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You may fire when ready”—the book chronicled the adventures of a boy named Larry Russell who was “lost overboard while on a trip with his folks from Honolulu to Hong Kong. Adrift on a bit of wreckage, he is picked up by the ‘Olympia,’ Captain Gridley, Commodore Dewey’s flagship.” A publisher bit, and the book came out, with blinding speed, in August of 1898. Its sale price was $1.25, and it was resplendent with a sailor on the cover waving a brightly colored American flag that was three times his size.
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