Pilots and Cosmonauts.

Kamanin’s full-length memoir, in the “About Life and About Oneself” series, covering his entire career in four parts: flight training and the 1930s Soviet air force, the 1934 Chelyuskin ice-rescue that made him one of the first Heroes of the Soviet Union, his wartime command of aviation formations, and, in its final section, his work from the early 1960s chairing the commission that selected and trained the first cosmonauts, including Yuri Gagarin — the future role this collection’s note on his 1935 memoir alludes to without naming, since it still lay ahead of him when that earlier book was written.

Laid into this copy is a “Day of the Air Fleet of the USSR” illustrated stamped envelope — the envelope stock itself dates to 1959, per a Ministry of Communications imprint on the back, but Kamanin signed and dated it well after the fact, in ink directly on the illustration: “N. Kamanin, 14.5.73.”