WOW ... time warp flashback !
On the jacket back cover, there was a message from his widow, Virginia, that said this version was the way he wrote it and intended for the readers.
The original version, as published, had been cut down considerably because the publisher didn't think a sci-fi novel was supposed to be big and long and so they had him cut it down three times before they finally accepted it.
FROM WIKI:
Publication history
Two major versions of this book exist:
The 1961 version, which, at the request of the publisher, Heinlein cut by over a quarter. Approximately 60,000 words were removed from the original manuscript, including some sharp criticism of American attitudes to sex and religion.[9] Sales were slow at first, but after winning a Hugo award Stranger became popular among college students. The book remained in print for 28 years.[10] By 1997, over 100,000 copies of the hardback edition had been sold along with nearly five million copies of the paperback.[9] None of his later novels would match this level of success.[21]
In 1989, Heinlein's widow, Virginia, renewed the copyright to Stranger and cancelled the existing publication contracts in accordance with the Copyright Act of 1976.[10] The 1991 version, retrieved from Heinlein's archives in the University of California, Santa Cruz, Special Collections Department by Virginia and published posthumously, which reproduces the original manuscript and restores all cuts. Both Heinlein's agent and his publisher (which had new senior editors) agreed that the uncut version was better: readers are used to longer books, and what was seen as objectionable in 1961 was no longer so thirty years later.[6]