The Grapes of Wrath (Viking, 1939)

Elmer Hader painted the jacket for Viking's April 1939 first edition: a farmer in overalls, his wife and a boy watching a line of loaded jalopies crawl across a pale valley toward blue mountains. It is the Joad family's road west reduced to one quiet watercolor, with none of the anger of the text on show. The first-state jacket carries a $2.75 price and the words "First Edition" along the lower edge of the front flap.