We found the other two versions of THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE (we blogged on the first version HERE). The second version is a lovely leather-bound book printed by The Easton Press as part of its "The Hundred Greatest Books Ever Written" series -- albeit this list's POV is primarily American/British. There's actually 125 books on its list. This Easton Series offers high quality printing and we enjoy having these books in our library. We currently have about 40 of the 125 books in our library.
But you have to be careful with this series as some of The Easton Press's versions are not the full book but are "abridged" versions. This is why our library will not be carrying all of the 100 or 125 books on Easton Press' list as we are mostly focused on obtaining the best printed version of the full book (for example, The Book of a Thousand Nights and A Night by Richard Burton, an abridged one-volume book within this series; we obtained the full book at 17-volumes -- grist for another post).
Anyway, we go through the secondary market (e.g. Ebay) for The Easton Press's greatest hundred or 125 books. We can find them for as low as $30, which is what we paid for THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, versus the full retail price of $39.95. But it's not just the relatively small price differential; to get the book from Easton, one has to subscribe to the entire series which we've already explained we're not interested in doing due to our lack of appetite for abridged versions. Here, though, are some lovely images of The Easton Press edition which is bound in leather with 22k gold accents, gilt page edges and sewn in bookmark:
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The third edition we have, which is a pleasing version, is a Reader's Digest edition we found for $5 at Main Street Books. Dad has given you that edition now for purpose of reading. While not as lovely as The Easton Press edition, it is a satisfying hold within one's hands:
Love,
Mom and Dad
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