Thomas A DOOLEY / The Edge of Tomorrow HBDJ Signed photo 1958

First edition in dust jacket with a signed photograph of the author added to the FFEP. From the Wikipedia entry on Dooley: Thomas Anthony Dooley III (January 17, 1927 – January 18, 1961) was an American physician who worked in Southeast Asia at the outset of American involvement in the Vietnam War. While serving as a physician in the United States Navy and afterwards, he became known for his humanitarian and anti-communist political activities up until his early death from cancer. After his death, the public learned that he had been recruited as an intelligence operative by the Central Intelligence Agency, and numerous descriptions of atrocities by the Viet Minh in his book Deliver Us From Evil had been fabricated. Dooley has been called “a key agent in the first disinformation campaign of the Vietnam War,” garnering support for the US government’s growing involvement there. Dooley, one critic said, is an example of “celebrity sainthood” and the “intersection of show business and mysticism occupied the space where Tom Dooley was perhaps most at home”; nevertheless, he “helped to pull American Catholicism away from its insular, angry anti-Communism” and he lived a life that does not “invite facile judgment.” Dooley authored three popular books that described his activities in Vietnam and Laos: Deliver Us From Evil, The Edge of Tomorrow, and The Night They Burned the Mountain. From the Wikipedia entry on this book: The Edge of Tomorrow is a 1958 book by American physician Thomas A. Dooley about his humanitarian mission Operation Laos in the country of Laos. Dooley wrote about the “shaky beginnings” of his team’s formation in the Laotian capital of Vientiane and the team’s trips to Vang Vieng and Nam Tha, from which he had a “triumphant departure”. James T. Fisher, who published a biography about Dooley, said, “The Edge of Tomorrow was even more successful than [Dooley’s previous book] Deliver Us from Evil; a best-seller, it also won virtually universal critical acclaim.” Seth Jacobs, writing in a chapter of Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars, said, “The Edge of Tomorrow and [Dooley’s other book] The Night They Burned the Mountain, attracted almost as wide a readership as Dooley’s debut.” The United States Information Agency distributed The Edge of Tomorrow (along with Deliver Us from Evil) globally “as part of its cultural diplomacy efforts”. Fisher described the book, “The Edge of Tomorrow is both an American adventure story and a journal of the spirit that evokes the ‘little way’ of St. Thérèse of Lisieux… and other participants in the ‘lay apostolate’ of the era.” According to the biographer, Dooley exhibited a “naive idealism” about foreign aid to Laos amidst “the yawning void of” Laos–United States relations in the 1950s. Dooley asked if foreign aid planners’ inability to relate to his mission was due to “spiritual barrenness”.