copyright 1970; The Heritage Press publishers, New York; includes the original "The Heritage Club, Sandglass" flier (pic); introduction by Jean Jules-Verne; illustrations by Robert Shore; very good as-new condition; external slipcase very good; a beautiful book.
 
From The Earth To The Moon -
Verne's 1865 tale of a trip to the moon is (as you'd expect from Verne) great fun, even if bits of it now seem, in retrospect, a little strange. Our rocket ship gets shot out of a cannon? To the moon? Goodness! But in other ways it's full of eerie bits of business that turned out to be very near reality: he had the cost, when you adjust for inflation, almost exactly right. There are other similarities, too. Verne's cannon was named the Columbiad; the Apollo 11 command module was named Columbia. Apollo 11 had a three-person crew, just as Verne's did; and both blasted off from the American state of Florida. Even the return to earth happened in more-or-less the same place. Coincidence -- or fact!? We say you'll have to read this story yourself to judge.
 
Around The Moon -
Around the Moon, Jules Verne's sequel to From the Earth to the Moon, is a science fiction novel continuing the trip to the moon which left the reader in suspense after the previous novel. It was later combined with From the Earth to the Moon to create A Trip to the Moon and Around It. Plot Having been fired out of the giant Columbiad space gun, the Baltimore Gun Club's bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers, Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan, begins the five-day trip to the moon. A few minutes into the journey, a small, bright asteroid passes within a few hundred yards of them, but luckily does not collide with the projectile. The asteroid had been captured by the Earth's gravity and had become a second moon.
 
The three travelers undergo a series of adventures and misadventures during the rest of the journey, including disposing of the body of a dog out a window, suffering intoxication by gases, and making calculations leading them, briefly, to believe that they are to fall back to Earth...