"Persons & Places. The Background of My Life" by George Santayana, First Edition, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York in 1944, with "War Time Book" imprint on the copyright page.

Original dust jacket [some wear, a few small damages: see photos]; hard boards, original green cloth with gold lettering on spine and front board, 5.1/2" x 8.1/4"; frontispiece photo of Santayana, 257 pages, very good condition.

The 16 chapters of this book take us from Santayana's ancestry though his undergraduate and graduate studies at Harvard. In between we hear about his father, his mother, the family of his Spanish mother's first husband, his sister Susana (the love of his life, apparently), Avila, very early memories, his "exile" to America, his life with his Sturgis-infatuated mother at Beacon Street, Latin School, the Catholic Church which saturates his soul, then four chapters about Harvard and his friends.

A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana (1863-1952) was raised and educated in the United States, wrote in English and is generally considered an American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, even though, of his nearly 89 years, he spent only 39 in the U.S. He is perhaps best known as an aphorist, and for the oft-misquoted remark, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," [from "Reason in Common Sense"]

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