The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

The census claim is confirmed: the first edition is American — Hippocampus Press, New York, 2010 — of Ligotti's first work of non-fiction. The book was written in English and there is no earlier UK or foreign-language edition, so no transatlantic precedence question arises. The trap is the 2018 Penguin Books trade paperback (ISBN 978-0-14-313314-8), which is a 'first thus' and not a first: it is a reissue with a new preface by Ligotti and is by far the common state on shelves today, which is why it is so often mistaken for the book. Only the Hippocampus hardcover of 2010 is the first edition; a reported earlier small-press announcement of the title could not be corroborated and is not asserted here.