Kent's profusely illustrated autobiography here receives an inscription from him contemporaneous to publication. Kent had met Geckler while both worked as aspiring painters in Winona, Minnesota, and maintained their friendship in years following. Much of Kent's prolific correspondence with Geckler records his personal affairs - the births of his children, his shifting residences - and his frustrations with the American government during the two World Wars and at the onset of the Cold War. No doubt his occasional use of German in his missives to the German-born Geckler were at least in part brazen attempts to draw out what he suspected was the nefarious policing of his mail. In this particular set of letters Kent describes the writing of this autobiography, in particular of the episode he titles "The Case of the Swiped Camera." Though Kent sets up the narrative as a regular detective story, it evinces his, and Alex's, socialist leanings, which were apparently quite off-putting to the publisher who required Kent to cut it. Of course, Kent coyly nods to the whole business in the final text, claiming that with "shears in hand" he followed orders "meekly." The letters tell another story. Book bound in blue cloth over boards gilt titling and motif to upper cover. Moderate rubs to edges, front hinge tad shaken, lacking dust wrapper save lone panel laid in, else very good. Typescript staple-bound in plain wrappers lightly soiled, interior pages bright. Letters all in original envelopes.