are collected in this volume, is better known to the world as a physicist than as a Zionist. Yet for many years he has given abundant proof both of a keen interest in Zionism and of a penetrating insight into its underlying ideas. Himself an assimilated Jew, he is impelled to Zionism by his acute consciousness of the excessive price at which the blessings of assimilation are brought by the Jewish communities of the Western world, which for him are mainly represented by that of Germany. The price is a loss of solidarity, of moral independence and of self-respect. These, in his view, can be regained only if assimilated in Jews find some common task, of absolute human value, to which they can bend their corporate energies as Jews. Such a task is to be found in the restoration of Jewish national life in Palestine, which involves the regeneration of Palestine itself and its transformation into a living and productive country."
