Chapter I
of this book indicates the need of a study of business
English. Succeeding chapters take up such subjects as the business vocabulary, ‘Common errors,’ clearness and emphasis in written expression. Chapters VIII, IX, and X deal with oral English. Five chapters are devoted to the study of various forms of letters. The subject of advertising is given thorough consideration.”—School R
* * * * *
=N Y Evening Post= p9 O 30 ’20 90w
Reviewed by Brander Matthews
+ =N Y Times= p10 D 5 ’20 980w
“The book is well organized for use as a textbook. Persons giving English courses in secondary schools will find it helpful.”
+ =School R= 28:797 D ’20 320w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p801 D 2 ’20 40w
=BARTLETT, WILLIAM HENRY.= Handbook of American government; rev and enl ed. by H: Campbell Black. *$1.25 Crowell 353
20–11824
The last previous edition of this book appeared in 1912. The present revision is designed to cover changes since that time, including three amendments to the constitution, changes in the judicial system, and changes brought about by the war. The editor has also “taken advantage of the opportunity to explain or discuss at greater length various important topics mentioned in the original text, and to introduce comments or explanations of some clauses of the constitution, or of the practical working of government under it, which had not previously been included.” (Editor’s note)
* * * * *
+ =Survey= 45:26 O 2 ’20 60w
=BARTLEY, MRS NALBRO ISADORAH.= Gorgeous girl. il *$1.75 (2c) Doubleday
20–6713
Stephen O’Valley became rich quick. He strained every nerve to become so because he wanted to marry the “gorgeous girl,” Beatrice Constantine, the spoiled daughter of wealth. When the engagement gaieties, the wedding and honeymoon were over, and Steve proposed to Beatrice that they quiet down and “find themselves” the disillusionment began. A perpetual round of social excitement, a reckless spending of money was Beatrice’s entire world and Steve’s comparisons between her and Mary Faithful, his right hand in business, became more searching. In time Mary assumes the rôle of critic holding the mirror up to Steve, to show not only his own life but Mary’s heart. When the failure of Steve’s business sends the heartless Beatrice to Reno another kind of “gorgeous girl” takes her place.
* * * * *
“Nalbro Bartley has mastered the style of American magazine fiction. She has the light touch, the gift for quick, clever characterization and a modicum of American slang. It is quite noticeable that the women of the story are much more real creations than the men.”
+ − =Boston Transcript= p11 Ap 3 ’20 500w
+ =Ind= 104:247 N 13 ’20 20w
“While Nalbro Bartley’s new story of ‘The gorgeous girl’ cannot be called particularly convincing, it is less glaringly improbable than some of her other tales. The book has some neat phrasing, Mary’s home life is nicely sketched, and there are a few clever touches of characterization.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:199 Ap 18 ’20 480w
Reviewed by E. C. Webb
=Pub W= 97:995 Mr 20 ’20 300w
=BARTLEY, MRS NALBRO ISADORAH.= Gray angels. *$1.90 (1½c) Small
20–17174
The first notice the world took of Thurley Precore was when she “sang for her supper” and then continued to sing herself into people’s hearts generally. The rich ghost lady heard the voice in her living tomb and came out to take Thurley to New York and give her a musical education. She became a prima donna, lived in an intimate circle of first class artists, experienced their disappointments, their boredom and the restlessness of fame. She tried to become reckless and flirted with the forbidden, when her singing teacher, also a man of genius, whom she secretly loved, set her right by confiding to her his vision of America’s supreme mission in art. Winning the violet crown he called it. Later the war with its war madness showed to Thurley that her own particular mission lay in helping to restore a hysterical people to sanity and to become one of the gray angels to the broken ones of the war.
* * * * *
“The book is entertaining, the characters are well drawn. Fewer characters would have been better. Thurley’s interesting career, with its pleasing denouement, might have been told in considerably less than 420 pages.”
+ − =N Y Times= p10 O 17 ’20 350w
=BARTON, BRUCE.= It’s a good old world. *$1.50 Century 814
20–14616
The book is a collection of contributions to various magazines. They all look upon the cheery side of life, pick out the amenities from the commonplaces, and abound in good advice and cheery encouragement for the passengers on this “Good old world” whose “quiet, patient fashion in which he goes around about the same old task, day after day and year after year” the author admires. Some of the titles are: I expect to be entirely consistent—after ninety; A great little word is “why”; The second mile; It’s a moving picture world, and the film changes every few minutes; The fine rare habit of learning to do without; That fine old fake about the good old days; Everybody has something.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:137 Ja ’21
+ =Ind= 104:249 N 13 ’20 30w
“Brief and pithy and filled with common sense philosophy.”
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 16:234 D ’20 30w
=BARTON, GEORGE.= Celebrated spies and famous mysteries of the great war. il *$2 Page 940.3
19–17029
“George Barton has gathered together some of the strange happenings of the war. It is no connected tale of espionage, but rather a series of pen pictures relating to only a few of those involved in the conflict, and those few among the best known. The opening chapter deals with the disappearance of the Hampshire, with Kitchener and his staff; the final one, with the murder of Ferdinand at Sarajevo. In between are such dissimilar persons as Edith Cavell, Capt. Fryatt, Bolo Pasha, Roger Casement, Ram Chanda and Werner Horn.”—Springf’d Republican
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 16:126 Ja ’20
“Every chapter reads like an Oppenheim novel in little, and there is matter enough in the book to furnish material for all writers who are seeking plots for stories of mystery.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p11 D 13 ’19 200w
“This book contains more promise than performance. Whatever interest the stories themselves might hold is entirely spoiled by the stagey dressing.”
− =Cath World= 111:406 Je ’20 170w
“An especially interesting chapter is ‘Eugene Van Doren and the secret press of Belgium.’ If Mr Barton has told nothing new he has at least gathered together the fragments of interesting and varied careers reflecting differing aspects of the war.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 D 16 ’19 160w
=BARTON, WILLIAM ELEAZAR.= Paternity of Abraham Lincoln; was he the son of Thomas Lincoln? an essay on the chastity of Nancy Hanks. *$4 Doran
20–19246
The author says that this book may be considered a footnote to his earlier book, “The soul of Abraham Lincoln” and as a suppressed preface to a “Life of Abraham Lincoln” which he plans to write. He states that in collecting data for the first book he came upon a considerable body of material bearing on Lincoln’s paternity and discovered that a number of intelligent collectors of Lincoln books and students of history were convinced that Abraham Lincoln was not the son of Thomas Lincoln. “Moreover, the author found himself at length compelled to ask of himself the question, What if these reports are true? And he pursued his investigations with an open mind.... The author has endeavored to trace every rumor and report relating to the birth of Abraham Lincoln, to assemble all the available evidence in favor of it and against it, to judge each one of these reports upon its own merits, and to render what, he believes, is a judgment from which there can be no successful appeal.” The judgment is a refutation of the supposed evidence and the author believes that he has covered the ground so thoroughly that the matter need not be referred to again.
* * * * *
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 N 20 ’20 840w
“A convincing study which leaves not a square inch of ground for the scandal to stand on. Mr Barton’s researches have been exhaustive and—barring a few minor slips—accurate.” C. V. D.
+ =Nation= 111:734 D 22 ’20 820w
“It is undisputedly and indisputably a good work to which Dr Barton has set his hand.”
+ =N Y Times= p16 O 31 ’20 1750w
=R of Rs= 53:222 F ’21 70w
“A scholarly monograph.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 N 15 ’20 480w
=BARTON, WILLIAM ELEAZAR.= Soul of Abraham Lincoln. *$4 (3½c) Doran
20–3862
“The fact that there are so many books on the religion of Abraham Lincoln is a chief reason why there should be one more.” (Preface) The author explains his volume by stating the considerations which differentiate it from earlier works. He has provided an adequate historical background for the study of Lincoln’s religious life in successive periods and has been aided in this effort by the fact that he spent seven years in the same environment in which Lincoln lived during two important epochs of his career. He has assembled a larger body of essential evidence than any previous writer has compiled, and subjected it to a critical analysis. He has opened several entirely new avenues of investigation and he has set forth his conviction concerning the faith of Abraham Lincoln aside from his theological opinions. Accordingly the book falls into three parts: 1, A study of religious environment; 2, An analysis of the evidence; 3, The religion of Lincoln. The appendices contain extracts from addresses and books of other writers and there is a bibliography and an index.
* * * * *
“For libraries attempting a complete Lincoln collection, though it is rather lacking in charm for general reading.”
+ − =Booklist= 17:28 O ’20
“This book is so important in its field that it must be regarded as necessary to any library, public or private, fittingly equipped for the critical consideration of Lincoln’s religious history. His book is so well done that it is likely long to remain the standard work on the subject.” L. E. Robinson
+ =Bookm= 51:547 Jl ’20 3200w
“The conclusion of the whole matter is that despite its entertaining and its authoritative biographical qualities, such a book as ‘The soul of Abraham Lincoln’ is utterly futile. It leaves us exactly at the point of its beginning. In its last page we have no clearer idea of Lincoln’s religious belief than in its first. Despite the mass of material he assembles, Dr Barton proves nothing.” E. F. E.
− + =Boston Transcript= p4 Ap 7 ’20 1500w
“His viewpoint, the skilful analysis of conflicting evidence, and the ability which the author shows in reaching a logical conclusion, seems to us to make this book one with which all students of the lives of Lincoln must hereafter reckon.”
+ =N Y Call= p10 Mr 28 ’20 340w
“His volume will probably be the final authority on the much-debated topic of Mr Lincoln’s religious faith.”
+ =Outlook= 124:656 Ap 14 ’20 2000w
=Spec= 124:835 Je 19 ’20 70w
“Like many others who would like to have Mr Lincoln pictured not exactly as he really was, but as they are eager to think him, Mr Barton labors hard to show what he believes to have been the president’s religious ideas. The result is a new literary portrait of Mr Lincoln, interesting and agreeable in details of the president’s family life, but leaving one unconvinced regarding his religious convictions.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p6 Mr 15 ’20 600w
“Mr Barton has done his work with good feeling and well. In one thing we dissent from him seriously. He quite naturally ascribes Lincoln’s refusal to follow his wife all the way into the Presbyterian fold, or some other, to the weak side of his intellect and character. In all this there is something astray.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p480 Jl 29 ’20 1250w
=BARUCH, BERNARD MANNES.= Making of the reparation and economic sections of the treaty. *$3 Harper 940.314
20–18667
Having been intimately concerned with the creation of the reparation and economic sections of the treaty, the writer, in his introduction to the book, gives an apologetic review of the then existing conditions. The treaty was made, he says, in the still smouldering furnace of human passion. In the reparation clauses the conference was not writing a mere contract of dollars and cents; it was dealing with blood-raw passions still pulsing through peoples’ veins. He concedes that the treaty is severe but also insists that it is a flexible instrument, qualified to help effectuate a just and proper peace, if that desire and purpose be really present. Contents: How the reparation clauses were formed; Drawing the economic clauses; Reparation clauses; Economic clauses; Appendix; Index.
* * * * *
“He writes with more caution and less indignation than Keynes but his conclusion is essentially the same.”
+ =Booklist= 17:139 Ja ’21
“It is straight history, instead of being, like Keynes’s book, a blend of history, literary satire and propaganda.”
+ =Ind= 103:442 D 25 ’20 120w
“Though Mr Baruch is still somewhat under the influence of the pall of Paris, he lifts something of the veil of secrecy, and when he does he speaks with authority, and not as the journalists. It is an invaluable contribution.” L. S. G.
+ − =Nation= 111:506 N 3 ’20 1200w
Reviewed by Alvin Johnson
=New Repub= 25:21 D 1 ’20 1550w
“Mr Baruch seeks to explain, rather than to defend—which is the more enlightening method. His simplicity, candor, and restraint let the reader in to an apprehension of the true facts as he sees them. Where is it, then, that Mr Baruch’s conception of the relations of men and nations fails us and dismays us? Because he counts too low the significance of words. Mr Baruch comforts himself that the parts of the treaty which he hates not less than I do are empty because they are impossible, and harmless because they can never happen. But they have wounded, nevertheless, the public faith of Europe.” J. M. Keynes
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p3 D 4 ’20 3050w
“The author has given a valuable account of the matter; clear, dispassionate, uninvolved. His contentions gain in force through the strictness with which he keeps within the field that he has marked out for himself.”
+ =No Am= 212:859 D ’20 600w
“Should prove a valuable book of reference.”
+ =Outlook= 127:32 Ja 5 ’21 340w
“Mr Baruch’s chapters are brief and direct, while also persuasive to the point of carrying conviction. The atmosphere in which the work was done is well reproduced. This volume will be a necessary part of every public and private library that includes the essential books relating to the making of peace.”
+ =R of Rs= 62:668 D ’20 320w
“His new book is short and concise, but it is in some respects the most illuminating comment upon the treaty that we have seen.”
+ =Spec= 125:778 D 11 ’20 1300w
=BASCOM, LELIA.= Elementary lessons in English idiom. *$2 Appleton 425
20–15172
A work prepared in the Extension division of the University of Wisconsin as a textbook for students in correspondence-study. It is “designed to aid two types of students,—those who are not native Americans but who have had a season of study in night school or elsewhere so that they read and write English a little; and those native Americans who are handicapped by a lack of knowledge of good English usage.” The teaching thruout the book is by examples and exercises for practice. Rules are reserved for a summing up at the end.
=BASDEN, GEORGE THOMAS.= Among the Ibos of Nigeria. il *$5 Lippincott 916.6
20–20653
“The country of the Ibos is a district in British West Africa on the lower Niger immediately above the delta, and mainly on the eastern bank of the river. The people—some of them—are cannibals and addicted to the offering of human sacrifices with every circumstance of cruelty; they eat snakes, except the python which is sacred; their occupations are primitive, farming, fishing, and hunting—all three it will be noticed connected with the necessity for procuring the prime necessity, food. Their customs will be found detailed in this book.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
* * * * *
“There are annoying misprints both in English and Ibo; the map, especially in the southern portion, must be termed misleading, it does not even contain all the names mentioned in the text; but Mr Basden has brought together much interesting material, some of it novel, though in many instances insufficiently localized to be of use to the scientific student. The errors pointed out above need not alarm the general reader, who will find the life of the people set forth in an interesting manner.” N. W. T.
+ − =Ath= p580 O 29 ’20 580w
“It is by a missionary of wide experience, rare open-mindedness, and a real gift of observation. He makes no pretension to literary excellence, but has made a book that is entertaining as well as valuable ethnologically.”
+ =Outlook= 126:470 N 10 ’20 60w
“If we did not begin by crediting Mr Basden with sincerity, we should be convinced of it in a few pages.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p631 S 30 ’20 720w
=BASS, JOHN FOSTER.= Peace tangle. *$4.50 Macmillan 940.314
20–19521
“Mr Bass traces recent diplomatic history from the secret treaties entered into by various nations through the Paris peace conference and the subsequent period. He devotes special chapters to conditions in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, the Balkans, and Turkey. Particular interest attaches to the comment on the League of nations.”—Outlook
* * * * *
“Not so much a study of the treaty itself as Scott or of particular sections of it as Baruch but more an evaluation in terms of actual conditions and hoped for results. Less well organized than Keynes but more detached in spirit (opinions are presented coldly, without any attempt to persuade).”
+ =Booklist= 17:139 Ja ’21
“His book falls short of some of the other accounts, notably that of Keynes, in organization of material, in charm of style and subtlety of argument. In compensation it offers superior evidence of candor, freedom from preconception and party bias and respect for the independence of the reader’s judgment.” Alvin Johnson
+ − =New Repub= 24:330 N 24 ’20 1700w
“We know of no better volume to commend either to the man in the street or to the serious student. The matter reveals a keen observation, a rich experience, and a ripe maturity of judgment.”
+ =Outlook= 126:470 N 10 ’20 330w
“It is the best single book that has been written showing how the peace treaty has actually worked in its application to political and economic conditions.”
+ =R of Rs= 62:668 D ’20 110w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p843 D 9 ’20 100w
=BASSETT, JOHN SPENCER.= Our war with Germany; a history. il *$4 (3c) Knopf 940.373
19–19694
For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.
* * * * *
“Taken all together the account of Professor Bassett is the clearest and best that has yet attempted in one volume the story of our part in the world war. New sources will modify parts of the work, but the main outlines will stand much as this historian has dispassionately presented them. The chief complaint that some readers will make with justice is that the book is placid rather than penetrating or analytical.”
+ − =Am Hist R= 25:737 Jl ’20 650w
“Professor Bassett has written modestly and intelligently in a field in which it would be easy to go far astray, and has attained more than the ‘reasonable accuracy’ that his preface hopes for. No better book is as yet available for the student interested in our participation in the world war, and no other is so detached and historical-minded as this. The least successful portion of the book is that which covers the obscure yet significant leadership of the United States in the development of the ‘single front,’ military and economic.” F: L. Paxson
+ − =Am Pol Sci R= 14:351 My ’20 420w
+ =Booklist= 16:198 Mr ’20
“Carefully studied and judicially written, this book is sure to be one of the useful authorities. In a broad survey of the field, the only notable lack is a consideration of the economic effects of the war and of its financing.” Preserved Smith
+ − =Nation= 110:302 Mr 6 ’20 360w
=BASSETT, SARA WARE.= Paul and the printing press. il *$1.50 (2½c) Little
20–8885
Paul Cameron, president of his class in Burmingham high school, conceives the idea of a school paper. With boyish daring he approaches the leading editor of the town with a business proposition and to the great man’s surprise persuades him into printing the paper. The venture is a success and Paul learns much of modern printing methods as well as something of the history of early manuscript books and of printing. The book is the first volume in the Invention series.
* * * * *
“Miss Bassett has made the story readable and enjoyable. One is not too conscious of the didactic intention while on the other hand her information stands out clearly, and she never allows it to be smothered by the story interest.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Je 30 ’20 150w
=BASSETT, SARA WARE.= Wall between. il *$1.90 Little
20–15702
“A feud of four generations between two New England families is the motif of Sara Ware Bassett’s new romance, ‘The wall between.’ Since the days of Great-Grandfather Webster and Great-Grandfather Howe, the two families have quarreled over who shall keep in repair the stone wall dividing their farms. Ellen Webster, a narrow-minded, vitriolic spinster of seventy-five, and Martin Howe, forty, are the respective heads of the families of this generation. Matters change when Ellen brings her young niece Lucy from the West into the old home. Lucy, who has heard nothing of the feud, makes the acquaintance of Howe’s three timid sisters, and eventually meets him. It follows that the two fall in love. On her death bed, Ellen discovers how matters stand with her niece and neighbor and determines on final revenge. When her will is read it is found that she leaves all her property to Howe provided he repairs the long-disputed wall. Otherwise it is to become the town poor farm. The situation develops into a battle between Howe’s pride and the inclinations of his heart. But love, as usual, finds a way out.”—Springf’d Republican
* * * * *
“A wholesome and pleasant, though not remarkable story that will please girls and women.”
+ =Booklist= 17:70 N ’20
“Her previous novels, if one reads right, were somewhat saccharine, but with growing firmness of touch due to experience in writing ‘The wall between’ is more natural, more real, than its predecessors.” R. D. W.
+ =Boston Transcript= p9 O 16 ’20 160w
“While different from her ‘Cape’ tales, this story is fully as interesting, for, in spite of its artificialities, it is told with understanding of human nature and the perversion of human instincts.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p11a S 26 ’20 320w
=BATES, KATHARINE LEE.= Sigurd our golden collie and other comrades of the road. il *$2 (3c) Dutton 636.7
19–19679
Under the first title we have the biography of a beloved dog, household pet of two professional women, teachers in Wellesley college, who tended him from puppyhood until old age ended his career. The other comrades of the road were birds, a cat, and Hamlet and Polonius, another dog and a parrot. Poems occur between the chapters.
* * * * *
“The grownup lover of pets will enjoy this book of dog, cat and bird biography much as children enjoy their numerous animal books. The writer’s fondness for collies is tempered with a sly delightful humor which relieves the book of sentimentality.”
+ =Booklist= 16:169 F ’20
“She has, in short, made literature out of a dog and enshrined one lovable member of that remarkable race in a work as thoughtful as it is delightful. Sigurd, I believe, will take his place among the canine immortals, along with Greyfriars Bobby, John Muir’s Stikeen, and the great dogs of fiction.” W. A. Dyer
+ =Bookm= 51:575 Jl ’20 750w
“It was almost inevitable that in writing the life-story of Sigurd Miss Bates should have woven into the book so much of the atmosphere of Wellesley that it will take on for the alumnæ of those years the character of an unfading memory.” D. L. M.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ja 28 ’20 1100w
+ =Cleveland= p33 Mr ’20 40w
“It may be that Miss Bates really understands dog nature, but she has not expressed it here.”
− =Nation= 110:861 Je 26 ’20 310w
+ =Outlook= 124:203 F 4 ’20 60w
“We like her writing best when it is most bookish. That is its note. We have other books on our shelves aplenty in which the canine hero plays a more tragic or pathetic or even humorous rôle, but none in which he is more humanly literate than Miss Bates’s Sigurd of the golden fleece.”
+ =Review= 2:135 F 7 ’20 260w
“Cannot fail to please all animal lovers.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p13 F 1 ’20 1000w
=BATTERSBY, HENRY FRANCIS PREVOST (FRANCIS PREVOST, pseud.).= Edge of doom. *$1.75 (2c) Lane
20–7652
A novel with scenes laid in England, East Africa and on the western front. Rumors of Julian Abingdon’s disgraceful conduct in Central Africa, where he has held official position, reach London, together with an unconfirmed rumor of his death. Believing him still alive and desiring to clear his name, his fiancée, Cyllene Moriston, insists on going out to look for him. His cousin, Jim Chaytor, who has always disliked Abingdon, takes charge of her expedition. Cyllene is stricken with fever and is left in the care of German missionaries while Chaytor goes on to find Julian. He finds him alive and well and living voluptuously with native women and hence desiring to remain officially dead. He does not tell Cyllene the truth; marries her himself and is then separated from her by the outbreak of the war. During his absence she meets Julian, finds that her old love is dead, and turns with full hearted devotion to her husband.
* * * * *
“‘The edge of doom’ is a very capable piece of work, serious without being in any way disagreeable, absorbing both on account of the intensity of the emotion, the consciousness of beauty both in emotion and in the physical aspect of things, and the importance of the historic background.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p9 Je 5 ’20 400w
“The book reads very much as though the author had started out to write one kind of a story, then suddenly changed his mind and proceeded to produce another. This is the more deplorable because the second part of the book, the war section, is well done and interesting.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:25 Je 27 ’20 480w
“The story is skilfully told, with a deft, yet sparing use of local colour which helps to carry conviction. It is well worth its place on any bookshelf.”
+ =Sat R= 129:111 Ja 31 ’20 200w
“The novel part cannot be commended as a story. At the same time there is no doubt that the whole book is well written; the dialogue and the narrative skilfully and vividly handled.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p652 N 13 ’19 280w
=BAXTER, ARTHUR BEVERLEY.= Blower of bubbles. *$1.75 (2½c) Appleton
20–1698
Five unusual stories based on the war, with a sparkling iridescent quality remote from, yet not antagonistic to, reality. The title story depicts a delightful, apparently carefree personality, a gentleman, university bred, who has no set vocation in life, is a dilettante in almost everything it is possible to be, and who spends most of his time and energy making unfortunate or gloomy people happy: in other words, blowing bubbles. In spite of his weak heart he contrives to get into the war, is permanently crippled, yet sitting in his invalid’s chair in a picturesque garden on the Isle of Wight, blows brighter, gayer, more luminous bubbles than ever before, and gives one person, at least, a lasting happiness. The other titles are: Petite Simunde; The man who scoffed; The airy prince; Mr Craighouse of New York, satirist.
* * * * *
“All are readable.”
+ =Ath= p1411 D 26 ’19 40w
=Booklist= 16:242 Ap ’20
“The very fact that the actors are of various nationalities affords a wide scope in character drawing and the author has done this work with an incisive delicacy of feeling which one cannot fail to appreciate. Humor is not lacking and forceful, thought-compelling passages add to the graceful style of every story.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Mr 24 ’20 160w
“They are whimsically written. But the regularity with which the various characters undergo a metamorphosis under the stimulus of the patriotic impulse becomes wearisome.”
+ − =Dial= 68:399 Mr ’20 60w
“In this brightly written collection of five short stories we have proof—rather sorely needed—that fiction with the recent great war as a setting can avoid bathos on the one hand and obviously false joviality on the other. One of the best books of unassuming and yet purposeful fiction that has seen the light this season.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:123 Mr 14 ’20 1650w
“Perhaps the last is the best—‘Mr Craighouse of New York, satirist.’ His visit as a typical American to Lord Summersdale makes a very taking story.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p754 D 11 ’19 100w
=BAXTER, ARTHUR BEVERLEY.= Parts men play. *$2 (2c) Appleton
20–20646
Austin Selwyn, an American writer in England, has first hand opportunity, in his intercourse with the family of Lord Durwent, to observe the parasitism of the English aristocracy. The colorful personality of Elise Durwent and her latent protest against the uselessness of her class arouse his interest and love. When the war breaks out he sees in it a hideous wrong into which the people of all countries have been trapped by their ignorance. He embarks on a crusade against this ignorance and writes pacifist literature, which leads to a break with Elise. She declares indignantly that, far from crying out against the infamy and cruelty of the war, women feel the glory of it in their blood. The usual thing happens: Selwyn is gradually convinced of the error of his ways and his subsequent bravery in France wins him Elise.
* * * * *
“When he writes of London society as it was before the world war he exhibits a deft, light touch in drawing character sketches. Later he loses his attitude of detachment and ends in a loud outburst of jingoism which sounds strangely hollow in these disillusioned times.”
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p18 D 4 ’20 80w
“The author wrote another novel, ‘The blower of bubbles,’ which proved that he had a facile style, a whimsical spirit, and the power to divine and portray human nature. This book possesses all those qualities and an original undercurrent of philosophy as well.” Katharine Oliver
+ =Pub W= 98:1890 D 18 ’20 270w
=Springf’d Republican= p5a Ja 23 ’21 150w
“A work of considerable promise. It is crude in parts, but crudeness is only a synonym of unripeness, and Mr Baxter’s literary defects are of a kind that experience can cure. Meanwhile, he has a vitality, a gift for swiftly moving narrative, and a creative power in flinging his characters upon the canvas which augur well for his future development.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p761 N 18 ’20 440w
=BAXTER, LEON H.= Boy bird house architecture. il *$1 Bruce pub. 680
20–7092
Mr Baxter, director of manual training in the public schools of St Johnsbury, Vt., has prepared this book out of his own experience with boy architects. “Each drawing offered is of a proven house, one that has served as a home for some of our songsters and if the directions, here set down, are faithfully followed, equal success will crown the builders’ efforts.” (Author’s preface) Some of the topics covered by the text are: Our friends the birds; Birds that adapt themselves to nesting boxes; Bird house material; Methods of conducting a bird house contest; Bird house day; Winter care of the birds. There are twenty plates with full working drawings for bird houses of various designs.
+ =Booklist= 16:302 Je ’20
+ =School Arts Magazine= 20:41 S ’20 70w
=BAYFIELD, MATTHEW ALBERT.= Measures of the poets. *$2 Macmillan (Cambridge univ. press) 808.1
20–12409
“Mr Bayfield’s aim in ‘The measures of the poets’ is to ‘provide students of English verse with a system of prosody that is on the one hand sound in principle, and on the other not liable to break down when brought to the test of application.’” (Spec) “The broad outlines of Mr Bayfield’s system are fairly adequately apprehended if we blend together our existing notions about a foot in verse and a bar in music. Metre in music is built up out of a succession of equal time divisions marked off by the recurrence of an accent, the accented beat falling at the beginning of each of them. Mr Bayfield considers that the basis of metrical structure in poetry is essentially the same: and he therefore lays it down that the first syllable of every foot must bear an accent. The bulk of English poetry being written in dissyllabic feet or their equivalents, it follows that the typical English foot must be the trochee. The main portion of Mr Bayfield’s primer is devoted to an exposition of the system of scansion which he deduces from this governing perception.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup)
* * * * *
“Mr Bayfield expounds his theory with bold lucidity, and illustrates it with telling examples from every variety of English verse.”
+ =Ath= p1017 O 10 ’19 210w
“Like almost all prosodic theories which look at theory first, Mr Bayfield’s necessitates, even on its own showing, endless easements and epicycles to get it to work at all. There is no plain sailing; in fact, Mr Bayfield would seem to agree with Dr Johnson that ‘pure’ metre is dull and inartistic.” G: Saintsbury
− =Ath= p1150 N 7 ’19 2050w
“Mr Bayfield’s general treatment and scansions are by no means so convincing as those of his predecessors, [Lanier in ‘The science of English verse’ and Thomson in ‘The basis of English rhythm.’]” J. R. Hulbert
− =Mod Philol= 17:727 Ap ’20 200w
“The principle of his scheme is sound, and in the application of it to English verse he has shown, besides the wisdom of his instinct, a careful patience that is beyond praise.”
+ − =Spec= 122:864 D 20 ’19 1050w
“His theory has not cut him off from vital contact with poetry. The things of which he is chiefly aware are the essential things, and to read him is to have the ear quickened to a new enjoyment.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p668 N 20 ’19 1100w
=BAYLEY, HAROLD.= Archaic England. *$7.50 Lippincott 942.01
(Eng ed 20–11405)
“This is in the nature of a sequel to a book which Mr Bayley published some years ago called ‘The lost language of symbolism.’ He has long been an enthusiastic and industrious student of symbolisms and emblems and their hidden meanings, and of esoteric doctrines generally. The present work is copiously illustrated and offers controversial theories as to the peopling of Britain. Mr Bayley, among other things, sees in the Cretan discoveries a wholly new standpoint for the survey of prehistoric civilization. He believes that the Cretans systematically visited Britain, and that men of Trojan race peopled the island.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
* * * * *
“No doubt, Mr Bayley has worked hard and honestly. Use him as a quarry and one will find gold, and, may be, other things. But how accept his doctrine as a whole?” R. R. M.
− + =Ath= p240 F 20 ’20 260w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p22 Ja 8 ’20 120w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p166 Mr 11 ’20 2100w
=BAZALGETTE, LÉON.= Walt Whitman, the man and his work. *$3.50 (2c) Doubleday
20–2834
This work, the author says, was for him not a mere literary enterprise, but the fruit of close and fervent communion with Whitman’s work and character. Speaking of Whitman’s universality he says: “The America which dreams and sings, back of the one which works and invents, has given the world four universal geniuses: Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman.... And among these four figures, one of them more and more dominates the group: it is Walt Whitman.” (Introd.) The translator of the volume from the French, Ellen FitzGerald, attempts an explanation of the American masses’ neglect of Whitman, from the geniuses’ inevitable disregard of “untrained” minds, in deference to whom she has taken it upon herself to abridge M. Bazalgette’s treatment of the New Orleans episode and to lighten his emphasis on the “Leaves of grass” conflict. The book is in eight parts: Origin and youth; The multitudinary life; “Leaves of grass”; The wound dresser; The good gray poet; The invalid; The sage of Camden; The setting sun.
* * * * *
“Some remarkable pen portraits, a little Gallic exuberance at times.”
+ =Booklist= 16:241 Ap ’20
“The Frenchman’s biography, sympathetic and glowingly eloquent as it is, can scarcely rank as an authoritative chronicle of the poet’s life. It possesses, however, multiple values of its own. The translator has taken the liberty of abridging M. Bazalgette’s book. This is regrettable and not easily justified.” J. Black
+ − =Bookm= 51:172 Ap ’20 1100w
Reviewed by James Oppenheim
+ − =Dial= 68:633 My ’20 1350w
“M. Bazalgette communicates an absolute sense of Whitman’s greatness. His book, like his theme, is ample and magnificent.” V. W. B.
+ =Freeman= 1:68 Mr 31 ’20 500w
Reviewed by B: de Casseres
+ =N Y Times= 25:239 My 9 ’20 1350w
“Well informed, and adjusted to all the aspects of his subject, M. Bazalgette has written what is in all points as good a short life of Whitman as a reasonable person could wish. But M. Bazalgette is often illuminating, seldom penetrating.”
+ − =No Am= 211:719 My ’20 680w
“Admirers of Whitman will find it a stimulating and suggestive treatment of the poet from a new angle.”
+ =Outlook= 124:336 F 25 ’20 50w
“The book has been prepared with some care. But M. Bazalgette is inseparable from his subject; his jubilee from page 1 to page 355 is uninterrupted. When the author is too lavish of exclamation points the reader parries with the question mark.”
+ − =Review= 2:310 Mr 27 ’20 450w
“The biography, though rhapsodical rather than critical, will rank high among the scarce half-dozen of impressive books about the poet which have appeared in the quarter century since his death.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 Ap 8 ’20 480w
=BAZETT, L. M.= After-death communications. (Psychic ser.) *$1.60 Holt 134
The communications were received through automatic writing and the author says of them: “Whether these communications can come under the heading of telepathy from the living, or whether as the title suggests, they are partly due to telepathy from discarnate minds, is for the reader to decide.” (Preface) J. Arthur Hill, in his introduction to the book is inclined to attribute them to discarnate agency. Contents: First communications received; Cases where some link with communicators existed; Cases where relations were present; Cases where relations were not present; Character sketches; Special relationships; Erroneous, confused and irrelevant matter; Guides; Supernormal sense-impressions, etc.; The potential value of communication; Index.
* * * * *
=N Y Evening Post= p11 N 6 ’20 120w
=BAZIN, RENÉ FRANÇOIS NICOLAS MARIE.= Pierre and Joseph. *$1.75 Harper
20–7722
The story takes us to an Alsatian village at the outbreak of the war where the German subjects have all remained French at heart. Of the two brothers, Pierre and Joseph Ehrsam, the elder at once decides to flee the country and go to France to enlist, while the younger deems it wise to sacrifice himself in another way, to save the factory and the Ehrsam estate from confiscation by the Germans, by joining his German regiment. Pierre, in the French army makes unfavorable comparisons between French ways and German efficiency and is but slowly won over to complete enthusiasm for the spirit of France. Joseph at the eastern front develops an increasing hatred for the German spirit and when he is sent to the west and faces the necessity of fighting the French, he kills his superior officer and deserts to the French side. The translation is by Frank Hunter Potter.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 17:30 O ’20
“This latest novel of the gifted Frenchman adds not a single leaf to his laurel crown. For the most part, the interpretation is labored, and much space is devoted to moralizing upon the obvious. The general effect of the novel is accentuated by a translation which is awkward and infelicitous.”
− =Cath World= 111:688 Ag ’20 300w
“Interesting in itself, the story has an added interest through what it tells us of some of the events of the war, events which though important have not been much written about.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:264 My 23 ’20 1050w
“In its English dress, ‘Pierre and Joseph’ is not markedly distinguished from several earlier romances of Alsace-Lorraine in wartime, unless by its simplicity and precision.” H. W. Boynton
+ − =Review= 3:45 Jl 14 ’20 450w
=BEAMAN, ARDERN ARTHUR HULME.= Squadroon. il *$2.50 (3c) Lane 940.48
20–14681
The cavalry in the great war was most of the time in little demand, and had to take its turn in the trenches and at digging parties to relieve the infantry. “Towards the end of 1917 ... a horse soldier could hardly pass an infantry detachment on the road without being greeted by ironical cheers and bitter abuse.” (Foreword) But the time came when their prestige was reestablished. The war episodes sketched in the book are the reminiscences of a clergyman attached to a cavalry brigade. Among the contents are: Joining the squadroon; Day marching; The gap; The trench party; The devastated area; The great advance; The last lap.
* * * * *
+ =Ath= p751 Je 4 ’20 100w
“We commend the book most heartily: it is well and simply written, and deserves a wide popularity.”
+ =Sat R= 129:545 Je 12 ’20 50w
“Those who happen not to have read many ‘war books’ of the kind, or not to be tired of them, will find these genial, graphic, fluently-written pages pleasant enough.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p215 Ap 1 ’20 130w
=BEARD, DANIEL CARTER.= American boys’ handybook of camp-lore and woodcraft. il *$3 Lippincott 796
20–21339
This volume of the Woodcraft series is profusely illustrated by the author. The first chapters have to do with outdoor fires under the captions: Fire making by friction; Fire making by percussion; How to build a fire; How to lay a good cooking fire. Other chapters take up: Camp kitchens; Camp food; Packing horses; The use of dogs; Preparing for camping trip; Saddles; Choosing a camp site; Axe and saw; Council grounds and fires; Ritual of the council fire.
* * * * *
“His book is interesting, cheery, practical and constructive.”
+ =Cath World= 112:697 F ’21 110w
“A really valuable and comprehensive volume.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ =N Y Times= p9 D 19 ’20 80w
=BEARD, MARY (RITTER) (MRS CHARLES AUSTIN BEARD).= Short history of the American labor movement. *$1.50 (4c) Harcourt 331.87
20–7573
As the title indicates, the book is intended as a brief and simple story of the labor movement in the United States from the day of independence to the present time. After pointing out that every modern industrial country has a labor movement and that, although there are national peculiarities, it has overleapt national boundaries; that the origin of the movement lies in self-defense; and that it has a deep spiritual and social significance, the author limits herself to a plain statement of the facts in each phase of the movement as it appeared. Contents: Nature and significance of the labor movement; Origin of American trade unions; The century old tactics of labor; Labor’s first political experiments; Return to direct industrial
## action; Industrial panic, political action and utopias; Trade unionism
and the Civil war; A decade of panics, politics and labor chaos; Rise of the American federation of labor; The American federation of labor and politics; Revolutionary philosophies and tactics; Labor and the world war; Index.
* * * * *
“It is well organized, carefully definitive of simplest terms, and adapted to a less advanced student or reader of labor policies than Carlton.”
+ =Booklist= 16:327 Jl ’20
“Mrs Mary Beard has not only supplied the student of the works of Professor Commons and his associates with a text-book admirably lucid and condensed, but she has achieved what is far more difficult in writing a text-book—especially where no text-book exists—a connected and in many ways a dramatic story.” A. L. Dakyns
+ =Freeman= 1:523 Ag 11 ’20 1500w
“Mrs Beard’s book could hardly be better, as a readable and brief summary.” G: Soule
+ =Nation= 111:17 Jl 3 ’20 800w
“Naturally, a large field has been covered in so small a work, but the reader in search of a small volume that will give him the essentials of this history will find this one valuable for the purpose.” James Oneal
+ =N Y Call= p10 Je 13 ’20 370w
+ =R of Rs= 61:671 Je ’20 40w
“An excellent summary of American labor history. The book is based on recent more voluminous works, but the clarity of explanation and the skill in selecting the salient facts of somewhat complicated situations and incidents are largely the author’s own.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p10 My 6 ’20 120w
“In her ‘Short history of the American labor movement’ Mrs Beard performs with interest, competence and wide sympathy a much needed service.”
+ =Survey= 44:313 My 29 ’20 150w
“It gives a clear impression of the ups and downs of a movement which in one form or another goes back to colonial times. But its value is impaired by the author’s laudable desire for brevity. Her book is so general that it gives no sense of the real life and color of the labor movement and but little understanding of the contending philosophies within it. So important a phase of the modern labor movement as the development of the Amalgamated clothing workers is not even mentioned.” N. T.
+ − =World Tomorrow= 3:189 Je ’20 180w
“The book preserves an admirably sane and restrained tone to the end.” W: B. Walling
+ =Yale R= n s 10:214 O ’20 380w
=BEAUMONT, ROBERTS.= Union textile fabrication. (Pitman’s textile industries ser.) il *$7.50 Pitman 677
A work dealing with the British textile industry. The preface states: “‘Union textile fabrication’ touches, in its technological aspects and interests, the many grades and branches of spun and woven manufacture.... The subject, when thus viewed, assumes proportions and bearings of paramount significance to the practitioner, the manufacturer, and the investigator, whether distinctly associated with the cotton, the wool, the flax, or the silk trade.” The book is made up of three sections: Bi-fibred manufactures; Compound-yarn fabrics; Woven unions; and the illustrations consist of “numerous original diagrams, sectional drawings, and photographic reproductions of spun and woven specimens in the text.” The author was formerly professor of textile industries, Leeds university.
* * * * *
“The book is well printed, neatly illustrated, and will be found valuable by all who are engaged in these branches of the textile industry.”
+ =Engineer= 130:281 S 17 ’20 360w
=BEAVER, WILFRED N.= Unexplored New Guinea. il *$5 Lippincott 919.5
(Eng ed 20–8650)
“This interesting book is concerned with the primitive races of western Papua, where the author, a young Australian, acted as a resident magistrate for ten years before the war. Professor Haddon, in a preface, declares that Mr Beaver’s death in Flanders, where he was serving with the Australian corps, was a great loss to anthropology.” (Spec) “His narrative is an account of personal experiences along the Bamu and Fly rivers; and he makes good his claim to be an explorer. Little is known of the country behind the coastline; means of transport have to be improvized and the inhabitants are savages. In fact, savage is a mild term, for many of them are cannibals and all apparently head-hunters. Mr Beaver enumerates such of their customs as came under his notice, and throws out suggestions as to their origin, but without committing himself to any theory.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup)
* * * * *
“Mr Beaver’s descriptions of the customs of the Goaribari, Bamu, and other tribes are remarkably interesting; and Dr Gunnar Landtmann has added a noteworthy chapter upon the religious beliefs and practices of the Kiwai-speaking natives.”
+ =Ath= p1019 O 10 ’19 250w
“In short, considered from the standpoint of what Sir Richard Temple would term an applied anthropology, Mr Beaver’s book is eminently useful and instructive. Lack of space allows but a passing reference to his important chapter on property and inheritance.” R. R. M.
+ =Ath= p1117 O 31 ’19 950w
“An interesting and sound ethnological study, which is also an object lesson on the administration of aboriginal tribes by those who would introduce Caucasian culture.”
+ =Booklist= 17:25 O ’20
“This is one of those books, by no means rare from British pens, that make the American ethnologist green with envy. It suggests what stores of information on tribes now extinct or acculturated to the white man’s ways might have been garnered by our Indian agents if they had been selected from the class represented by Mr Beaver.” R. H. L.
+ =New Repub= 23:26 Je 2 ’20 900w
+ =Outlook= 124:79 Ja 14 ’20 40w
=R of Rs= 61:221 F ’20 80w
“The author had the gift, not common among anthropologists, of writing well and of describing savage tribes with sympathy and humour. The book abounds in curious anecdotes.”
+ =Spec= 122:584 N 1 ’19 180w
“Mr Beaver is no globe-trotter concerned to make a good story out of a few days spent in a strange land. He is absorbed in a subject that is organically interesting, and he is content to let it produce its own effect. Unintentionally he has framed an indictment of mechanical progress.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p544 O 9 ’19 1900w
=BECK, ERNEST GEORGE.= Structural steelwork. il *$7.50 (*21s) Longmans 691.7
20–10621
“The book contains technical information for the designing and constructing of ordinary steel-framed buildings. ‘The principal endeavor throughout has been to make the work broadly suggestive rather than particular or exhaustive.’ (Preface) The appendix contains tables useful for reference. Partly reprinted from the Mechanical World and The Engineer.”—Booklist
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:16 O ’20
=N Y P L New Tech Bks= p6 Ja ’20 70w
=BECK, HERBERT MAINS.= Aliens’ text book on citizenship; laws of naturalization of the United States. $1; pa 50c McKay 353
19–6644
“In preparing this book the aim has been to provide means of thoroughly and quickly acquiring the knowledge necessary to pass the examinations for naturalization and to assist those who have been deprived of the advantages of our modern public schools.” (Preface) The steps required for naturalization are first set forth. Then follows the texts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States and a final section is given up to questions and answers on laws and government. There is an index. The author is chief of naturalization, Camden county courts, Camden, N.J.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 17:9 O ’20
“This business-like explanation of the law’s provisions is infinitely more satisfactory and useful than the mushy, sentimental and verbose expository books for the foreign-born of which there are so many.” B. L.
+ − =Survey= 43:408 Ja 10 ’20 250w
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 16:233 D ’20 60w
=BECK, JAMES MONTGOMERY.= Passing of the new freedom. *$1.50 Doran 940.314
20–18420
In part in the form of imaginary conversations, the book discusses the essential nature of President Wilson’s policies. The dialogues, in which the chief personages of the Peace conference take part, abounds in biting sarcasm. In the first dialogue Mr Wilson is made to appear upon the scene literally exuding “omniscience,” and to expound his new freedom with sounding grandiloquence. In his final estimate of Wilson the author says: “Already the world is conscious of a distinct revaluation of that interesting and complex personality, and it must be sorrowfully added that this revaluation adds nothing to his prestige.” The chapters are: Mr Wilson explains the new freedom; The old freedom; “It might have been”; The apostle of the new freedom.
* * * * *
“The use of imaginary conversation as a means of plucking the mystery out of the heart of the Peace conference may be questioned as to its integrity, but Mr Beck has employed the medium with such rare degree of skill that no one will question its effectiveness for literary purposes.”
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p24 O 23 ’20 190w
“Mr Beck has produced in these dialogues a kind of literature that is not often written after so much cool, thoughtful preparation, and that is seldom found to be, as in this case, profound and exact as well as amusing.”
+ =No Am= 212:859 D ’20 850w
“‘The passing of the new freedom’ gives him some claims to rank as a political satirist—that rare bird in American letters.” E. L. Pearson
+ =Review= 3:419 N 3 ’20 140w
=BECKER, CARL LOTUS.= United States; an experiment in democracy. *$2.50 Harper 342.7
20–13591
The book gives all the outstanding facts of our political history with such impartiality as to appeal to the reader’s critical faculty and to challenge independent conclusions. A “habitual dislike of thinking” the author holds to be a characteristic of Americans, which at the present time exposes them to the danger of mistaking the “form for the substance of democracy” and may prevent America from being in the future what it was in the past—“a fruitful experiment in democracy.” Contents: America and democracy; The origins of democracy in America; The new world experiment in democracy; Democracy and government; New world democracy and old world intervention; Democracy and free land; Democracy and slavery; Democracy and immigration; Democracy and education; Democracy and equality.
* * * * *
“It is to be hoped that the inaccuracies will not seriously injure the usefulness of a readable book, which is on the whole filled with sagacious comment and treats in a telling way a number of traits and tendencies of American democracy.” A. C. McL.
+ − =Am Hist R= 26:337 Ja ’21 560w
+ =Booklist= 17:10 O ’20
“The author has given a valuable sketch of the political history of America.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 18 ’20 580w
“Keen, clear, impartial analysis of American institutions and traditions, reminding the reader in many ways of Bryce’s ‘American commonwealth.’”
+ =Ind= 103:292 S 4 ’20 30w
Reviewed by C: A. Beard
=Nation= 111:sup416 O 13 ’20 450w
“Interesting, and would be valuable as a brief and rapid résumé of America’s early history and political problems were it not for one fatal defect. It lacks that aspect of detachment which we used to expect from college professors in dealing with debatable topics. Such a book must be read with the same caution with which the wise man reads the current political press during the presidential campaign.”
+ − =Outlook= 126:334 O 20 ’20 270w
=Wis Lib Bul= 16:232 D ’20 50w
=BECKWITH, ISBON THADDEUS.= Apocalypse of John. *$4 Macmillan 228
19–16729
“This book is a veritable encyclopedia of information regarding the interpretation of Revelation. A series of introductory studies deals at length with a history of eschatological hopes among Hebrews, Jews, and Christians. An extended description is given of apocalyptic writings among the Jews. There is also a detailed account of the occasion, purpose and unity of John’s apocalypse. Other topics discussed minutely are the literary characteristics of the author, the content of his composition, the permanent and the transitory elements in his book, the main features of his theology, the different methods that have been used in the interpretation of the book, its circulation and canonical recognition in the early church, the question of authorship, the two Johns of the Asian church, the meaning of the ‘beast,’ and the condition of the Greek text of the book. The commentary proper, which embraces slightly less than half the volume, is of the usual analytical and statistical type.”—Bib World
* * * * *
+ − =Bib World= 54:428 Jl ’20 550w
“It is a real service to religion and sanity when a scholar equipped with common sense as well as knowledge provides a good commentary on the book of Revelation. This has been done by Professor Beckwith. The book fills a real need.”
+ =Nation= 111:163 Ag 7 ’20 250w
“A splendid treatise it is upon a splendid book, and a fresh honor to American scholarship.”
+ =Outlook= 124:29 Ja 7 ’20 280w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p243 Ap 15 ’20 70w
=BEERBOHM, MAX=, comp.[2] Herbert Beerbohm Tree: some memories of him and his art. il *$7 Dutton
“The volume is at once a biography and a tribute. The first half of the book is written by Lady Tree. After short contributions by Sir Herbert Tree’s two daughters and Max Beerbohm (who, it will be remembered, is his half-brother) come A sketch, by Edmund Gosse; A tribute, by Louis N. Parker; From the stalls, by Desmond MacCarthy; Herbert Tree—my friend, by Gilbert Parker; From the point of view of a playwright, by Bernard Shaw; and An open letter to an American friend, by W. L. Courtney. By no means least in interest are the appendices, which contain Sir Herbert’s ‘Impressions of America,’ as written for London papers in 1916 and 1917, and some extracts from his ‘Notebooks,’ as well as the speeches made at the unveiling of the memorial tablet at His Majesty theater and the sermon preached by the Bishop of Birmingham at the memorial service.”—Springf’d Republican
* * * * *
“Why did not Mr Max Beerbohm give us a whole book himself instead of a ‘carved cherrystone’ called ‘From a brother’s stand-point’? That, no doubt, is his business. But why did he not persuade (or bully) Lady Tree into writing the whole work and inserting his and Mr Shaw’s contributions at the appropriate places? Certainly the half of it which she has contributed under the title ‘Herbert and I’ is delightful, in style and individuality.” D. L. M.
+ − =Ath= p519 O 15 ’20 880w
“When all is said this book serves its purpose. It is readable; it contains the facts; it gives personal anecdotes; it has a host of portraits in character and out; it provides a variety of points of view.”
+ =N Y Times= p7 D 19 ’20 1250w
“A most interesting book about a great actor. Throughout, it is informal and lively.” E. L. Pearson
+ =Review= 3:648 D 29 ’20 90w
“Lady Tree’s portrait of Tree is the most vivid and the most life-like the world is likely to possess.”
+ =Sat R= 130:318 O 16 ’20 920w
“The whole book—all the contributions from all the different sources are in the mass so sparkling, that it is clear that for so many hands to write so amusingly, they must have been inspired by a thoroughly witty and amusing subject.”
+ =Spec= 125:569 O 30 ’20 1150w
=Springf’d Republican= p8 O 23 ’20 40w
=Springf’d Republican= p8 Ja 8 ’21 150w
“It is an amusing macédoine, never insipid, giving all the flavours of the subject, without perhaps any one flavour that can be called dominant. And that is right, for Tree’s was a ‘mixed’ temperament, and his art was a good deal ‘mixed’ too.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p633 S 30 ’20 1350w
=BEERBOHM, MAX.= Seven men. il *$3.50 Knopf
20–19582
Six men and the author make seven. The book contains six imaginary sketches of six imaginary men: Enoch Soames; Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton; James Pethel; A. V. Laider; “Savonarola” Brown; with an appendix of drawings of these men by the author. As the drawings are caricatures so are the pen sketches satires on human vanities, weaknesses and foibles, literary and otherwise.
* * * * *
“In none is the author’s authentic touch wholly absent, but there are tedious pages.”
+ − =Ath= p1138 O 31 ’19 80w
“Our only regret on finishing the book is that he might have paraded his seventh, and after all his most amusing puppet, himself, a little more lavishly.” S. W.
+ =Ath= p1186 N 14 ’19 720w
“The motif of each story in ‘Seven men’ is slight, the working out of it spread thin—very thin.” C. K. H.
− + =Boston Transcript= p6 D 4 ’20 480w
+ =Nation= 111:785 D 29 ’20 560w
“Another thing that gives feature to four of the five stories in ‘Seven men’ is their author’s love of design. Even upon his essays this love has left its mark, less distinct upon whole essays than upon single pages now and then.” P. L.
+ =New Repub= 21:386 F 23 ’20 1500w
“Max is more than a humorist—he is an ironist. His irony is exquisite in its nuances, a carefully wrought method of workmanship that grows almost precieuse at times. ‘Seven men’ is assuredly one of the most amusing books of the year. It will recapture an undefinable atmosphere that could only go with youth that was audacious and laughable, and, by strange flashes, poignantly serious.” H. S. Gorman
+ =N Y Times= p9 Ja 2 ’21 2150w
+ − =Sat R= 128:465 N 15 ’19 240w
“Not even a good comedy is so rare as genuine satire, and when an example of the latter is produced some indulgence in superlatives may well be excused. In the case of Mr Max Beerbohm’s new volume, which brilliantly achieves what ‘Zuleika Dobson’ as conspicuously missed it is difficult to restrain praise within the bounds of judgment, for its beneficent, limpid ridicule is an undiluted joy.”
+ =Spec= 122:19 Ja 3 ’20 1500w
“The fragrant quality of the book, the solemn malice of the papers on Brown and A. V. Laider; the imaginative subtlety of the account of Enoch Soames, and the glorious remedy of the rivalry between Braxton and Maltby—they all show Max at his best.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p13a Ja 25 ’20 270w (Reprinted from London Observer)
“Not only are his characters interesting in themselves but Mr Beerbohm depicts them with such skill that the book is a welcome relief from the work of less accomplished writers.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 Ja 3 ’21 300w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p627 N 6 ’19 810w
=BEERS, HENRY AUGUSTIN.=[2] Connecticut wits and other essays. *$2.25 Yale univ. press 814
20–22823
“Mr Henry A. Beers’s ‘Connecticut wits’ consists of eleven brief literary essays on subjects whose diversity is undisguised. He has found nothing in the tradition or the atmosphere of his Yale habitat to discourage the inclusion of an essay on Cowley and an essay on Riley in the same volume.” (Review) “He unearths Joel Barlow and those other neglected spirits of old Connecticut; and then allows his fancy to range over such themes as the poetry of the cavaliers, Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Thackeray and Sheridan.” (Freeman)
* * * * *
“In manner, these essays are scholarly, informative, and suavely graceful.” L. B.
+ =Freeman= 2:358 D 22 ’20 170w
Reviewed by Brander Matthews
+ =N Y Times= p2 Ja 16 ’21 1150w
“Scholarship and humor are admirably blended in these essays.”
+ =Outlook= 126:470 N 10 ’20 30w
“Mr Beers is a clear expositor, is at ease with facts, and can make them agreeable by almost imperceptible departures from the jogtrot of chronicle. Without humor, he has something of the buoyancy of humor.”
+ =Review= 3:506 N 24 ’20 180w
“In his essays there is no trace of a professional tendency to carry on with the class room manner in one’s relations with the world beyond the class room.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ja 31 ’21 310w
=BEGBIE, HAROLD.= Life of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation army. 2v il *$10.50 Macmillan
20–5263
In the preface to this life of the founder of the Salvation army, the author says: “William Booth is likely to remain for many centuries one of the most signal figures in human history. Therefore, to paint his portrait faithfully for the eyes of those who come after us—a great duty and a severe responsibility—has been my cardinal consideration in preparing these pages. Only when circumstances insisted have I turned from my attempt at portraiture to examine documents which will one day be employed by the historian of the Salvation army.” The work opens with an account of social conditions in England at the time of William Booth’s birth and reflections on the probable effects of his early surroundings on his mind and character. Volume 1 covers the years up to 1881 and volume 2 continues the story to his death in 1912. There are a number of portraits and other illustrations and an index.
* * * * *
“The world may be divided into people who pray with General Booth, people who are angry with General Booth, and people who turn their face away and look out of the window. Mr Begbie, unfortunately, seems to have considered that it was necessary for his official biographer to pray perpetually with the General, and his 1,000 pages of biography even conform to the tradition of prayer in their repetitions, vagueness, and verbosity.” L. W.
− =Ath= p365 Mr 19 ’20 1800w
+ =Booklist= 16:343 Jl ’20
Reviewed by O. L. Joseph
+ =Bookm= 52:76 S ’20 550w
“There can be no doubt that Mr Begbie has laid us all under immense obligation through the unusual blend of candor, insight, and reverence with which he has limned the picture of this noble soul. And yet we must confess to a feeling of disappointment. At important places the story lacks clarity. Perhaps the most serious disappointment of all is the paucity of reference to General Booth’s immediate touch with the outcast. We miss the bugles and the tears of the Army too much.” A. W. Vernon
+ − =Nation= 111:507 N 3 ’20 2000w
“Mr Begbie has done his work well. We could have dispensed with some of his own observations concerning Darwin, Bergson, Nietzsche, and other figures of interest which are unhelpful to the story and whose omission might have sensibly reduced the size of the volumes. But where he has been content with simple narration of events and the selection of letters and writings, he has proved himself a good biographer.”
+ − =Nation [London]= 26:778 Mr 6 ’20 2100w
“Every small detail is entered into sympathetically and fully. This is a human document worth the reading.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:191 Ap 18 ’20 120w
“The life-story of the man who created the Salvation army, written with a sympathy and understanding such as Mr Begbie puts in it, is an extraordinarily welcome book.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:210 Ap 25 ’20 2200w
“Mr Begbie’s life of William Booth would be for the general reader twice as good if it were half as long.”
+ − =Outlook= 125:679 Ag 18 ’20 3500w
“For the general reader there are rather too many ‘interesting cases’ of conversion described in the more or less technical diction of revivalism, too much journalism in the way of press clippings and tributes from royalty. But the record as a whole is an inspiring one of heroic achievement.”
+ − =Review= 2:680 Je 30 ’20 680w
+ =R of Rs= 62:334 S ’20 130w
“These portly tomes on the founder of the Salvation army are torrential in their eloquence and typhoon-like in their denunciations. They resemble nothing so much as an exceptionally lively rally at the Army headquarters, with the penitent-form in full view. Apart from his exuberance, Mr Begbie has an interesting tale to tell.”
+ − =Sat R= 129:230 Mr 6 ’20 1150w
“Though to the modern man this modern story has more to say than most of the annals of hagiology, it is as a romance, as a love story, that William Booth’s ‘Life’ is perhaps most to be valued. The pawnbroker’s assistant and the half-invalid girl from Brixton are the hero and heroine of a love romance which for passionate intensity, for sublimity, for tempestuous vicissitude, stands head and shoulders above the tales of Paris and Helen, of Tristram and Iseult.”
+ =Spec= 124:584 My 1 ’20 1600w
“The biography is a thorough, exhaustive, vividly personal piece of work.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p10 Ja 14 ’21 530w
“In spite of a tendency to repetition, his book will be welcomed widely as the good thing which it undeniably is—a book frankly written and free from prejudice or exaggeration.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p121 F 19 ’20 1850w
=BELL, JOHN KEBLE (KEBLE HOWARD, pseud.).= Peculiar major. *$1.75 (2½c) Doran
19–15567
“An almost incredible story” says the subtitle, and so it is. The major had been given a ring by an old Turkish priest in ransom for his life. This ring was found to possess the magic property of making its bearer invisible. It first brought the major into repute as a lunatic, then into all manner of scrapes and out again and so from one Arabian nights’ entertainment into another until the war was over and we leave him returned to England and in the arms of his best-beloved.
* * * * *
=Boston Transcript= p4 My 26 ’20 300w
“Mr Howard has produced a book that will be a welcome relief from much of the dreary fiction of the day.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:71 F 8 ’20 600w
“A book of irresponsible fun.”
+ =Outlook= 124:336 F 25 ’20 70w
“We thought the humours of the ring that makes the wearer invisible had certainly been pretty well worked out by now. But this was a delusion.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p414 Jl 31 ’19 100w
=BELL, WALTER GEORGE.= Great fire of London in 1666. il *$6 Lane 942.1
20–19932
The book comes with forty-one illustrations including plans and drawings, reproductions of English and foreign prints, and photographs. It is the first authentic account of the fire resulting from thorough historic research. The sources have largely been manuscript and the subject matter includes measures taken for meeting the distress occasioned by the catastrophe, the temporary housing of the citizens, the restoration of trade and the work of rebuilding. Among the appendices are letters from residents in London and contemporary accounts (English and foreign) describing the great fire. There are also notes, a list of authorities consulted and an index.
* * * * *
“In every chapter sidelights are cleverly thrown upon the habits and daily lives of the rather unpractical citizens.” E. G. C.
+ =Ath= p613 N 5 ’20 1200w
+ =Outlook= 126:654 D 8 ’20 70w
“Mr Bell had, of course, previously proved himself a scholarly and responsible historian, a good literary craftsman, and an excellent guide to old London. Here we have all his qualities at their best, lighted up with an enthusiasm which good Londoners at any rate will find exceedingly sympathetic. Now and then, perhaps, he allows his fervour to run away with him.”
+ =Sat R= 130:320 O 16 ’20 640w
“We commend Mr Bell’s excellent book, with its wealth of new material and its many illustrations and maps, to all who are interested in the history of London.”
+ =Spec= 125:403 S 25 ’20 1850w
“The book is well and accurately referenced throughout.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p609 S 23 ’20 1900w
=BELL, WALTER GEORGE.= Unknown London. il *$1.50 Lane 914.21
20–5387
“In the eighteen essays which make up this book—for most of them are sufficiently personal to be given that name—is nothing that is not interesting. Mr Bell has chosen, for the most part, from among those antiquities of which everybody has heard but of which most people know nothing. His ‘Unknown London’ deals with very familiar things—with such things as Domesday book, the shrine of Edward the confessor, London stone, the wax works in the abbey, the Roman baths, the bells of St Clements, the bones of the mummy of Men-Kau-Ra in the British museum, and London wall.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup D 11 ’19
* * * * *
=Ath= p734 Je 4 ’20 1400w
=Ath= p763 Je 11 ’20 1250w
+ =N Y Times= 25:279 My 30 ’20 800w
“His book, while necessarily desultory, is readable and full of information gathered at first hand.”
+ =Outlook= 124:657 Ap 14 ’20 70w
=R of Rs= 61:559 My ’20 100w
“If Mr Bell is so human and hearty an antiquary it is that in him the antiquary and the journalist are admirably joined. The one gives to his book the gusto of an enthusiast. The other prevents him from ever forgetting, in his accumulation of knowledge, the art of interesting others.”
+ =Sat R= 128:492 N 22 ’19 950w
=Spec= 123:585 N 1 ’19 110w
=Springf’d Republican= p10 Jl 1 ’20 170w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p615 O 30 ’19 60w
“The merit of his book is that the stories are retold here in a simple, personal, and most attractive way. From first to last Mr Bell is an admirable guide to old London, an enthusiast, well stored, humorous and unfailingly entertaining.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p731 D 11 ’19 950w
=BELLAIRS, CARLYON WILFROY.= Battle of Jutland; the sowing and the reaping. il *$5 Doran 940.45
(Eng ed 20–8002)
Lord Jellicoe has written his own account of the Jutland battle. This
## book is by one of the critics of his policy, who says: “The ban on
discussion, which was felt by many as applying right up to the time of the surrender of the German fleet, no longer exists. Nothing that can be done now can remedy the past; but much that can be said may safeguard the future. Hence this book, which must stand or fall in proportion to its influence on future thought and action. It is not intended to be any more than a critical survey. It is not a full history of the battle of Jutland, for the policy of secrecy pursued by the Admiralty, and the failure to hold an investigation, have made an accurate history impossible for the time being.” (Preface) The book is illustrated with diagrams and there is an appendix containing a chronology of the battle; also an index.
* * * * *
“It has the authoritativeness that will give it value to historians.”
+ =Booklist= 17:23 O ’20
=Review= 2:677 Je 30 ’20 1400w
“For the general reader it has less value than for the naval expert. Yet it is an interesting example of the kind of criticism which seems to be encouraged among British naval officers, not for the sake of mere controversy but in order to draw conclusions that may be useful in the future.”
+ =R of Rs= 61:670 Je ’20 120w
“We do not quarrel with Captain Bellairs’s main conclusion, ... but we could wish that his tone did not sometimes suggest that he fails to be judicial.”
+ − =Spec= 124:277 F 28 ’20 1300w
“If his captious tone be ignored, there is much in Commander Bellairs’s criticism in his more general chapters on the sowing which is well said and is well worth saying. But we cannot commend his tone and temper; and for the reasons we have given we can attach very little weight to his onslaught on Lord Jellicoe.”
− + =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p115 F 19 ’20 1700w
=BELLOC, HILAIRE.= Europe and the faith. $2.25 Paulist press 940
20–15729
“Mr Belloc’s essay may be regarded as having a twofold aim, although, to the mind of its author, this aim appears to be one and indivisible. The first, and more narrowly historic aim of the essay, is to present a new picture of the decline of the centralized Roman empire and the subsequent building up of Europe, and the second, more obviously philosophic aim, is to account for the modern European consciousness in terms of (1) the Catholic faith and (2) the reformation. To Mr Belloc these two objectives are not really distinct. An account of Europe is an account of the Catholic faith, and an account of the Catholic faith is an account of Europe.”—Ath
* * * * *
“The most convinced opponent of Mr Belloc’s views of the historian’s qualifications will probably agree instantly that an acquaintance with the Catholic faith is necessary to writing a history of Europe, although he may not agree that the historian must be a Catholic. But the strangest part of Mr Belloc’s assumption is that he regards this condition as sufficient. We feel that Mr Belloc, although a Catholic, has not understood European history, and that he does not understand the modern European consciousness.” J. W. N. S.
− =Ath= p406 S 24 ’20 1150w
“If many points of detail are not new, the explanation of their import and bearing is original. In some cases the author’s critical examination of sources is particular and minute.”
+ =Cath World= 112:535 Ja ’21 900w
“Mr Belloc writes with great earnestness. One could wish that the solution of civilization’s difficulties were as simple as he judges it to be; and that for the strength of his argument history were as universally confirmatory of his preconceived thesis as it seems to him.” Williston Walker
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p9 O 23 ’20 950w
“Our real objection to him is not that he has twisted history to his own view—everybody does that—but that he has given us an incomplete book, and even on his own showing he has left out the vital part. He discusses at length the unified Roman state of Europe. He discusses at length the unified Roman church of Europe. But he omits to discuss the relations between the two.”
− + =Sat R= 130:338 O 23 ’20 1150w
“It is needless to say that from Mr Belloc’s whole conception of Protestantism we profoundly dissent. He cannot conceive of men opening their eyes and realising that they were serving an institution and not the cause for which the institution stood. This fatal lack of insight and comprehension effectually disqualifies him from giving the impartial presentation of European history which he is desirous of exhibiting, and almost completely nullifies the graphic force and admirable clarity of his narrative.”
− + =Spec= 125:858 D 24 ’20 1050w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p603 S 16 ’20 30w
“He has the courage of his consistency and the merit of a principle; but neither is adequate to the perplexities of the modern world.”
− + =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p661 O 14 ’20 2100w
=BEMAN, LAMAR TANEY=, comp. Selected articles on the compulsory arbitration and compulsory investigation of industrial disputes. 4th ed, rev and enl (Debaters’ handbook ser.) *$2.25 Wilson, H. W. 331.1
20–18153
Altho issued as a revised edition of the handbook on compulsory arbitration first published in 1911, this is practically a new work. The explanatory note states: “This volume is compiled according to the general plan of the Debaters’ handbook series, but it differs from other members of the series in that it covers two questions.... In this case the two questions are closely related, and much of the literature deals with both, so that it is impracticable to present them in separate volumes and yet impossible to combine them into one question.... The volume contains a full general bibliography revised to the date of this issue, but not separated into affirmative and negative references.... It also contains briefs and reprints of the best material on both sides of each question.”
* * * * *
=Booklist= 17:165 Ja ’21
Reviewed by S. M. Lowenthal
+ − =Survey= 45:672 F 5 ’21 390w
=BENÉT, STEPHEN VINCENT.= Heavens and earth. *$2 Holt 811
20–21994
This collection opens with a long poem in two parts, Two visions of Helen followed by Chariots and horsemen; The tall town; Apples of Eden; The kingdom of the mad. The tall town is made up of poems of New York.
* * * * *
“So many moods and themes spread over the compass of this book, riotous and rapturous, whimsical and ironic, and undulating on waves of swift and thrilling music make ‘Heavens and earth’ an enjoyment to those who admire poetry when it is first of all music and imagination, and may be after these anything in the way of subject and ideal.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ =Boston Transcript= p4 D 29 ’20 1300w
“He has a swirling dexterity in syntax and rhythm, and practices a gorgeous, hot impressionism.”
+ − =Nation= 112:86 Ja 19 ’21 60w
“Originality marks his work in spite of the intimation that his themes are somewhat threadbare. He possesses a virility that is manifest at all times and a delight in swinging measures and emphatic rhymes.” H. S. Gorman
+ =N Y Times= p11 Ja 9 ’20 100w
=BENET, WILLIAM ROSE.= Moons of grandeur. *$2 Doran 811
20–19072
This collection of poems is reprinted from contributions to various magazines. With a few exceptions the poet takes his inspiration from history: the renaissance, ancient Egypt, medieval England furnishing him with subjects. Some of the titles are: Gaspara Stampa; Legend of Michelotto; Niccolo in exile; The triumphant Tuscan; Michelangelo in the fish-market; The ballad of Taillefer; The priest in the desert; Dust of the plains.
* * * * *
“The rich color and vigor of his poetry have caught some of the brilliance and romance of these times. The vocabulary and allusions make demands upon the reader which to many will be a serious drawback.”
+ − =Booklist= 17:104 D ’20
“A poet so fertile and diversified is bound to be interesting, and one cannot but recognize Mr Benet’s gifts of streaming phrase and bannered fancy; at the same time one often misses the clear, strong note of nature, often feels the absence from this work of actual blood and bone.”
+ − =Nation= 112:86 Ja 19 ’21 100w
“The vigor, the individuality, the natural sources of growth and development in his work, deserve the first word. Mr Benet’s limitations in making the renaissance, in its essence, live again are inherent in his method and approach. There was a roundness of gesture in these years which is missed by nervous actions and pouncing words.” Geoffrey Parsons
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p8 Ja 8 ’21 720w
“In ‘Moons of grandeur’ he includes ten such poems that may be ranked among quite the best things he has done. It is apparent in this book that he has grown greatly in stature as a poet. An extravagance that was once fatal to him as an artist at times has been finely curbed and turned into channels where it becomes a virtue.” H. S. Gorman
+ =N Y Times= p11 Ja 9 ’21 480w
“Mr Benet’s poems possess the essential qualities of beauty and imagination.”
+ =Review= 3:419 N 3 ’20 10w
“In these pictures of renaissance Italy Mr Benet proves his possession of rhythm, of knowledge, of an allusiveness as ingathering as a scythe, of energy, of a lambent and vibrant picturesqueness, of the gait and swing, if not the soul, of passion. ‘Moons of grandeur,’ with all its attractions, errs somewhat in the obscuration of the rhyme.”
+ − =Review= 3:654 D 29 ’20 290w
=BENET, WILLIAM ROSE.= Perpetual light. *$1.35 Yale univ. press 811
19–25952
“A memorial to the poet’s wife, who died early in 1919. ‘This verse is published in her memory,’ says the poet in a foreword, ‘because I wish to keep together the poetry she occasioned and enable those who loved her—and they were a great many—to know definitely what she was to me.’” (Springf’d Republican) “Some of the poems are reprinted from former books of Mr Benet, and a few of the others have appeared in American periodicals.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup)
* * * * *
“Mr Benet has a great command of rich language and rich rhythms, and many of his poems are of a high literary value.”
+ =Ath= p194 Ap 9 ’20 80w
“A tribute full of deep and delicate feeling.”
+ =Booklist= 16:122 Ja ’20
“Poems of much delicate beauty, tenderness and deep feeling.”
+ =Cleveland= p85 S ’20 30w
“Mr Benet has written no better lyrics than some of those included in this volume. They are both brave and simple.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:173 Ap 11 ’20 180w
“Mr Benet has given his best to this little book.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p15a Ja 18 ’20 200w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p783 D 25 ’19 60w
“The dignity, the courage, the faith, the aspiration of these verses are like a beacon in this time of unrest and uncertainty.” E: B. Reed
+ =Yale R= n s 10:205 O ’20 220w
=BENGE, EUGENE J.= Standard practice in personnel work. il *$3 Wilson, H. W. 658.7
20–102
A work which aims to cover the subject of personnel work thoroly, showing what the standard practice at present is. “The author has attempted to preserve an impartiality of viewpoint, not by evading frank statement of conditions, but rather by presenting the pros and cons on each side of the labor question.” (Preface) Daniel Bloomfield, editor of the three volumes on industrial relations, contributes a foreword. Contents: The personnel audit; Job analysis; Study of the community; Labor turnover and labor loss; Organizing the personnel department; The employment process; Selection by mental and skill tests; Methods of rating ability; Education and training; Health supervision; Maintenance of the working force; Incentives and wages; Employee representation; Record keeping in the personnel department; Personnel research; Index.
=BENNET, ROBERT AMES.= Bloom of cactus. il *$1.50 (3c) Doubleday
20–7647
Jack Lennon goes prospecting for a lost copper mine in the Arizona desert. He encounters a fair amazon who, at the risk of her own safety, tricks him into becoming a partner to her scheme of rescuing her weak, drunken father from the clutches of a criminal white brute, and “Dead Hole, dad’s ranch” from marauding renegade Indians. She succeeds and so does Jack, after facing incredible dangers, cruelty and all-round slaughter, for Carmena becomes his own dearly beloved. She proves her metal by not only fighting her foes in the flesh but her own jealousy of her much more femininely frail, clinging and pretty foster-sister, Elsie.
=BENNETT, ARNOLD.= Our women; chapters on the sex-discord. *$2.50 (5c) Doran 396
20–18319
Sex-discord exists, the author avows; it will always exist; it will continue to develop as human nature develops—but on a higher plane; it is the most delightful and interesting thing in existence—a part of the great search for truth. In this vein a mere man writes broadly, sanely and humorously about women. Contents: The perils of writing about women; Change in love; The abolition of slavery; Women as charmers; Are men superior to women? Salary-earning girls; Wives, money and lost youth; The social Intercourse business; Masculine view of the sex discord; Feminine view of the sex discord.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:93 D ’20
“‘Our women,’ being witty, human, and full of challenging contradictions, will bore no reader, but will interest everyone, if only for the sake of that argument dear to every mind.” Dorothy Scarborough
+ =Bookm= 52:363 D ’20 560w
“He is not always sensible when he is serious, and he is not always funny when he seeks to be humorous. His discourse is merely the attempt of a glib and facile writer to toy with a theme upon which he can play endlessly, and at the end be no nearer his goal that he was at the beginning.” E. F. Edgett
− + =Boston Transcript= p6 O 16 ’20 1400w
“The book is diverting to read, but is not without that vein of vulgarity which mars so much of Mr Bennett’s work.” L. P.
+ − =Freeman= 2:190 N 3 ’20 270w
=Nation= 112:90 Ja 19 ’21 400w
+ =N Y Times= p1 O 10 ’20 1500w
“Mr Bennett writes as a novelist and more or less for the human fun of it.” K. F. Gerould
+ − =Review= 3:377 O 27 ’20 900w
=Sat R= 130:279 O 2 ’20 500w
“We believe that most of his own countrywomen, though they may praise, will not altogether like his book.”
+ − =Spec= 125:535 O 23 ’20 720w
“Though fresh enough in style and not philistine in precepts, ‘Our women’ is as conventional as ‘Godey’s lady’s book,’ which regaled several generations of young women; it is, however, a book modern in sentiment.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p10 O 21 ’20 320w
“His pictures of the modern woman are kaleidoscopic—a medley of truths and halftruths picked more or less at random from past, present and future.”
− =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p678 O 21 ’20 1000w
=BENNETT, ARNOLD.= Sacred and profane love. *$1.50 Doran 822
20–1240
A dramatization of the author’s novel “The book of Carlotta.” The story is that of Carlotta Peel, who as a young girl of twenty gives herself for one night to Emilio Diaz, a world famous pianist. She does not see him again for eight years and then, on learning that he has become a morphinomaniac, goes to him and nurses him back to health and manhood and restores him to his old place on the concert stage.
* * * * *
“It is, evidently, not the Arnold Bennett of ‘Clayhanger’ who plays upon the glittering instrument of the theatre. And it is that Arnold Bennett who could fortify the English drama.”
− + =Nation= 110:435 Ap 3 ’20 200w
“The dialog leaves us unconvinced and shadowed by the feeling that sooner or later Carlotta will awaken to the futility of her task. We glance with foreboding into the future. The present is temporarily serene, but beyond the final curtain lurks a suspicion that the real conflict of human emotions is still to come.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p13a Ap 25 ’20 520w
“Mr Bennett could hardly write a play without putting into it some insight into character, some witty or suggestive comments upon human life, at least one or two interesting situations and some passages of good dialogue. Hence, this play is readable enough, but it is clumsy and unconvincing.”
+ − =Theatre Arts Magazine= 4:174 Ap ’20 180w
=BENNETT, RAINE.=[2] After the day. $1.50 Stratford co. 811
A volume of poems written after the war, reflecting the impressions of war of one who took part in it. The author is a Californian who has written dramas for local groups and had one play produced at the Greek theatre in Berkeley. The introduction, by George Douglas of the San Francisco Chronicle, says: “These ‘after the day’ or ‘nocturnal’ impressions were all written with a view to their being read aloud, and as dramatic reading they take on a singularly magnetic quality.” Free verse is the form employed.
* * * * *
“The poems, dramatic rather than lyric, are an earnest expression of a man—one who has something to say in free verse that is worth saying.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 N 20 ’20 120w
=BENOIT, PIERRE.= Atlantida (L’Atlantide). *$1.75 (2½c) Duffield
20–12951
This prize novel of the French academy is translated from the French by Mary C. Tongue and Mary Ross. Two French officers engaged on a scientific expedition into the wilds of Sahara, discover the mythical island of Atlantis and find that instead of having been immersed in the sea, the desert had emerged about it preserving it with all its ancient treasures and through mysterious contact with the outside world, making it a storehouse of all the sciences and lore of all the ages. Antinea, its present ruler, a descendant of Neptune, is continually supplied with men from the outside world, who all die of love for her while she is unable to love. At last she loves one of the two officers of our story, but being scorned by him, she compels his companion to kill him. This one, by the aid of a slave girl in love with him, succeeds in escaping, but ever after wanders about a restless spirit, consumed with the desire to return.
* * * * *
=BooklistM= 17:30 O ’20
“There is a glamor of mystery in the story; there is a flavor of the Orient, a glint of gold, an aroma of perfume which attracts the senses and beckons the reader onward to the end. The French have a fascinating way with them.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 25 ’20 200w
“Benoit has learned from Anatole France to display erudition but the translators make a sad mess of it. What they do to classical names should be a warning to reformers of the curriculum.”
+ − =Dial= 69:546 N ’20 90w
“The tale is told with an economy, a sureness and a subtlety that show how a French writer can come near to salvaging for literature themes which, in English, are condemned to a humbler sphere.” H. S. H.
+ =Freeman= 2:358 D 22 ’20 120w
“Excellent as Monsieur Benoit’s book is, it does not equal, either in imaginative power, fertility of invention, ingenuity and abundance of incident, suspense, dramatic effectiveness, construction, character-drawing, sustained interest or the ability to make the reader feel that the events narrated actually occurred, any save perhaps some one among the lesser of the many romances written by Sir Rider Haggard. This is not to say, however, that it is not an admirable and very entertaining story, with a conclusion both artistic and dramatic, and more than one scene of fine imaginative quality.”
+ − =N Y Times= p24 Ag 1 ’20 1050w
=BENOIT, PIERRE.= Secret spring. *$1.75 (3c) Dodd
20–7919
In this story within a story Lieutenant Vignerte tells his brother-in-arms the story of his life, which is still casting a melancholy spell over him. Just before the war he had been a tutor to the heir of the Grand Duke of Lautenburg-Detmold. He had fallen in love with the Grand Duchess, received much friendly encouragement, had come on the track of a mystery which points to the murder of her first husband—brother to the present duke—by discovering old records and a secret spring opening a door into a hidden chamber. A conflagration in the castle and the outbreak of the war prevented complete disclosure. The duchess herself took him in her private car to the French frontier and saw him safely into the hands of the French commander there. While in action in the trenches a German prisoner of high rank is discovered, by Vignerte’s confidant, to be the arch-fiend in the Lautenburg tragedy, but here again a complete revelation of the secret is foiled by a shell that kills both Vignerte and the prisoner.
+ =Cleveland= p71 Ag ’20 70w
“In spite of the involved plot, the annoyance of a story within a story, and the somewhat cloudy narrative style—which latter may or may not be partly the fault of the translator—the spirit of romance in this volume makes it fairly acceptable to the leisurely reader.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:21 Jl 11 ’20 550w
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p9a Ag 29 ’20 250w
=BENSHIMOL, ERNEST.= Tomorrow’s yesterday. *$1 Small 811
20–11179
Marsh dreams, The passing of a shadow, Morning and evening, Confession of hope, Atonement, In the wilderness, The tale of the grey wolf, The moon on the Palisades, At dusk, Evening, The end of the trail, are some of the themes in this volume of poems. The author is a young poet, a graduate of Harvard, class of 1917.
* * * * *
“It is pleasing to discover a poet today who thinks in every line he writes. There is no superfluous word-painting in any of Benshimol’s poems. They are the genuine and spontaneous expression of a highly imaginative and reflective mind. Here and there, unfortunately, the reader comes across an image that is obscure or jumbled.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p9a Jl 4 ’20 250w
“The writer is a true poet and this first volume not only has great promise for the author’s future development, but has great charm in the present.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a Ag 1 ’20 100w
=BENSON, EDWARD FREDERIC.= “Queen Lucia.” *$2 (1½c) Doran
20–15389
Riseholme was a strictly Elizabethan village, and “The Hurst,” the Lucas’s house, more Elizabethan than all the rest, was its social centre. Here Queen Lucia reigned. For ten years she had been the undisputed ruler when the smoldering rivalry between herself and her neighbor, Mrs Quantock, threatened open eruption. Not content with having set the town’s pace with her classic taste, Queen Lucia must also make herself the leader in each new fad discovered and introduced by Mrs Quantock. With the coming of the famous singer, Olga Bracely, as a resident of the town, all social observances, rules and precedents are knocked into a cocked hat and one by one the bubbles, in which Mrs Lucas saw her own greatness reflected, are pricked. She no longer rules and social oblivion threatens to engulf her when Olga, in large-hearted pity, executes a series of maneuvers which reinstate a humbler and wiser queen in something of her former position.
* * * * *
“The dismallest feature of all is that Mr Benson’s humour should have gone—not to the dogs, but to the cats.” K. M.
− =Ath= p241 Ag 20 ’20 700w
+ =Booklist= 17:30 O ’20
“Fantastic in the extreme, Mr Benson’s latest novel may be accepted more as a light and airy fantasy than as a contribution to the study of English social manners. It is, in fact, a merry farce transferred from the lights of the stage to the printed pages of fiction and it bears further tribute to the ingenious qualities of Mr Benson’s humor.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Jl 28 ’20 1150w
“A clever and amusing satire.”
+ =Cath World= 112:549 Ja ’21 170w
“The book is lacking in what we are constantly told is necessary for a good novel. There is not much plot; there is no love interest; there is no climax. But it is long since one has seen such a masterly bit of satire, such a piece of character-study as Lucia.”
+ =Lit D= p101 S 18 ’20 1400w
“The book is a great treat from beginning to end.” E. L. Pearson
+ =Review= 3:249 S 22 ’20 480w
“Apart from its humor and comic sense of character, the narrative emphasizes Mr Benson’s versatility and his mature art.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a S 12 ’20 400w
“Taken as pure farce, ‘Queen Lucia’ is an altogether satisfying entertainment; full of humorous situations, sparkling with wholesome wit. The characters, too, are for the most part consistent and original. So very little restraint would have kept it within the limits of comedy and we do not feel that it gains in any way from the touches which incline to extravaganza.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p502 Ag 5 ’20 480w
=BENSON, EDWARD FREDERIC.= Robin Linnet. *$1.75 (2c) Doran
19–19852
The book shows us English society “snug and comfortable and stereotyped” in various aspects. First among the students and faculty of Cambridge where, in the former, the spirit of youth occasionally pierces through the stereotyped smugness doubly emphasized in the faculty. There we meet Robin Linnet, nicknamed “Birds,” a lovable boy, full of fun and horse-play with his chums, but fortified by a rare love and respect for his mother. The latter, Lady Grote—brilliant society woman, patroness of celebrities, shining center of an aristocratic coterie absorbed in “a fever of mere living, a determination to make the most of the present moment, whether bridge or scandal or games”—has for her saving quality her great and sane love for her son. The war-change that English society suffers, topples Lady Grote’s world over like a house of cards, when her son goes to France. She decides to superintend the Red cross hospital, into which her husband converts their country house, in person. When Robin is killed her spirit rises nobly to the occasion and what was a fill-gap and a duty now becomes a work of love.
* * * * *
“Full of bright and entertaining dialogue.”
+ =Ath= p1138 O 31 ’19 120w
“Parts of the book are so slow moving that some readers may not care to finish it.”
+ − =Booklist= 16:242 Ap ’20
“The action moves cumbrously; too much time wasted in irrelevant talk by superfluous characters. This tries the reader’s patience, and makes negligible a book which might have been one of Mr Benson’s most successful efforts.”
+ − =Cath World= 111:539 Jl ’20 210w
“The concluding pages of the book are beautifully written and very moving, making the whole worth while. It is a book practically devoid of even a slight thread of plot, and it is very much too long.” L. M. Field
+ − =N Y Times= 25:1 F 29 ’20 1150w
=N Y Times= 25:190 Ap 18 ’20 70w
“Not Mr Benson’s best work in fiction. The whole [is] thrown together rather than thought out.”
− + =Outlook= 124:479 Mr 17 ’20 70w
“The story is told with Mr Benson’s usual vivacity, but the conversion of Lady Grote is far less convincing than the elaborate and often acute analysis of her emotions in her unregenerate days.”
+ − =Spec= 124:179 F 7 ’20 500w
“The closing chapters are beautifully written. Mr Benson is deeply sympathetic without giving way to the strong temptation to be highly sentimental. The characters are excellently individualized.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p13a Ap 25 ’20 700w
“Has the same merits and weaknesses as Mr E. F. Benson’s previous novels.... Mr Benson, in fact, is almost entirely preoccupied with the superficial.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p629 N 6 ’19 460w
=BENSON, STELLA.= Living alone. *$1.75 Macmillan
20–2266
“This little book describes the adventures of Angela and the adventures of those with whom she comes in contact while she is caretaker of a small general shop which is also part convent and monastery, part nursing home and college, and wholly a house for those who wish to live alone. She is an out-and-out, thorough witch, a trifle defiant, poor, always hungry, intolerant of cleverness and—radiant.... We have said that ‘Living alone’ is a book about the war. There is an air raid described from below and from above, together with a frightful encounter which Harold has with a German broomstick, and one of the inmates of the house of ‘Living alone’ is Peony, a London girl who is drawing her weekly money as a soldier’s wife—unmarried. The story that Peony tells her fellow-lodger Sarah Brown of how she found the everlasting boy is perhaps the highwater mark of Miss Benson’s book.”—Ath
* * * * *
“We hardly dare to use the thumbmarked phrase, a ‘born writer’; but if it means anything Miss Stella Benson is one.” K. M.
+ =Ath= p1187 N 14 ’19 440w
=Booklist= 16:203 Mr ’20
“Stella Benson possesses the rarest of attributes among writers—that of personality.” D. L. M.
+ =Boston Transcript= p4 My 5 ’20 950w
“The particular merit of ‘Living alone’ is that it is a fairy-tale for grown-ups, a piece of whimsical madness without rhyme or reason.” H. S. G.
+ =Freeman= 1:406 Jl 7 ’20 200w
“No one but a poet could have written ‘Living alone.’ It is Barrie at moments; again it is Chesterton, that preposterously humorous Chesterton of the romances; and, after all, it is Stella Benson. It is a book for the lonely and it is a lesson for the self-conscious. Best of all, it can be read for the sake of the narrative by those who do not care to trouble themselves with allegory.”
+ =N Y Evening Post= p2 My 1 ’20 720w
“It is a book to dally over and reflect on.”
+ =Sat R= 129:70 Ja 17 ’20 100w
“There are many amusing sketches of people.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a My 16 ’20 330w
“It is a pity that mere manner should so have marred this new essay in beautiful nonsense. Beautiful is none too grand a word for ‘Living alone.’ The book teems with beautiful ideas, beautiful imaginings, best of all—beautiful feeling.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p586 O 23 ’19 550w
=BERESFORD, JOHN DAVYS.= Imperfect mother. *$2 (2c) Macmillan
20–8237
A story based on what the Freudians term the “mother complex.” Cecilia Kirkwood, a woman of dynamic personality, is married to a sombre little book-seller and is mother to three grown children. At forty-one she falls in love with the cathedral organist and leaves her family to go to London with him. Before taking the step she tells her story to her seventeen year old son thinking him the only one who will understand her. Stephen at this time is just beginning to fall in love with little Margaret Weatherly and his mother, hungry for admiration and sensitive to all shades of feeling toward herself, is conscious of the slight change in his attitude, and the one bond that might have held her to her home is broken. All thru his young manhood Stephen is influenced by the tie that binds him to his mother and all his relations with women, including his love for Margaret, are affected by it. With the dissolution of the conflict her spell over him is broken and he moves forward unhampered to business success and happy marriage.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 16:346 Jl ’20
+ =Boston Transcript= p8 Je 12 ’20 950w
“Reads like a case book on the ‘Oedipus complex.’ But in spite of the author’s effort to get everything right according to Freud it is not a bad story.”
+ − =Ind= 103:54 Jl 10 ’20 110w
“The story is woven with great delicacy and with unobtrusive skill and is remarkably interesting. Yet it is doubtful whether really great fiction would thrive on so much scientific awareness.” Ludwig Lewisohn
+ − =Nation= 111:74 Jl 17 ’20 750w
“‘An imperfect mother’ is certainly one of the best of the recent English novels. The author is secure in the consciousness of a ripe and finely developed art.” W. H. C.
+ =New Repub= 24:52 S 8 ’20 900w
“It is all symmetrical enough. And yet it is all quite unconvincing. It is even uninteresting. Cecilia alone emerges—a splendid creature bursting through the murky moralities of stuffy Medboro.”
− + =N Y Times= 25:264 My 23 ’20 700w
“It is an easy enough book to read; but there is nothing much to carry away from it, except the impression of an experienced chronicler rehandling his materials in the light of an ‘idea.’”
+ − =Review= 2:654 Je 23 ’20 650w
“Where it might be thought to fail, is in the too subtle characterisation of Celia; older hands would have broadened their touches. It is a fine piece of work.”
+ − =Sat R= 130:14 Jl 3 ’20 100w
“The merit of the book lies in the skill with which the conflict between Cecilia’s better instincts and her invincible egotism is drawn. Mr Beresford is an admirably self-effacing narrator.... Allowing for the improbabilities we have noted, this is an excellent and restrained study of an ‘a-moral’ type of womanhood.”
+ − =Spec= 124:697 My 22 ’20 560w
“Judged as an essay in morbid psychology, ‘An imperfect mother’ is an interesting document; judged as a novel, it is a failure.”
− + =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p199 Mr 25 ’20 850w
=BERGER, MAURICE.= Germany after the armistice. *$3.50 (5c) Putnam 914.3
20–9640
“A report, based on the personal testimony of representative Germans, concerning the conditions existing in 1919.” (Sub-title) The author of this book, which is translated from the French, with an introduction, by William L. McPherson, was a lieutenant of the Belgian army. He went to Berlin after the signing of the armistice to engage in a series of personal interviews with men of prominence in diplomacy, the army, industry, finance, politics, journalism, the arts and sciences. These interviews are here published in full and contain such names as: Brockdorff-Rantzau; Prince Lichnowsky; General Kluck; Karl Helfferich; Hugo Haase; Karl Kautsky; Theodor Wolff; Maximilian Harden; Hermann Sudermann, and many others. In his conclusions the author treats of: Germany and the war; Germany and the atrocities; The Kaiser—militarism—bolshevism; Public spirit—the government; Germany and the society of nations; The new Germany. The book also contains a preface by Baron Beyens, former Belgian minister in Berlin, and has an index.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 16:339 Jl ’20
“A full revelation is this volume of the true inwardness of the German character.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 4 ’20 500w
“The interviewer writes with the violent prejudice of an enemy who still fears his defeated foe. But many of the conversations are of peculiar interest none the less. Especially valuable, perhaps, are the statements of Kautsky and other Socialists; also the account of the shameless murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.” H: W. Nevinson
+ − =Freeman= 1:404 Jl 7 ’20 280w
“No better account has appeared of the individuals who are directing the destinies of the young republic.”
+ =Ind= 104:67 O 9 ’20 30w
“Lieutenant Berger draws with bold strokes the portraits of the men he met—they stand out with lifelike distinctiveness. His style is simple and vivacious and his subject matter is engrossing.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:10 Jl 18 ’20 1300w
=R of Rs= 62:112 Jl ’20 40w
“There is a tone of sincere frankness in the interviews which carries weight. Lieutenant Berger is evidently a man of tact and discernment; he refused to enter upon useless discussion, but he was able to guide the conversation so skilfully as to secure for his superiors the desired information.” C: Seymour
+ =Yale R= n s 10:419 Ja ’21 310w
=BERGSON, HENRI LOUIS.= Mind-energy. *$2.50 (3c) Holt 194
20–15087
This collection of lectures and essays, translated from the French by H. Wildon Carr, is not only an authorized translation, says the translator, but has been carefully supervised by M. Bergson himself, as to details of meaning and expression, in order to give it the same authority as the original French. The lectures are partly in exposition of philosophical theory, partly detailed psychological investigation and metaphysical research illustrative of their author’s concept of reality as a fundamentally spiritual activity. Contents: Life and consciousness; The soul and the body; “Phantasms of the living” and psychical research; Dreams; Memory of the present and false recognition; Intellectual effort; Brain and thought; a philosophical illusion; Index.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:137 Ja ’21
“Bergson is brilliant, and he is in close touch with the life of men. He is always worth reading for his intellectual strength and his insight into things spiritual. In this book Bergson is found at his best.” F. W. C.
+ =Boston Transcript= p4 S 22 ’20 1050w
“The present volume is valuable for students of Bergson just because its confident reaffirmations proclaim that, in the author’s judgment, his theories have stood the test of time. Hence this is a good opportunity for attempting a total estimate of Bergson’s work and a sorting out of what is likely to live from what is likely to die.” R. F. A. Hoernle
+ =N Y Evening Post= p6 Ja 15 ’21 850w
“The student who lacks either the time or the training to study Mr Bergson’s larger and more difficult work will find in this volume of essays clues not difficult to understand and profitable to follow.”
+ =Outlook= 126:767 D 29 ’20 300w
“The essays before us, though diversely prompted, all converge towards one centre, which is revealed by the title of the book. At the end they leave the feeling that he has been pursuing the same subject all the time. The tenacity with which he applies his principles is certainly to be noted in a thinker who suggests such a flexible, almost elusive, view of reality. There is a fascinating essay about ‘false recognition.’”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p715 N 4 ’20 800w
=BERNSTORFF, JOHANN HEINRICH ANDREAS HERMANN ALBRECHT, graf von.= My three years in America. *$5 Scribner 940.32
20–11505
“As a pendant to Mr Gerard’s reminiscences of the American embassy in Berlin during the war, Count Bernstorff’s account of his work as German ambassador at Washington is of some historic interest. He is mainly concerned to defend himself and to put all the blame for the quarrel with America on the Berlin foreign office and on the military chiefs. He denies, of course, that he had anything to do with the campaign of bomb outrages which German-Americans, assisted by Irish-Americans, waged against American and Canadian factories and allied shipping. He records the profound horror and indignation caused by the torpedoing of the Lusitania, but disclaims all previous knowledge of that foul deed.”—Spec
“For the historian and student of the war Count von Bernstorff’s book has undoubted value. The excellence of the translation may be due in part to the style of Count von Bernstorff; for, unlike many German writers, he does not hide his thought behind dense and complicated entanglements of language, but sets it forth in clear, short, crisp sentences.” E. E. Sperry
+ =Am Hist R= 26:99 O ’20 1100w
“There are many curious statements in the book, some of which no sophisticated reader will believe without confirmation. At any rate students of political science will find many things in this volume to provoke dissent, and some also that will meet with hearty concurrence.”
+ − =Am Pol Sci R= 14:736 N ’20 250w
“The book is interesting and has a certain historical value.”
+ =Ath= p11 Jl 2 ’20 580w
“The tone is reasonable and conciliatory, the logic sometimes too smooth.”
+ − =Booklist= 17:23 O ’20
“Throughout the narrative Count Bernstorff is wonderfully frank. Whether this frankness arises from an honest openness of mind or from an utter absence of ability to realize his own obliquity is a question for each reader to solve for himself.” E. J. C.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Jl 10 ’20 900w
“Count Bernstorff himself is not a thinker like Norman Angell and Bertrand Russell, but he is intelligent to a high degree, exact, fearless, without cheap pride, living in a much more real atmosphere than most of the German war statesmen. He has the prime advantage, for a time of such complexity, of having a good mind that functions without interference from his prejudices or his passions.” Norman Hapgood
+ =Nation= 111:132 Jl 31 ’20 1750w
“The story is told coolly and without any sign of prejudice, except for an occasional slurring reference to Colonel Roosevelt or Ambassador Gerard. The narrator analyzes his characters in an objective sort of way, unmoved by anger or enthusiasm, except for one exclamation of admiration for Colonel House; he dissects, he does not eulogize or condemn.” C. W. Thompson
+ =N Y Times= 25:3 Jl 4 ’20 2150w
“This book, as a real contribution to history, will assuredly take its place alongside volumes of such permanent value as Viscount Haldane’s, General von Falkenhayn’s, and Count Czernin’s. Indeed, in none of these is there sharper, more illuminative, and more cynical observation both of men and events.”
+ =Outlook= 126:690 D 15 ’20 250w
=Review= 3:710 Jl 7 ’20 360w
“It would be a serious mistake to consider his ‘plaidoyer’ as dispassionate history. It is a further and exceedingly interesting addition to that large library of self-justification now appearing in Germany. It differs from other volumes only on a point of good taste.” Christian Gauss
− + =Review= 3:190 S 1 ’20 1200w
“The reader into whose hands it may come will not fail to find its chapters exceedingly interesting, as they review familiar episodes from what to Americans is an unfamiliar standpoint.”
+ =R of Rs= 62:221 Ag ’20 240w
“We think that all the great actors in the German tragedy, military, political and diplomatic, have now told their story, except the ex-Kaiser. Count Bernstorff’s is certainly the best of these ‘pieces justificatives,’ for it shows that the writer’s judgment was better than that of his masters, and his style is temperate and logical.”
+ =Sat R= 129:542 Je 12 ’20 900w
=Spec= 124:799 Je 12 ’20 430w
“His attempt to gauge American character is on the whole happy. Even those who differ with him will find it difficult to disprove his findings. There is no rancor in his judgments. There is no attempt to add piquancy to the narrative by gossip.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ag 9 ’20 280w
=BERRIMAN, ALGERNON E., and others.= Industrial administration. (Manchester univ. publications) il *$2.40 Longmans 331
20–9654
“The lectures published in this volume were delivered in the department of industrial administration in the College of technology, Manchester, during the session 1918–19, by various well-known authorities on subjects relating to industrial administration.” (Nature) “Contents: Social obligations of industry to labour, by B. S. Rowntree; The applications of psychology to industry, by T. H. Pear; Education as a function of management, by A. E. Berriman; Occupational diseases, by T. M. Legge; Atmospheric conditions and efficiency, by L. Hill; Industrial councils and their possibilities, by T. B. Johnston; Training for factory administration, by St G. Heath; Industrial fatigue, by A. F. S. Kent.” (Am Econ R)
* * * * *
=Am Econ R= 10:840 D ’20 50w
=Ath= p814 Je 18 ’20 60w
=Nature= 106:74 S 16 ’20 620w
=BETTER= letters; a little book of suggestions and information about business correspondence. $1 Herbert S. Browne, 608 S. Dearborn st., Chicago 658
20–3557
“This little book has been compiled for the average person in business, whether executive or stenographer, who wants a statement in simple and direct form of the elementary things that are essential to good letters. It is a first-aid manual of style for business correspondence, suitable for adoption by any commercial concern, large or small.” (Introd.) Contents of part 1—The letter itself: Appearance; Substance; Phraseology; Punctuation; Paragraphing; Abbreviations; Miscellaneous. Contents of part 2—Words, right and wrong; Some misused words; Verbal vulgarisms; Similar words often confused; Pronouns: their use and abuse; Miscellaneous.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 17:17 O ’20
=BIERSTADT, EDWARD HALE, ed.= Three plays of the Argentine; tr. from the Spanish by Jacob S. Fassett, jr. *$1.75 Duffield 862
20–4775
In his introduction to these plays Mr Bierstadt has given us a glimpse of the culture of one of our American neighbors to the South, of whom we have hitherto known too little. His historical sketch of the folk drama of the Argentine, known as the drama criollo, shows it to have sprung from the very heart of the people, the gaucho, and to have had its inception in the sawdust ring of the circus. As given in the translation, the plays are transcriptions from the original popular and unprinted versions and although modified, have retained their true atmospheric and colorful qualities. Of the two first Mr Bierstadt says: “They are perhaps the most famous in all the category of gaucho plays, and carry as do no others the very spirit of the pampas.” These are “Juan Moreira” and “Santos Vega.” The third, “The witches’ mountain,” is not in the same sense a gaucho play, as it is set in the mountain country, but is considered as marking the last milestone in the epoch of truly native drama.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 16:336 Jl ’20
“‘The witches’ mountain’ is the only one of the three plays included that conforms to the canons of real drama.”
+ =Dial= 59:664 D ’20 80w
“The second, while sufficiently crude and violent, has elements of great beauty. The third, The witches’ mountain, is a really magnificent piece, both in conception and construction.”
+ =Freeman= 1:214 My 12 ’20 400w
“When we come to the actual texture of the ‘dramas criollos’ the impression is one of slight disappointment. The figure of the wandering ‘gaucho’ and minstrel is romantic rather than naive. Speech and verse, at least in their translated forms, present a curious mixture of the sentimental and the artificial. In The witches’ mountain there is high and concentrated dramatic passion. But this play is obviously the least primitive of the three.”
+ − =Nation= 110:693 My 22 ’20 260w
“These plays have a freshness and vigor of spaces our Wild West scenarios somehow lack. There are the same conventional gestures, the same corroborated sentiment from which any informing fire has gone out. But at least these are reminiscent of authentic instead of manufactured emotion.” Lola Ridge
+ − =New Repub= 25:236 Ja 19 ’21 660w
+ − =Review= 2:605 Je 5 ’20 240w
“However primitive the plays, they possess what our American drama strives in vain to discover, the soul of their native land.... The witches’ mountain is doubtless the most actable, and the most easily understood by an American audience.” D. Grafly
+ =Springf’d Republican= p13a Ap 25 ’20 600w
“If these plays seem immature rather than naive; crude, rather than in the spirit of the folk; if Mr Bierstadt seems to have mistaken the drama inherent in the life and character of the ‘gaucho’ for drama in the plays that represent him, there is still nothing but gratitude due him for introducing the ‘gaucho’ to our unromantic world.”
+ − =Theatre Arts Magazine= 4:256 Jl ’20 380w
=BIGELOW, MELVILLE MADISON.= Papers on the legal history of government; difficulties fundamental and artificial. *$2 (4½c) Little 320.1
20–4206
The author warns against making a fetish of history and points out the difficulty in the way of its infallibility as a teacher. The number and complexity of the facts, in part hidden, in part incomprehensible, impede correct judgment. Besides, latent energies may at any time spring into action to change men’s reactions to given facts. On the other hand there is a certain fundamental principle on which society rests and which serves as constant in the interpretation of history. It is the object of the book to study the past, to give assurance of the principle and then to see how men have acted and are acting in its presence. Contents: Unity in government; The family in English history: an inquiry; Medieval English sovereignty; The old jury; Becket and the law; Index.
* * * * *
=Am Pol Sci R= 14:738 N ’20 50w
=Booklist= 17:10 O ’20
=Boston Transcript= p6 Ap 28 ’20 220w
=BINDLOSS, HAROLD.=[2] Lister’s great adventure (Eng title, Head of the house). il *$2 (2c) Stokes
George Lister, a young Canadian engineer, has his pluck and natural ability rather than a defective scientific training to thank for a moderate success. His self-reliance scorns the help of friends. He rescues a young girl, Barbara Hyslop, from an amorous crook who has induced her to run away with him. Later he is instrumental in returning the girl to the bosom of her family. Having lost his job he resolves to see something of the world and goes to England, and while there undertakes to raise a wreck off the African coast for Barbara’s step-father. After heroic efforts he succeeds but succumbs to the fever-ridden locality. Barbara, who from conscientious scruples over her romantic exploit, had refused his love, now calls him back to health with the gift of it.
* * * * *
“The heroine and the various members of her family have more individuality than is usual in this class of literature.”
+ =Ath= p523 O 15 ’20 80w
“There are no improbabilities and no excesses of sentimentality, the style is simple and effective, and the pace is brisk and unwavering.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p621 S 23 ’20 90w
=BINDLOSS, HAROLD.= Wilderness mine. il *$1.90 (1½c) Stokes
20–14600
This story is divided into three distinct parts, the first and third of which take place in England, and the second in Canada. Creighton and Stayward are partners in business until Creighton, driven on by his wife’s extravagances and his daughter’s need of an education, misappropriates some of the funds and Stayward dissolves the partnership. Creighton disappears and his wife spreads stories about Stayward’s cruelty and dishonesty to her husband. The Canadian part of the story has to do with Geoffrey Lisle, Stayward’s nephew, who is managing a mine there, and who comes in contact with Tom Carson, cook and chemist, who helps him defeat the rival mining company he is working against. Upon his return to England at his uncle’s death, Geoffrey again meets the girl who has been in his thoughts ever since he left England, to discover that she is Ruth Creighton, and theoretically his enemy. The timely discovery of who Tom Carson really was helps him to win the girl and to clear his uncle’s name in her eyes.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 17:70 N ’20
“His latest effort is a far more polished production than some of those that have gone before it. As it is not the best kind of romance, quite naturally it is not the best kind of adventure, but it serves very well for an hour or so’s amusement, and lovers of Mr Bindloss will find in this tale all the ingredients of his other efforts.”
+ − =Boston Transcript= p8 S 15 ’20 350w
“Mr Bindloss is one of those writers (all too few) who handle the adventure story without stressing the adventures to the disadvantage of all the other parts of the story. In other words, his characterization is always clear and distinct and worked up with some elaboration, and he has a quick eye at the description of natural scenery.”
+ =N Y Times= p27 Ag 22 ’20 370w
“The Canadian part of the book is much the best.”
+ =Outlook= 126:378 O 27 ’20 40w
=BINDLOSS, HAROLD.= Wyndham’s pal. *$1.75 (2c) Stokes
19–16148
Harry Wyndham having inherited from his forefathers an old business enterprise of somewhat doubtful credit, along with a romantic, restless, daring temperament, sets out on a trading adventure in the wild lagoons, mandrake swamps, fever atmosphere, and mysterious dangers of the Caribbean coast. There is a girl back home in England, for whose sake he wishes to return wealthy and successful. He achieves his purpose, although in order to do it he has to deal with a dangerous, sinister, mysterious creature called the Bat, and has to compromise his honesty and honor. Found out by his bride and business partner he seriously undertakes reparation and re-establishes his own self-respect, as well as the respect of others.
* * * * *
“Men, and boys in their teens, will like this story.”
+ =Booklist= 16:242 Ap ’20
“Without being particularly exciting or particularly vivid, it holds the reader’s attention.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:120 Mr 14 ’20 380w
=Outlook= 124:479 Mr 17 ’20 50w
“To an astonishing degree, he maintains his average. And his average is good.” H. Dick
+ =Pub W= 97:604 F 21 ’20 280w
“We have read better stories by this author.”
+ − =Sat R= 128:422 N 1 ’19 60w
“The story is rather better than many of the author’s recent books, and his readers will find considerable entertainment in its pages.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a Mr 7 ’20 300w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p502 S 18 ’19 100w
=BINNS, OTTWELL.= Mating in the wilds. (Borzoi western stories). *$2 (2c) Knopf
20–15961
Hubert Stane, who has served a prison sentence on a false charge, is in the north woods. Here he meets Gerald Ainley, the man who was responsible for his sentence. Ainley apparently stands high in the estimation of Hudson Bay company officials and is a suitor for the hand of Helen Yardely, a beautiful English girl who is making a tour of the posts with her uncle. Helen is lost in the woods. Stane finds her and fate forces the two to spend long months of exile together. Helen takes naturally to primitive life and when Stane’s name is cleared the two are married at an English mission and continue their wilderness life.
* * * * *
“An exciting tale told with literary excellence beyond the average of adventure stories.”
+ =N Y Times= p25 Ag 29 ’20 550w
“It is all admirably and romantically told. Though we know the tale of old, it is still alive when the right chronicler takes it up; and Mr Binns never for a moment lets it flag.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p126 F 19 ’20 200w
=BIRDSEYE, CLARENCE FRANK.= American democracy versus Prussian Marxism. *$2.50 Revell 335
20–4906
“Clarence F. Birdseye, in a volume entitled ‘American democracy versus Prussian Marxism,’ presents what he calls ‘a study in the nature and results of purposive or beneficial government,’ his object being to warn his fellow-citizens of the great danger threatening the American form of government through the attacks that are being made upon it by Marxian socialists. In order to make clear the danger is real, and not fanciful, Mr Birdseye analyzes both governmental forms and shows conclusively that no tolerance of the Marxian idea can be permitted in this country without damage to American institutions and ideals.”—N Y Times
* * * * *
“In this compact little volume, rich in well selected facts and information throughout, the author has performed a useful service.” W. B. Guthrie
+ =Am Pol Sci R= 14:510 Ag ’20 420w
=N Y Times= p31 S 5 ’20 90w
=R of Rs= 61:560 My ’20 50w
=BIRNBAUM, MARTIN.= Introductions; painters, sculptors and graphic artists. il *$5 Sherman, F: Fairchild 704
20–2849
“Papers by an American critic on Beardsley, Conder, C. H. Shannon, C. Ricketts, Pakst, Dulac, Alfred Stevens, John Flaxman, and some younger American artists—Maurice Sterne, Paul Manship (sculptor), Alfred Sterner (painter, lithographer, etc.), Robert Blum (illustrator, decorator, pastellist), Edie Nadeloman (Polish sculptor), Kay Nielsen, the Danish water-colourist, Jules Pascrin, the Austrian satiric artist.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
* * * * *
“The Aubrey Beardsley and Conder introductions may be taken as the perfect models for this form of art. Mr Birnbaum, himself, never quite arose to the same plane of detachment in his later writings. The citations, though brilliant, become too incessant and the authorities parading through the pages scarcely give each other elbow room. The feats of memory displayed are prodigious, comparable to those of Mr Huneker. In fact, stylistically, there is more than a suspicion that Mr Birnbaum is Mr Huneker’s child.” H: McBride
+ − =Dial= 68:371 Mr ’20 1850w
“To be graceful, informing, and readily understood was the problem. The author has solved it with sure literary tact and offers as well a fine criticism which was not in the bond.”
+ =Review= 2:184 F 21 ’20 350w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 S 10 ’20 580w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p304 My 13 ’20 50w
=BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE.= Frederick Locker-Lampson. il *$8 Scribner
(Eng ed 20–14702)
“A kinship of spirit as well as relationship by marriage bound Mr Birrell and Locker-Lampson, and in every page of his character sketch, he reveals a sympathy that is both personal and professional. Few books are both more and less a biography than this. It is merely a series of impressions and appreciations. Less than half its opening pages contain the biographical matter, and then follow some fifty pages of letters from eminent literary men—including Thackeray, Dickens, Tennyson, Holmes, Ruskin, Hardy and Stevenson—which reveal the esteem in which Locker-Lampson was held by his contemporaries. The other material which completes the volume includes six letters written by him to his son at Eton, some family bookplates, bibliographical notes on the books in the famous Rowfant library, and a brief account of the Rowfant library at Cleveland, with a list of its publications.”—Boston Transcript
* * * * *
“Mr Birrell’s biography reads so queerly because it brings before us a real human being. It is not that he is more profound than others, or that he has a story to tell to which we cannot fail to listen. It is that the values of life are quite different from those of biography. There is such a thing as living. One of the chief merits of Mr Birrell’s method, which is a peculiar compound of wit and sanity, is that it reduces these nineteenth-century phantoms to human scale.” V. W.
+ =Ath= p201 Ag 13 ’20 1300w
“It has been a long time since ‘London lyrics’ first appeared, but none the less this intimate and accurate character sketch of their author has a genuine interest and value.” H: L. West
+ =Bookm= 52:73 S ’20 450w
“A gentle and a genial tribute, it may well be said, is this volume to the personality, the achievements and the memory of a rare being.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Je 30 ’20 1250w
“As a piece of book-making, the offering is admirable; as a book—! But Mr Birrell is a devoted chronicler and if, from these impeccable pages, his placid father-in-law emerges an even less interesting figure than he seemed before one’s perusal of his memorial, the meticulous chronicler himself can not escape scot-free.” L: Untermeyer
− + =Freeman= 2:163 O 27 ’20 750w
“Hitherto the best analysis of Locker’s work was to be found in the sympathetic study prepared by Austin Dobson in 1904. Mr Birrell’s sketch is ampler than Mr Dobson’s and it is also more discursive. It abounds in playful digressions and in pleasant irrelevancies.” Brander Matthews
+ =N Y Times= 25:14 Jl 11 ’20 2300w
“His sketch is somewhat discursive and casual, containing more background than definite statements, but it includes some agreeable Birrelling.”
+ − =Sat R= 129:588 Je 26 ’20 1000w
“Nowhere has he gossiped more charmingly; and if he cannot resist an occasional divagation from his main topic, his obiter dicta are as pleasant as ever.”
+ =Spec= 124:82 Jl 17 ’20 1500w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a Jl 18 ’20 650w
“In reading this book, and noticing how Mr Birrell is always sliding away from his subject to talk about himself, or about somebody or something other than Frederick Locker, you ask why he chose ‘Frederick Locker-Lampson: a character sketch’ for the title of a book that might just as properly have been called ‘Scraps,’ or ‘Chips,’ or ‘Jottings.’ In the end nevertheless, you feel that you have been unfair. Mr Birrell, in his odd, slipshod way, is a man of letters—at least a man who delights in letters; and he gives you a faint character sketch of Frederick Locker-Lampson.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p381 Je 17 ’20 1500w
=BISHOP, CARLTON THOMAS.=[2] Structural drafting and the design of details. il *$5 Wiley 744
20–4714
“The author was formerly chief draftsman to one of the largest bridge companies, and is now a professor at Yale university. Part 1 covers comprehensively the duties of the draftsman and what he should know in a general way about organization of plant and office, as well as a survey of the manufacture and fabrication of structural steel. Part 2 tells in detail about the technique of drawing, with special chapters devoted to beams, girders, trusses, bracing systems, bills, checking, etc. Part 3 deals closely with the theory and practice of designing different types of construction members.”—N Y P L New Tech Bks
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:102 D ’20
“To the student or inexperienced draftsman the book is invaluable. The experienced draftsman can hardly fail to add to his efficiency by reading it. The typography of the book is all that needs be desired. This, with the general excellence of the contents, will make it a standard in the field of structural drafting for some time to come.”
+ =Engin News-Rec= 84:1215 Je 17 ’20 1150w
+ =Iron Age= 105:1293 Ap 29 ’20 160w
=Mining & Scientific Press= 121:33 Jl 3 ’20 110w
“On the whole we are inclined to name this the best book on the subject.”
+ =N Y P L New Tech Bks= p27 Ap ’20 170w
=Pratt= p16 O ’20 20w
=BISHOP, ERNEST SIMONS.= Narcotic drug problem. *$1.50 Macmillan 613.8
20–1614
“‘It is becoming apparent that in spite of all the work which has been done there has been practically no change in the general situation, and there has been no solution of the drug problem.’ This is the conclusion of Dr Ernest S. Bishop, clinical professor of medicine in the New York polyclinic medical school. Two outstanding elements appear to Dr Bishop to have received insufficient consideration in the efforts to solve the narcotic drug problem. One of these elements is the suffering of the addict: the other is the nature of the physical disease with which he is afflicted. Dr Bishop asserts that the exploitation of human weakness and suffering would be checked on any large scale, if the disease created by continued administration of opiates were recognized and its physical demands comprehended and provided for in legitimate and relatively unobjectionable ways.... Dr Bishop also recommends the establishment under proper supervision and management of stations or clinics at which those who for financial or other reasons are unable to secure honest medical help, may obtain their necessary opiate at minimum expense without ‘resorting to underworld associations and illicit commerce.’”—Springf’d Republican
* * * * *
+ =Cleveland= p74 Ag ’20 50w
“Occasionally, very occasionally, one finds a book upon a somewhat technical subject which is not merely readable and informative, but actually liberating. Such a book is Dr Bishop’s discourse on the narcotic drug problem.”
+ =No Am= 211:428 Mr ’20 850w
=Review= 3:112 Ag 4 ’20 130w
“A criticism of the book might well be directed against its redundancy. Nor does it appear just what type of audience he had in mind when inditing his message. Obviously it is not intended for the narcotic drug addict. If addressed to the physician, it is incomplete and fragmentary. If meant for the layman only casually interested in the problem, the message should have had greater emotional appeal.” H. E. K.
+ − =Social Hygiene= 6:586 O ’20 480w
“Dr Bishop’s study of the situation is scientific, thorough and humane. It will authoritatively inform the public regarding a subject on which enlightenment is needed.
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ja 29 ’20 800w
“The real problems of the narcotic drug situation are related to the origin and prevention of heroin and cocaine addictions and the treatment and after-care of those so addicted. This book avoids these questions and is sterile of information on these essential points of the narcotic drug problem.” Medicus
+ − =Survey= 44:253 My 15 ’20 450w
=BISHOP, H. C. W.= Kut prisoner. (On active service ser.) il *$1.50 (3c) Lane 940.47
20–5240
The author, a subaltern of the Indian army reserve of officers, gives an account of prison life at Kastamuni in Asia Minor, and of his escape in company with three other officers, their recapture, and rescue by Turkish brigands and their voyage across the Black sea in a small boat, to the Russian border and freedom. Contents: Ctesiphon; Kut; From Kut to Kastamuni; Life in Kastamuni; Escape from Kastamuni; The first night; On the hills; Slow progress; Bluffing the peasants; Reaching the coast; Recaptured; Rescued; In hiding with the Turks; Continued delays; Three days on the Black sea; The Crimea and home; Friends in captivity. There are maps, illustrations and appendices.
* * * * *
“The book is interesting.”
+ =Ath= p386 Mr 19 ’20 30w
+ =Boston Transcript= p8 S 15 ’20 250w
“Mr Bishop describes his adventures simply and clearly, and his book is worth reading.”
+ =Spec= 124:216 F 14 ’20 70w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p90 F 5 ’20 60w
=BISHOP, JOSEPH BUCKLIN.= Theodore Roosevelt and his time shown in his own letters. 2v il *$10 Scribner
20–17013
“Seven years ago, when Theodore Roosevelt published his ‘Autobiography,’ he prefixed to it a foreword, which began with this sentence. ‘Naturally, there are chapters of my autobiography which cannot now be written.’ Yet he had written from day to day, on the spur of the moment, in his frank letters to one or another of his multitude of friends, the very passages which he could not give to the public while he was still in the thick of the fight. And it is these passages which enliven and illuminate the two volumes which Mr Bishop has now selected and set in order, and explained and annotated. The work was begun while Roosevelt still lived; it had his complete approval; parts of it were read to him and amplified from his recollections.”—N Y Times
* * * * *
“The biography which will be most worth while to libraries.”
+ =Booklist= 17:68 N ’20
“One of the most notable works of the season is Joseph Bucklin Bishop’s ‘Theodore Roosevelt.’” Margaret Ashmun
+ =Bookm= 52:345 D ’20 140w
“With perfect taste and judgment Mr Bishop has stood aside and allowed the story to be told through Roosevelt’s letters. He has made an excellent book, important, always readable and often extremely amusing. With the ‘Autobiography’ and Mr Thayer’s book, the present work, ‘Theodore Roosevelt and his time’ is one of the three indispensable books on this subject. With Mr Huneker’s ‘Steeplejack,’ it is one of the two best American biographies of this year.” E. L. Pearson
+ =Boston Transcript= p5 O 23 ’20 2750w
“It is a work of notable artistic merit. Perhaps fifty years hence it may generally be conceded that this book preserves what is important in ‘the true Theodore Roosevelt’s’ character. At present one cannot help feeling that Mr Bishop’s figure of rugged integrity, unerring rectitude, and loftiest patriotism has been shorn of some of its beams.” S. P. Sherman
+ − =Nation= 112:18 Ja 5 ’21 2500w
“A difficult task has been accomplished triumphantly, and the result is a portrait of Roosevelt by himself, set in an editorial frame which is artistically unobstructive. Mr Bishop has given us a work which does for one president of the United States what was done for an earlier president by the publication of Grant’s ‘Personal memoirs.’ And neither of these great men would object to the comparison.” Brander Matthews
+ =N Y Times= p4 O 3 ’20 2300w
“There are a few little errors, nothing of consequence. But the book is undoubtedly partisan; which does not prevent it from being a thoroughly good and complete biography.” C: W. Thompson
+ − =N Y Times= p5 O 3 ’20 3450w
“It is a work after Roosevelt’s own heart, the sort of record that he himself would have endorsed just as it stands, showing him in the full strength and weakness of his very human quality.” F: T. Cooper
+ =Pub W= 98:1196 O 16 ’20 480w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
+ =Review= 3:314 O 13 ’20 340w
“These two volumes, as they stand, will serve not only for the present time but for future generations.”
+ =R of Rs= 62:669 D ’20 280w
“Mr Bishop has succeeded in giving us two volumes of great value and readability.”
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 16:236 D ’20 110w (Reprinted from Atlantic D ’20)
=BISHOP, LOUIS FAUGÈRES.= Heart troubles; their prevention and relief. il *$3.50 Funk 616.1
20–13070
A book written in popular style and addressed to the layman. The author believes that a patient is entitled to the full confidence of his physician and thinks that in heart disease “the educated patient can help more when wisely advised than in almost any other form of disease.” The book is in two parts: Physiological and symptomatic, and Therapeutic. The final chapter is devoted to Nursing in heart troubles. The book is illustrated and indexed and there is a one-page list of collateral reading. The author is professor of the heart and circulatory diseases, Fordham university, New York city.
* * * * *
+ =Cath World= 112:410 D ’20 90w
“The immediate effect of this sane and sensible work should be a wider dissemination of modern knowledge of the heart, its affections and their treatment; the ultimate result should be a reduction in the alarming death rate from heart disease in the United States.” V. B. Thorne
+ =N Y Times= p17 Ag 29 ’20 3000w
“A ‘doctor book’ of an unusual sort and one which will be found of great interest and of much practical value.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ag 2 ’20 130w
=BISPHAM, DAVID SCULL.= Quaker singer’s recollections. il *$4 Macmillan
20–1629
“For thirty years and more David Bispham has been prominent, here and abroad, as a baritone of note, a singing actor, and an advocate of the use of English speech in opera. In these recollections he has packed into one volume the record of a long and busy life—a life of many strange and varied experiences. Unlike most men who have their hour in opera, he has had his in society. He has traveled far and wide, and mixed with people who were worth knowing and far-famed in many ways. To this it may be added, unreservedly, that he has more than an instinctive turn for setting down, in plain but vivid words, what he would tell.”—Review
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:241 Ap ’20
“The style, unfortunately, is plainly that of a singer, and wavers continually between the exclamatory and the sentimental.”
+ − =Dial= 68:402 Mr ’20 90w
“While Mr Bispham’s book may appeal primarily to singers and students of singing, it is none the less a valuable text book for students of the drama.”
+ =Drama= 10:356 Jl ’20 140w
“It is an interesting volume full of the writer’s personality written with more literary skill and taste than many such books, giving many sidelights on the musical life of the period of which it treats.” R: Aldrich
+ =N Y Times= 25:6 F 29 ’20 2150w
“If we were disappointed in David Bispham’s ‘A Quaker singer’s recollections,’ it was not because of lack of thoroughness, but because that delightful singer’s fund of anecdote has not been used to advantage.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:192 Ap 18 ’20 80w
“A singer who can write with ease and style is rarer than that rare bird, the black swan. One artist of the kind is David Bispham.” C: H: Meltzer
+ =Review= 2:289 Mr 20 ’20 950w
=R of Rs= 61:333 Mr ’20 100w
“An excellent volume of reminiscences.”
+ =Spec= 124:694 My 22 ’20 780w
“He has perhaps not grasped the first bitter truth to be learned by an author that of all the countless incidents which his own mind makes picturesque in retrospect only those are interesting which he can make picturesque to others. The bald stretches, however, are only occasional.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p233 Ap 15 ’20 850w
=BISS, GERALD.= Door of the unreal. *$2 (3c) Putnam
20–19179
Strange disappearances are common in fact and in fiction, sometimes involving equally strange explanations, but surely in either realm, nothing could rival the solution of the mystery of this story. Of the four people who completely vanish from a well-traveled English road about midnight of a moonlight night, the only one who is ever seen again is Tony Ballingdon, and he is found unconscious and bruised in a nearby wood. Lincoln Osgood, an American who happens to be on the scene, makes a study of the case and soon forms a theory which proves to be the correct one, altho so weird and uncanny is it that he himself can hardly credit it. It is based on lycanthropy and its strange lore: in fact, it presupposes the existence in the neighborhood of two werewolves, Prof. Lycurgus Wolff and his old servant. By his knowledge of the subject Osgood prevents further tragedy and frees Dorothy, Wolff’s daughter, from the curse that is threatening her.
* * * * *
“With the understanding that the solution of the mystery of the novel lies along the lines of lycanthropy, the reader finds before him a smoothly written, straightforward narrative, lucid and compelling in its admirable simplicity, and endowed with that sustained interest which before anything else connotes a good story.”
+ =N Y Times= p23 S 19 ’20 760w
“A readable yarn it is.”
+ =Review= 3:350 O 20 ’20 330w
=BLACHLY, CLARENCE DAN.= Treatment of the problem of capital and labor in social-study courses in the churches. *50c Univ. of Chicago press 330.7
20–2984
“The social-study movement in the churches of America has developed on lines both sound and broad in recent years, and a review of its present status would be decidedly helpful. Mr Blachly, however, has found the material so large that in the present essay he confines himself to only one aspect of that movement. He presents an analysis of several hundred pamphlets and reports, replies to questionnaires and letters of inquiry, the texts of the social study courses used in the leading Protestant churches, the principal church magazines and other literature. He distinguishes five methods of approach to the discussion of capital and labor by the churches: deductive study which he finds as a rule incomplete and non-conclusive; controversial discussion, especially the adoption of a definite political or economic platform, which is dangerous to church harmony; control of experience through attitude of mind and heart, i.e., emphasis on the spiritual rather than the legal control of conditions; scientific, critical examination—which is rare because the religious attitude is as different from that of the student as it is from that of the legislator; the incorporation of modern, scientific and sociological facts into teaching that is primarily religious. Evidently, the author’s preference is for the last named method.”—Survey
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:10 O ’20 (Adapted from Survey 43:781 Mr 20 ’20)
“This is a valuable summary of information for the student of the teaching of organized religion on present-day problems of the social life and a suggestive criticism of the different policies that have been adopted.” B. L.
+ =Survey= 43:781 Mr 20 ’20 330w
=BLACK, HUGH.=[2] Lest we forget. *$1.50 Revell 824
“In the eleven chapters which make up this book the author discusses among other things the meaning of the victory, a democracy safe for the world, patriotism, true and false, peace and pacifism, the binding of the nations and the English-speaking peoples. In the chapter on the binding of the nations he says: ‘All men of goodwill must recognize that the plan for a league of nations is inspired with their highest ideal, and they can make it invincible.’”—Springf’d Republican
* * * * *
=N Y Evening Post= p24 O 23 ’20 90w
=N Y Times= p21 N 14 ’20 120w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 D 21 ’20 280w
=BLAKE, A. H.= Things seen in London. il *$1.35 Dutton 914.21
20–26316
“This book is a pocket-sized volume, belonging to the Things seen series, which contains descriptive and historical chapters on points of special interest with post-card sized illustrations.”—Booklist
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:239 Ap ’20
+ =Spec= 122:546 O 25 ’19 40w
“It hardly exhausts the city. But it is a good introductory description, written by a person who appreciates historic flavor. The little book is well illustrated.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 F 18 ’20 120w
=BLAKEMORE, ARTHUR WALKER.=[2] Make your will. *$1.25 Appleton 347.6
20–22318
The book is “a guide to the drafting of a valid will under the laws of any state.” (Sub-title) In the introduction the reasons for making a will, its essentials, and definitions of the terms used are given. The other chapters are: Form and essentials; Provisions of will; Execution of will; Codicils; After execution of will. The book is indexed and has an appendix containing a synopsis of laws affecting wills for every state.
=BLANCHARD, PHYLLIS MARY.= Adolescent girl. *$2.50 Moffat 136.7
20–8047
“A pioneering into the field of girl life in a direction, says Dr G. Stanley Hall in his preface, which his studies took with the adolescent boy. The book is a summary of the main theories of Fichte, Schelling, Von Hartmann, Bergson, Freud, Trotter, Adler, Jung, Maeder and others.”—Booklist
* * * * *
“More helpful to the serious student than Evans [‘Problem of the nervous child’] because of its carefully selected chapter bibliographies.”
+ =Booklist= 16:302 Je ’20
“Unfortunately, she does not resist the temptation to adopt the evangelistic tone. Although ostensibly based on the findings of Freud, Jung and Adler, there is never any suggestion that their researches may ultimately lead to a questioning of some of our moral standards. But this is an eminently safe book.” Fola La Follette
− + =Freeman= 1:621 S 8 ’20 1100w
“To the reviewer the book commends itself most particularly on account of the richness of first-hand clinical material, put in a simple, readable manner, the frankness with which the author has handled the subject of the instinctive determinants of conduct, and finally because it reflects throughout a ‘mental hygienic’ rather than a therapeutic aim.” Bernard Glueck
+ =Mental Hygiene= 4:974 O ’20 800w
“The chief value of Miss Blanchard’s work is in line with her own real interest, philosophy. Busy workers with girls, who may feel that their knowledge of the main developments of psychoanalysis is rather vague, and who wish to know some of its real possibilities in their own field, will find this a useful and interesting introduction.” M. E. Moxcey
+ − =Social Hygiene= 6:584 O ’20 350w
“She endeavors to give a social direction to her material. But it remains a good deal of a jumble.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p9a Jl 4 ’20 70w
Reviewed by A. E. Morey
+ =Survey= 45:369 D 4 ’20 560w
=BLAND, JOHN OTWAY PERCY.= Men, manners and morals in South America. il *$4.50 Scribner 918
(Eng ed 20–14550)
“This book is the outcome of two or three journeys which Mr Bland, the author of several books on China, made to South America in the course of the war. They took him to Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) “He protests against the ‘blue-book stodginess’ of many works which deal with that portion of the western hemisphere south of the equator. It is undeniable that the general reader wants, not dry particulars of South American trades, industries, and manufacturing possibilities, but silhouettes of the men and women and their social life; descriptions of the prairies and forests, of mountain gorges and the ‘everlasting hills.’ Mr Bland, who portrays numerous types of South American humanity, and spiritedly describes the places he has visited, successfully avoids the faults to which his strictures apply.” (Ath)
* * * * *
“His book is heartily to be commended.”
+ =Ath= p687 My 21 ’20 100w
+ =Booklist= 17:25 O ’20
“All that he tells is well worth the reading.” E. J. C.
+ =Boston Transcript= p8 Je 12 ’20 550w
“Tho rambling in manner and somewhat cynical in tone, is an illuminating introduction to a little understood part of the world.”
+ − =Ind= 104:68 O 9 ’20 60w
“In no place in the present work has he attained or even attempted that subtlety of characterization, that inimitable charm of description which enchants us in Hudson. The outsides of people he has faithfully observed and studiously catalogued; the insides he has missed. Not that there are lacking passages of rare beauty and memorable description in the present work. Had Mr Bland chosen any other theme than this one, which has already been covered by a master, his volume would stand out as an unusual contribution to the literature of travel.” H. L. Varney
+ − =N Y Times= p16 Ag 15 ’20 1700w
“He writes because he likes writing, and as he writes very brightly the reader has no cause to complain. He conjures up people and customs that were strange to him in phrases of so much colour, point, and pungency that we are well content to see them with his eyes.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p198 Mr 25 ’20 1100w
=BLAND, OLIVER.= Adventures of a modern occultist. *$2 Dodd 133
20–17101
To acquire psychic power, says the author, presupposes certain unusual natural gifts and the object of the volume is to render assistance to those possessing such gifts. It contains disclosures of hidden facts which have been abiding their time for years in the author’s notebooks, and which are of interest to the spiritualist, the theosophist, and the student of psychic research. Contents: The dead rapper; The automatist; Astral light and psycho-lastrometer; An experiment on the theory of protective vibration; Sex in the next world; The reality of sorcery; Incense and occultism; Beasts and elementals; Possession; Some new facts and theories; Oriental occultism.
=BLASCO IBÁÑEZ, VICENTE.=[2] Enemies of women (Los enemigos de la mujer); tr. from the Spanish by Irving Brown. *$2.15 Dutton
20–19241
“In a fairy-like villa on the Mediterranean, Prince Lubimoff, a Russian Apollo, surfeited with luxury and liasons, gathers a group of friends,—a savant, a soldier, and a musician,—in order to live in calm contemplation, free from the most disturbing element in life—the feminine. These ‘enemies of women,’ as they style themselves, start with a sense of satiated superiority that makes renunciation easy, but the gradual defection of each from the code and the coterie forms an intriguing study of human nature and its inevitabilities. In the end, all the ‘enemies of women’ have succumbed to the eternal feminine and chiefly because of it have gone to fight on the side of idealism, even that incorrigible epicurean, the Russian prince, losing an arm in the Foreign legion and gaining some semblance of a soul.”—Pub W
* * * * *
“Taking it by the large, the book, though not without its weak spots, is a decided improvement over the two that went before it in point of time, and thus provides a genuine climax to the trilogy.” I. G.
+ − =Boston Transcript= p8 N 6 ’20 1350w
“While the book is a colorful, cross-section of the hectic war and post-war fragments of European civilization, it lacks the directed drive of the ‘Four horsemen’ and ‘Mare nostrum,’ as well as the concentration of theme and treatment of the Spanish stories.” Clement Wood
+ − =N Y Call= p10 Ja 16 ’21 200w
“The book is so full of splendid, glowing color, so rich in characters, each one clearly set forth and individualized—it has so many dramatic scenes, so many statements upon which one would like to comment, that to choose among them is extraordinarily difficult. That the book is beautifully written, and the descriptions of scenery remarkable, goes, of course, without saying.”
+ =N Y Times= p22 O 31 ’20 1300w
“Blasco Ibáñez has, with master hand, painted a broad, crowded canvas, teeming with life and glowing with primary colors. It is undeniably a strong book and thoroly characteristic of the author, tho with rather an over-emphasis on the sensual side and coronetted classes, and with different ethical values from those to which the Anglo-Saxon mind is trained.” Katharine Perry
+ =Pub W= 98:1888 D 18 ’20 410w
=BLASCO IBÁÑEZ, VICENTE.= Mexico in revolution; tr. by Arthur Livingston and José Padin. *$2 Dutton 972
20–12284
“The author of the ‘Four horsemen of the Apocalypse’ happens to be one of the few Spaniards of distinction who have recently visited the United States. That he should prove to be a journalist as well as a novelist occasioned some surprise among his admirers in this country. His visit to Mexico was distinctly a journalistic enterprise, the outcome of which was a series of articles printed in the New York Times and other important newspapers and now brought out in book form.”—R of Rs
* * * * *
“Statements cited as facts are sometimes based on hearsay, or incomplete knowledge. The style is that of a vigorous piece of reporting, particularly in the vividness of the personalities portrayed.”
+ − =Booklist= 17:24 O ’20
=Cath World= 112:401 D ’20 260w
“It is interesting reading, and is, of course, excellently written. The book is of only temporary interest, however, and from the standpoint of historical study will be of little or no value.”
+ − =Grinnell R= 15:262 O ’20 100w
“His shrewd, quick-glancing political insight, his wit, his sense of the picturesque, his fundamental common sense views of life and the smooth, even flow of his style are all illustrated at their best in his little book on ‘Mexico in revolution.’”
+ =Ind= 104:244 N 13 ’20 320w
“Señor Ibáñez owes a great deal to his translators. They had an inspiring task, for Ibáñez is a born journalist of the highest type, and the swift rush of his narrative, the power of terse description, the characterization, the wit to ‘make you see it,’ should be a spur to any translator.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:10 Jl 25 ’20 3800w
“Ibáñez will seem to the friends of the Mexican people to have erred as badly in going to the opposite extreme [from the radical position]. Yet Ibáñez’ picture, even if overdrawn, is an honest one. It is a depressing picture if one accepts it as it stands. But the artist has overcharged his canvas.” W. J. Ghent
+ − =Review= 3:212 S 8 ’20 800w
“Señor Blasco Ibáñez is gifted with a ‘nose for news’ and an unusual ability to give literary form to his observations and impressions. In short, he is a first-rate reporter. He employed his time in Mexico to good advantage.”
+ =R of Rs= 62:333 S ’20 140w
=BLASCO IBÁÑEZ, VICENTE.= Woman triumphant (La maja desnuda); tr. from the Spanish by Hayward Keniston; with a special introductory note by the author. *$1.90 Dutton
20–7292
“The central theme concerns the intimate tragedy of a great painter, Renovales, who, beholding the loveliness of his young wife, persuades her to pose for him, promising that the picture shall be destroyed. But when his inspired hand has added the last brush-stroke, Renovales knows that this is his master piece, and when exhibited will bring him fame. The wife, however, in a sudden revulsion of outraged dignity, flings herself on the picture and slashes it into ribbons. Her act cleaves asunder the artist’s two-fold worship. Meanwhile, a blight has fallen upon the wife’s former beauty. With pitiful futility she admits to herself that he might freely paint and exhibit her if only it would bring back her vanished charm. Yet she clings to life until the day when she becomes aware that even his technical fidelity is at an end. But when the prematurely old and faded wife is dead and buried, the memory of her comes back to haunt Renovales with the elusive charm of her girlhood. And it is borne in upon him that while pursuing unattainable desires he has missed the best life had to offer, and that now it is forever too late.”—Pub W
* * * * *
“‘Woman triumphant’ is, if one may say so without sounding dogmatic, one of the three great novels by Blasco Ibáñez that will endure. There are power, irony, depth and greatness in this novel. Josefina is one of Blasco Ibáñez’s few convincing portrayals of women, and Renovales is not merely an artist type, but a flesh and blood creature. The atmosphere is vibrant with interest, there are admirable pages of art-criticism, and the ever attractive scenes out of Bohemia.” I: Goldberg
+ =Boston Transcript= p10 My 1 ’20 1300w
=Dial= 69:102 Jl ’20 130w
“It shares the vivid pictorial quality, the sweeping rhetorical strokes characteristic of his fiction, but the slightness of its structure, tenuity of its philosophy and a certain morbidity of theme relegate it to the secondary rank among his novels. There is too much in the book that has this charnel-house atmosphere, and while it has unmistakable power, power does not redeem it.”
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p2 Ap 24 ’20 850w
“Vicente Blasco Ibáñez is the great storyteller of today. In sheer ability to narrate, to make even the minutest analyses of the thought-processes of his characters part of his action, he stands peerless. ‘Woman triumphant’ only serves to emphasize those traits which have brought him enthusiastic homage before. The translation, like the original, is far above the average.” T. R. Ybarra
+ + =N Y Times= 25:198 Ap 18 ’20 950w
Reviewed by F: T. Cooper
=Pub W= 97:1287 Ap 17 ’20 450w
“What moves us in it is that for all their blundering and wantonness something real and abiding has sprung from the union of Renovales and his maja.” H. W. Boynton
+ =Review= 2:520 My 15 ’20 500w
“Despite an inherent tendency to sensationalism, ‘Woman triumphant’ may be enjoyed for keen interpretation of human nature, sustained romantic creation, strong plot and vigorous action.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p11a My 30 ’20 500w
=BLEYER, WILLARD GROSVENOR.= How to write special feature articles. *$2.25 Houghton 070
20–5605
“A handbook for reporters, correspondents and free-lance writers who desire to contribute to popular magazines and magazine sections of newspapers.” (Sub-title) “The book is the result of twelve years’ experience in teaching university students to write special feature articles for newspapers and popular magazines.... The success that these students have achieved leads the author to believe that others who desire to write special articles may be aided by the suggestions given in this book.” (Preface) A careful analysis of current practices is the basis of the methods presented and an effort has been made to show the application of the principles of composition to the writing of articles. The book falls into two parts of which the second is devoted to a collection of typical newspaper and magazine articles, with an outline for the analysis of them. Part 1 contains: The field for special articles; Preparation for special feature writing; Finding subjects and material; Appeal and purpose; Types of articles; Writing the article; How to begin; Style; Titles and headlines; Preparing and selling the manuscript; Photographs and other illustrations. There is an index.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:47 N ’20
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8a Ap 4 ’20 240w
=BLISS, DANIEL.= Reminiscences of Daniel Bliss; ed. and supplemented by his eldest son. il *$2.25 Revell
20–20532
“Daniel Bliss is not a name of resounding fame, and yet the man who bore it lived a long and useful life, reaching well into its ninth decade, and this long life was for the most part spent in doing good to his fellowman. This book is largely an autobiography written, it is believed, wholly from memory, in his eighty-second year. His life was the life of a missionary, a teacher and the founder and president of the Syrian Protestant college at Beirut. He was born in August, 1823, in Vermont, the son of a farmer of the olden time. In his own language Mr Bliss records many incidents of his childhood. He follows these anecdotes with the story of his school life, his apprenticeship to a tanner, his course later at the academy and at Amherst, where he was graduated in 1852. It was during his college course that he became interested in missions and resolved to become a missionary. Soon after his graduation he received ordination to the ministry. Three years later he was married, and with his wife sailed for his lifework in Syria.”—Boston Transcript
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 O 9 ’20 340w
=N Y Evening Post= p9 O 30 ’20 120w
=Outlook= 126:421 N 3 ’20 1450w
“Exceedingly readable book. There is something extremely restful and benign in the manner and matter of the narration.”
+ =Spec= 125:674 N 20 ’20 300w
“One of the most interesting biographies of the year.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 N 19 ’20 700w
=BLOCKSIDGE, ERNEST WALTER.= Ships’ boats. il *$9 (*25s) Longmans 623.8
20–13582
“The first detailed text-book on this important subject. It follows mainly the requirements and classification of the British Board of trade and aims to deal essentially with practical applications and to avoid all abstruse theory. Form, stability, strength and capacity are carefully considered. Constructional details of the various classes are given and there are chapters on timbers, pontoon boats, motorboats, nested boats, and sail-boats; lifting and lowering appliances, buoyancy air-cases; miscellaneous equipment; galvanizing methods, painting, repairs and maintenance, fire and boat drifts, and stowage and transporting arrangements. The book is illustrated with photographs and line details. The author is ship surveyor to Lloyd’s register.”—N Y P L New Tech Bks
* * * * *
“Mr Blocksidge presents for the first time a complete and authoritative work on a very important branch of naval construction.” C. M. Peabody
+ =Int Marine Engineering= 25:774 S ’20 1700w
=N Y P L New Tech Bks= p31 Ap ’20 100w
=Spec= 124:54 Jl 10 ’20 180w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p109 F 12 ’20 60w
=BLOOD, BENJAMIN PAUL.= Pluriverse; an essay in the philosophy of pluralism; with an introd. by Horace Meyer Kallen. *$2.50 Jones, Marshall 191
20–9219
“In 1874 Blood wrote and circulated a pamphlet entitled ‘The anaesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy,’ which brought him into correspondence with Tennyson and Gurney, Emerson and Sir William Ramsay, Stirling and James. In the last years of his life he returned to the topic, and the result is ‘Pluriverse,’ posthumously published. The central point of the book is simple enough. It is that philosophy is ‘of all our vanities the motliest,’ and that the ‘satisfaction’ which it seeks, the sense of security through insight into the mystery of being, is not to be obtained through argument and reasoning but through the illumination or revelation which comes under the influence of anaesthetics.”—New Repub
* * * * *
“Another obscure volume is added to the literature of philosophy. And this will have to be acknowledged despite the fact that the diction of the author is in many places very beautiful, and his thoughts very often exceedingly suggestive.” F. W. C.
− + =Boston Transcript= p8 Je 12 ’20 570w
“Blood, in thorough keeping with the best in American philosophy, thinks waveringly and writes excellently.” E. P.
− + =Dial= 70:109 Ja ’21 200w
“Even Dr Kallen’s interesting and sympathetic introduction does not convince me that the aftermath was worth gathering in.... At any rate, most sane and reasonable men do not gather their religion in the obscure by-ways of abnormal experience, and one cannot help feeling that Blood’s memory would have been better served had it been allowed to live only through the pages of William James.” R. F. A. H.
− + =New Repub= 24:332 N 24 ’20 1250w
=BLOOMFIELD, DANIEL=, comp. Selected articles on modern industrial movements. (Handbook ser.) *$1.80 Wilson, H. W. 330.4
20–1961
For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.
* * * * *
=Am Econ R= 10:363 Je ’20 40w
+ =Booklist= 17:93 D ’20
“The selection on the whole is a fair and representative one. There is an exceptionally complete bibliography.”
+ =Nation= 110:774 Je 5 ’20 220w
“The editor seems to have been able to detach himself from any bias in making his selections. An excellent bibliography is presented, and an index completes what is, on the whole, a very useful documentary work. If the other volumes in the series maintain the standard set by this one they will prove valuable as a source of reference and study.” James Oneal
+ =N Y Call= p10 My 2 ’20 420w
=N Y Times= 25:196 Ap 18 ’20 30w
“As in all compilations of broad scope and limited size, the judicious but fallible editor has included things that he might have left out, and excluded things that he should have put in, and none of his readers will be altogether satisfied; but for all that, he has set before them some good material, for which those who have appetite for industrial problems should be truly thankful.” J. E. Le Rossignol
+ − =Review= 3:504 N 24 ’20 230w
“The compiler has made a discriminating selection of material. Papers on Bolshevism give a much needed insight into that creed, and tend to check the trouble-breeding application of the term to all radicals. Both the student and the man of business will find here ample material on which to base intelligent conclusions.”
+ =Scientific American= 122:476 Ap 24 ’20 130w
“Throughout an attempt is made to treat controversial subjects from various points of vision. Least successful in this respect is the chapter on Bolshevism, particularly as it relates to the achievements of the Soviet government. On the whole, however, the cream of the literature on both sides is impartially presented.” H. W. L.
+ − =Socialist R= 8:252 Mr ’20 120w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p10 My 6 ’20 70w
=Survey= 44:312 My 29 ’20 100w
“The reader is left free to make his own deductions from the fund of valuable information contained therein. The selected bibliography which starts the volume is a real contribution to literature on the subject of industrial relations.”
+ =Textile World= 57:30 My 15 ’20 160w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p741 N 11 ’20 50w
=BLOOMFIELD, DANIEL=, comp. and ed. Selected articles on problems of labor. (Handbook ser.) *$1.80 (1c) Wilson, H. W. 331.8
20–9366
This is volume 3 of Mr Bloomfield’s series of books on industrial relations following “Employment management” and “Modern industrial movements.” The compiler has selected for reprint the best of the recent material on the subject, grouping this material under the headings: Causes of friction and unrest; Cost of living; Methods of compensation; Hours of work; Tenure of employment; Trade unionism; Labor disputes and adjustment; Limitation of output; Industrial insurance; Housing; Methods of promoting industrial peace; Occupational hygiene; Women in industry. Bibliographies have been provided for each subject and there is an index. Meyer Bloomfield writes an introduction.
* * * * *
=Am Econ R= 10:607 S ’20 50w
Reviewed by R. W. Stone
+ =Am J Soc= 26:242 S ’20 200w
“All phases of the labor problem are ably and concisely treated.”
+ =Am Machinist= Jl 8 ’20 120w
=Booklist= 17:10 O ’20
=Springf’d Republican= p10 Ap 24 ’20 200w
“This series has become indispensable for those who, unable to maintain a large filing system of their own, wish to keep important articles on industrial topics that appear in the periodicals.” B. L.
+ =Survey= 44:638 Ag 16 ’20 140w
=BLOUNT, BERTRAM; WOODCOCK, WILLIAM H.; and GILLETT, HENRY J.= Cement. il *$6 (*18s) Longmans 691.5
20–13877
“The present volume forms one of the series of Monographs on industrial chemistry which is being edited by Sir Edward Thorpe, F.R.S., and published by Messrs Longmans. The book contains an introduction, thirteen chapters, and five appendices. In the introduction it is explained that, although cements may vary in chemical nature from casein to iron oxide, yet, by common consent and because of the enormous practical importance of calcareous cements, the term cement, used without qualification, is restricted to them; and it is of calcareous cements alone that the book treats. There are, as Mr Blount points out, numerous varieties of such cements, but they all fall into two groups, (1) the calcium silicate group, and (2) the calcium sulphate group, the first being typified by Portland cement and the second by plaster of Paris. Strictly speaking, it is with the first group alone that the author is concerned.”—Engineer
* * * * *
“This is a welcome addition to what may be described as the ‘popular’ literature on cement. There is indeed much in the book that should cause the cement manufacturer of today to think.” S. G. S. Panisset
+ =Concrete= 17:130 O ’20 640w (Reprinted from British Chemical Industry)
“One has become accustomed to connect Mr Blount’s name with novel and interesting points of view on a variety of matters and we are not surprised, therefore, to find that he has in large measure treated his subject in a manner quite different from that adopted by any previous author.”
+ =Engineer= 130:280 S 17 ’20 2250w
“Rather fuller references to continental and American methods would have been welcome. A very useful book.” C. H. Desch
+ − =Nature= 106:3 S 2 ’20 820w
+ =N Y P L New Tech Bks= p48 Jl ’20 100w
=BLÜCHER VON WAHLSTATT, EVELYN MARY (STAPLETON BRETHERTON) VON.= English wife in Berlin. *$6 Dutton 940.343
21–600
“Evelyn, Princess Blücher, English wife of the great-grandson of the famous marshal of Waterloo, lived throughout the war among her husband’s people, mainly in Berlin, and set down a record of what she heard, saw, thought and felt. As one of that strange colony of distinguished internationals who were war-bound in the German capital, she met everybody of note and enjoyed exceptional advantages for seeing what was going on behind the scenes during those eventful and tragic years. She saw the war also as the country-folk saw it, for she was frequently at the Blücher family seat in Silesia; and at the same time she played a useful rôle in the care of the British prisoners and wounded.”—Freeman
* * * * *
=Ath= p107 Jl 23 ’20 520w
“There is nothing stale or war-worn in this account.” Margaret Ashmun
+ =Bookm= 52:346 D ’20 70w
“Remarkably shrewd and impartial record.” C. R. Hargrove
+ =Freeman= 2:283 D 1 ’20 1000w
“Almost alone of the chronicles that have come out of the enemy country, her diary presents a portrayal of events that is neither envenomed by partisanship nor warped by propagandist intention.” Amy Loveman
+ =N Y Evening Post= p14 D 4 ’20 1050w
“Takes high rank among the really worthwhile books of the war.”
+ =N Y Times= p28 D 26 ’20 920w
“Princess Blücher’s book adds hardly any fact of importance or of permanent historical value. The author saw German life during the war from only a few angles. The attraction of the book for the general public lies almost wholly in the appeal which it makes to persons who are interested in people of title for the title’s sake.”
− + =Review= 3:654 D 29 ’20 260w
=R of Rs= 62:672 D ’20 90w
“This book, simply written by an English lady, with a decided sense of humour and deep religious faith, is far more amusing and informative than the many documented narratives of the famous war correspondents, because it is written from the centre of things in Germany, and has no political or partisan object.”
+ =Sat R= 130:73 Jl 24 ’20 1050w
+ =Spec= 124:84 Jl 17 ’20 2400w
“Its tone is moderate, neither violently pro-English or anti-German.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 N 25 ’20 980w
“This is not exactly an important book, but it is one of the most interesting of those that have been written about life in Germany during the war. Princess Blücher writes with ease, sympathy, and charm, but no special distinction.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p411 Jl 1 ’20 2250w
=BLUNDELL, MARY E. (SWEETMAN) (MRS FRANCIS BLUNDELL) (M. E. FRANCIS, pseud.).=[2] Beck of Beckford. *$2 Kenedy
(Eng ed 20–23029)
“The Becks of Beckford were baronets—alternatively Sir John and Sir Roger—and through an honest endeavour to repay money that had been embezzled by a member of the family they have come down in the world and live as hardworking farming folk. Young Sir Roger, the Beck of Beckford of the story, after school and Oxford, comes back to the farm; and instead of marrying an American heiress with whom he fell in love, wins through his hardships and difficulties by hard work.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
* * * * *
“The book is wholesome and pleasant enough, but seems best suited to readers who are still at the naïve and unexacting age.”
+ − =Cath World= 112:550 Ja ’21 100w
“This is a simple, pretty tale, but saved from insignificance by the skill which never fails this novelist.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p386 Je 17 ’20 120w
=BODENHEIM, MAXWELL.= Advice; a book of poems. *$1.25 Knopf 811
20–16518
Among the titles are: Advice to a street-pavement; Advice to a buttercup; Foundry workers; Rattlesnake mountain fable; Advice to a butterfly; Fifth avenue; Boarding house episode; Steel mills; South Chicago. Some of the poems have appeared in the Yale Review, Smart Set, New Republic, Touchstone and other magazines.
* * * * *
“Mr Bodenheim uses words in a cryptic, esoteric fashion, attaching to them meanings of his own, as though they were his private property and not the common possession of the race.”
− =Ath= p614 N 5 ’20 140w
“Mr Bodenheim has proved himself a very capable artist. Once the reader is willing to lend a bit of sympathy to his theory there is much to enjoy in his poems. The clew to their virtues may be a little difficult to get, the harmony may seem discordant, the images a trifle confusing and fantastic, but careful discernment will bring unity out of the picture, and with a vivid phase of imaginative suggestion.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ =Boston Transcript= p3 N 27 ’20 1050w
“His unfailing sentiment for things leads him at moments whimsically to indulge both word and thought with frantic gestures, even occasionally with unworthy figures of speech. Such tricks, although they often steal distinction from surprise, wear out the power of the brain to respond and eventually develop a resentment toward the kind of verse that leaves us jaded. But it must be observed that Mr Bodenheim has not made a habit of these literary capers; as occasional lapses, his can be condoned.” Stewart Mitchell
+ − =Dial= 69:645 D ’20 1100w
“There is not a single piece in the volume that fails to possess a fresh outlook, a precious intellectual attitude; but these are labored over and strained at so painstakingly that whatever poetry existed in the original concept has long left, and only dry intellectual husks remain.” Clement Wood
− + =N Y Call= N 21 ’20 440w
“‘Advice’ is indubitably one of the important books of the year, as it is one of the books most compact with beauty, actually worthy of frequent rereading. It is a book small only in size, for behind its lines tremble the multitudinous vibrations of a world of beauty and thought.” H. S. Gorman
+ =N Y Times= p22 D 26 ’20 920w
=BOGARDUS, EMORY STEPHEN.= Essentials of Americanization. $1.50 (3c) Univ. of Southern California press, 3474 University av., Los Angeles, Cal. 325.7
19–12739
For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.
* * * * *
“The book is written in splendid spirit and should be of good service to foreigners and to untrained Americanization workers. The chapter dealing with Democracy and the square deal, one of his four Americanisms, is the best in the book. It is much better than the other three. The chapter on the negro is very good but inconclusive.” A. E. Jenks
+ − =Am J Soc= 25:651 Mr ’20 280w
=Booklist= 16:153 F ’20
“On the whole, the book is a valuable contribution to a subject in which there is much interest at the present time.”
+ =School R= 28:313 Ap ’20 180w
=BOGARDUS, EMORY STEPHEN.= Essentials of social psychology. new and enl ed $1.75 Univ. of Southern California press, 3474 University av., Los Angeles, Cal. 301
20–11686
This is a revised and much enlarged edition of a work published in 1918. “In this edition the problems have been re-stated and increased in number.... The subject matter has been re-written and elaborated. The original eight chapters have grown into fifteen chapters.” (Preface to 2d ed) Contents: The field, development, and literature of social psychology; Psychological bases of social psychology; The social personality (three chapters); Suggestion-imitation phenomena (three chapters); Invention and leadership (two chapters): The nature of groups; Group conflicts; Group loyalties; Group control; Social change and progress. Problems and references follow the chapters. There is a general bibliography and an index.
* * * * *
“The volume makes no particularly new contribution to its subject; its value lies in its outlining of the field in its differentiations, and its opening up to the student of volumes of pioneer inquiry.”
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p12 Ja 29 ’21 160w
=BOGART, ERNEST LUDLOW.= Direct and Indirect costs of the great world war. *$1 Oxford; pa gratis Carnegie endowment for international peace 336
19–18454
In this volume of Preliminary economic studies of the war Professor Bogart of the University of Illinois presents a discussion, with tables and estimates, of the war costs in each of the countries concerned. The foreword says: “In the following pages the direct outlays of the governments, which are matters of usual financial procedure, may be said to be fairly accurate; the attempt to estimate the indirect costs of the war, however, is attended with a considerable amount of conjecture and must be regarded merely as the best guess which is possible at the present time.” The work closes with a bibliography of thirty pages and an index.
* * * * *
+ =Am Econ R= 10:377 Je ’20 140w
“It is not as an accurate summary of the costs of the war, but as an outline of the financial history of the great powers, that the book will prove permanently useful.” Alzada Comstock
+ =Am Hist R= 26:362 Ja ’21 420w
“This book by Professor Bogart is the most complete and authentic account now in print of the losses of the war, stated in terms of dollars. The work bears the mark of painstaking cautions and scholarly method. An extensive bibliography and good index adds to its value.” C. J. Bushnell
+ =Am J Soc= 25:650 Mr ’20 280w
=Ath= p386 Mr 19 ’20 100w
Reviewed by C. C. Plehn
=Nation= 111:379 O 6 ’20 380w
=Survey= 44:309 My 29 ’20 350w
“Professor Bogart has produced a careful, sober, and thoughtful analysis of the cost of the war to the world at large, so far as the items can be stated without over-indulgence in ‘estimates,’ and with all proper caveats.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p74 F 5 ’20 1100w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p369 Je 10 ’20 80w
=BÖHME, JACOB.=[2] Confessions of Jacob Boehme; with an introd. by Evelyn Underhill. *$2 Knopf 189
“Mr Scott Palmer has done a valuable piece of work in getting together in a small volume the more personal utterances of Jacob Boehme. It is a book that will appeal to many people who have felt an interest in the great mystic, but, at the same time, have found his writings, when presented to them in mass, heavy and difficult reading.”—Freeman
* * * * *
“Mr Scott Palmer has been wise in keeping as far as possible to William Law’s eighteenth-century translation, the simple language of which is so admirably adapted to the profound meditations of this homely tradesman. Quite apart from their speculative and philosophic value, certain sentences in this volume have about them the intense and innocent beauty of really great literature.” Llewelyn Powys
+ =Freeman= 2:357 D 22 ’20 840w
“We are grateful to Mr Scott Palmer and Miss Evelyn Underhill for their help in faithfully elucidating Böhme’s doctrine and revealing the man himself.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p502 Ag 5 ’20 1350w
=BÖHME, JACOB.= Six theosophic points, and other writings. *$3 (1½c) Knopf 189
20–4124
This book, written in 1620, has here been newly translated into English by John Rolleston Earle. In addition to the Six theosophic points, the contents are: Six mystical points; On the earthly and heavenly mystery; On the divine intuition.
* * * * *
“Valuable for helping to clarify a book written four hundred years ago in a very difficult vocabulary. Too obscure and special for any but the student of the question.”
+ − =Booklist= 16:326 Jl ’20
“These new translations have something more than the face value of new translations of an old and more or less inaccessible author. Students of German mysticism are indebted to the scholarship of John Rolleston Earle as a commentator as well as a translator.” G. H. C.
+ =Boston Transcript= p4 My 5 ’20 500w
Reviewed by Preserved Smith
=Nation= 110:sup483 Ap 10 ’20 220w
=N Y Times= p15 S 12 ’20 130w
“In the ‘Six theosophic points’ one will wander long unless one is provided with some chart. Page after page record the wanderings of a puzzled, ever-searching, ill-equipped, penetrating spirit, with no compass or chart; often over-stepping, it would seem, the bounds of sanity, but from time to time letting fall a pregnant saying. Even in his incoherences are gleams of light.”
− + =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p502 Ag 5 ’20 2650w
=BOJER, JOHAN.= Power of a lie. *$2 Moffat
“The novel tells the story of two men living in a small Swedish town or village, tells what the power of a lie did to them, to their families, and to those persons who came in contact with them—and it. Knut Norby, a wealthy farmer, has indorsed a note for a friend, Henry Wangen, a note for 2,000 kronen. Three or four years later Wangen becomes a bankrupt and Norby denies his signature, denies that he ever saw the paper, or ever signed one for Wangen. The witness is dead; Wangen is convicted of forgery and sent to prison, while Norby is given a banquet by his fellow-townsmen. The innocent man is punished; the guilty man is fêted.”—N Y Times
* * * * *
“Here is a novel of compelling power and dignity, illuminated by a bleak beauty like that of the aurora borealis.”
+ =Dial= 69:546 N ’20 60w
“Bojer does not allow himself the luxury of beauty except where it aids his story. He strips his narrative bare, trims it exquisitely to the least detail, and lets it glide straight before the wind. Johan Bojer is undoubtedly a great artist, although by no means a luxuriant and happy one. He has been aided in his American venture by the admirable translation of Jessie Muir, which deserves the highest praise.” R. L. Duffus
+ =Freeman= 1:524 Ag 11 ’20 360w
“The novel is indeed admirably written, the author indulging neither in verbal fireworks nor in splashes of black, white or scarlet. One reads it with the feeling that it is the truthful account of a real occurrence, but of an occurrence seen from all sides. ‘The power of a lie,’ in short, stands head and shoulders above the average contemporary novel.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:291 Je 6 ’20 1050w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
=Review= 3:708 Jl 7 ’20 750w
“The idea is presented with fine suggestiveness and artistic vitality.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a Jl 25 ’20 280w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p613 O 30 ’19 50w
=BOJER, JOHAN.= Treacherous ground; tr. from the Norwegian by Jessie Muir. *$2 Moffat
20–4783
“Young Erik Evje has two characteristics; he is a man whose former immoral aberrations weigh heavy on his conscience, and a man imbued with high ideals in connection with social reform. By putting into practice his ideals he hopes to atone for his sin. He can find no solace in religion, and he makes of his philanthropic work his crucifix. The little colony that he plants on a hillside is the only tangible evidence of his ideals, and at the same time his atonement. But he is told that his house is built on sand, that a landslide will carry it away. It is too necessary as his last grip on the best part of himself for him to give it up. The landslide occurs and wipes out several families.”—Springf’d Republican
* * * * *
“A story with interesting characters, a pleasant background and well sustained suspense, that is thoughtful without a touch of heaviness.”
+ =Booklist= 16:242 Ap ’20
“Its trenchant clearness is almost frightening, like transparent glass where one expected wooden walls; its teaching is both true and tragic.” R. M. Underhill
+ =Bookm= 51:444 Je ’20 100w
Reviewed by R. L. Duffus
=Freeman= 1:524 Ag 11 ’20 360w
=Lit D= p93 Je 26 ’20 1800w
“The tale has the bite and ‘follow through’ of an Ibsen play, a ‘Wild duck’ or an ‘Enemy of the people.’ It lacks, accordingly, the rich sympathy of ‘The great hunger.’” H. W. Boynton
+ − =Review= 2:520 My 15 ’20 420w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
=Review= 3:709 Jl 7 ’20 120w
“The theme is peculiarly and very strongly developed. Johan Bojer employs a very realistic style and presents a vivid picture of the Evje farm.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 My 31 ’20 250w
=BOK, EDWARD WILLIAM.= Americanization of Edward Bok; the autobiography of a Dutch boy fifty years after. il *$5 Scribner
20–17333
In writing his autobiography the author has treated himself objectively, which accounts for the title. It is with the editor and publicist that the book deals, not with the author’s private self. Not until he retired from the editorship of the Ladies’ Home Journal, did he cease to be two personalities and become simply himself. The book abounds in reminiscences of editorial experiences and of famous men, contains facsimiles of autographs and manuscripts, a list of biographical data, illustrations and an index.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:111 D ’20
“Mr Bok has done more than merely carry the reader with him along the pleasant paths which he has trod. He has thought deeply upon the problem of the immigrant and the result is a valuable contribution.” H: L. West
+ =Bookm= 52:362 D ’20 540w
“This autobiography of the ex-editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal is likely to produce upon the sophisticated reader that impression of exasperated amusement which I have noted in more or less civilized Britons when they have undergone a course of the Saturday Evening Post, at my suggestion, in order that they might become familiar with that microcosm of the United States.” E. A. Boyd
− =Freeman= 2:355 D 22 ’20 2550w
“This is an extraordinary array. In all the account of it there is not one gleam of intellectual speculation, not one sign that Mr Bok ever heard of the world of ideas, or that he understood any passions stronger than sentimentalism. His criticism of the America in which he lived and which he seems to have understood so well, is always merely trivial.” I. B.
− =Nation= 111:783 D 29 ’20 1050w
Reviewed by A. M. Jungmann
=N Y Evening= Post p2 O 23 ’20 1400w
“Considered in every aspect, ‘The Americanization of Edward Bok’ is an affording and a significant book. In style it is as simple and perspicuous as Xenophon’s ‘Anabasis,’ which was also written in the third person and by a man of shrewd common sense who trusted his instincts.”
+ =No Am= 213:134 Ja ’21 2000w
“There is a great deal that is stimulating to energy, originality, and resourcefulness in this autobiography, as well as much that is amusing and agreeable reading.” R. D. Townsend
+ =Outlook= 126:514 N 17 ’20 1600w
“It is pleasant reading and happily stimulating to wholesome ambition.” R. R. Bowker
+ =Pub W= 98:1884 D 18 ’20 300w
“All in all, this is a remarkable book. Edward Bok is as compelling a writer when telling his own story as when writing on other themes, and this ought to be one of the ‘best sellers’ of the year.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p7a D 26 ’20 850w
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 16:237 D ’20 100w
=BOLTON, GUY, and MIDDLETON, GEORGE.= Light of the world. il *$1.75 Holt 812
20–19671
The scene of this three-act play is Oberammergau, the village of the Passion play, just previous to a new performance; the time, between the choosing of the actors and the opening of the play; and the theme, the disparity between the teachings of Christ and the daily life of Christians. Anton Rendel, the chosen Christus, discovers, on the eve of his friend Simon’s wedding, that Simon has betrayed the girl Anton had loved. Anton forgives but advises confession to Ruth, the bride, and is left under the impression that it was made. The girl and her baby seek refuge and find shelter in Anton’s house. His rivals among the actors throw suspicion on Anton and insist that he drive out the girl or give up his rôle as Christus. He does the latter and before the play is to open a mob comes to set fire to his house. At that moment the truth of the situation has just been revealed to Ruth. She exacts open confession from Simon as the price of her love, whereupon the rôle of Christus is once more offered to Anton.
* * * * *
“In no sense is this a play that will live, but it is a workmanlike performance with a creditable motive—defence of the unfortunate and misunderstood.”
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p16 D 4 ’20 220w
“Guy Bolton and George Middleton have made a real addition to the literature of our contemporary stage. Yet curiously, perhaps, the illustrations interspersed through the published play serve as a check rather than a spur to the reader’s enjoyment.” Dorothy Grafly
+ =Springf’d Republican= p5a Ja 30 ’21 450w
=BOLTON, HERBERT EUGENE, and MARSHALL, THOMAS MAITLAND.=[2] Colonization of North America, 1492–1783. il *$4.25 Macmillan 970
20–16766
“A solid treatise (arranged in headed paragraphs) by two American history professors, giving a comprehensive survey of the colonization of North America from 1492 to 1783, and providing a more complete account than previous works have done of the colonies of nations other than the English and of English colonies other than those which established their independence. A special attempt has been made to do better justice to Spanish achievements in North American colonization. Of the three sections into which the work is divided the first deals with the founding of the colonies, the second with their expansion and the international conflict (Anglo-Spanish and Franco-Spanish as well as Franco-English), and the third with the revolt of the English colonies. Numerous convenient maps elucidate the text. Index 53 pp.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
* * * * *
+ =R of Rs= 63:110 Ja ’21 240w
“A convenient and readable sketch of the whole subject.”
+ =Spec= 125:823 D 18 ’20 110w
“The style of the work is far from distinguished, and it is a text-book rather than a work of history; but it shows just that breadth and firmness of treatment which will aid the student to acquire a true perspective of past events. The excellence of the idea should have considerable effect on the elementary teaching of history.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 N 4 ’20 120w
“Because of this comprehensive character, from the point of view of our present interests instead of from that of the original thirteen states of the union, it will be particularly appreciated by those of us who feel the importance of intelligent acquaintance with our historical backgrounds but have not the time to specialize in colonial history.” Lilian Brandt
+ =Survey= 45:579 Ja 15 ’21 100w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p802 D 2 ’20 120w
=BONI, ALBERT=, ed. Modern book of French verse in English translations. (Modern books of verse) *$2.50 Boni & Liveright 841.08
20–8026
“‘The modern book of French verse’ covers the whole field of French poetry from Guillaume de Poitier’s writing in 1071 to Jules Romain’s, who was born as late as 1885. All the famous figures of French poetry are generously included, the book being starred with the names of Villon, Marot, de Ronsard, Du Bellay, Chenier, De Beranger, Victor Hugo, De Musset, Gautier, De Lisle, Baudelaire, Prudhomme, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Samain, Laforgue, De Régnier, Jammes, Paul Fort and Vildrac. Among the translators may be casually noted Jethro Bithell, Robert Bridges, Chaucer, Austin Dobson, Ernest Dowson, James Elroy Flecker, Andrew Lang, Arthur O’Shaughnessy, John Payne, W. J. Robertson, Rossetti, Swinburne, J. A. Symonds, Arthur Symons and Francis Thompson.”—N Y Times
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:337 Jl ’20
“Mr Boni’s admirable compilation of English translations of the best French poetry makes a delectable volume. There are very few false notes in this varied chorus.”
+ =Cath World= 111:834 S ’20 170w
“An excellent anthology of translations. Should be valuable in courses in comparative literature.”
+ =Dial= 69:434 O ’20 100w
“The wealth of material at Mr Boni’s command must have made his editorial task a pleasure as it has undoubtedly made the resultant
## book invaluable. In future editions, however, Mr Boni should fill a
few very obvious gaps.” Ludwig Lewisohn
+ − =Nation= 110:857 Je 26 ’20 950w
“His anthology has many gaps, judged as a selection of French verse. However, it is useful and interesting to have this collection of translations, not only for a better idea of French verse among those to whom the originals are sealed, but for a study of poets of the whole subject of translation.” W. P. Eaton
+ − =N Y Call= p11 Je 13 ’20 620w
“It must have been a labor of love on Mr Boni’s part, and, like all labors of love, it vindicates itself by its completeness and high average of value. The book will be found invaluable by those who do not read French easily.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:296 Je 6 ’20 600w
“The quality of the verse is comparatively high; none of it is high enough to dissuade a sensitive reader from learning French.”
+ − =Review= 3:47 Jl 14 ’20 250w
=Springf’d Republican= p8 Jl 15 ’20 230w
Reviewed by E: B. Reed
+ − =Yale R= n s 10:202 O ’20 360w
=BONJOUR, FELIX.= Real democracy in operation: the example of Switzerland. *$1.50 (3c) Stokes 342.4
20–9847
The author of the book, a former president of the Swiss national council, outlines and explains the constitution and the workings of the Swiss federal republic, which he considers to be in the vanguard of democratic evolution. The twenty-five more or less autonomous states comprising this confederation are political laboratories which borrow one from another those forms of government which appear to succeed best—a practice which insures continuous democratic growth. Contents: Federalism in Switzerland; The evolution of democracy in Switzerland; The Landsgemeinde; The referendum; The results of the referendum; The popular initiative; The results of the initiative; The election of the government and officials by the people; Democracy in the communes and the churches; Compulsory voting and woman suffrage; Proportional representation; Democracy in the army and maintenance of neutrality; The future of democracy in Switzerland; Appendix; Index.
* * * * *
“Written in a pleasing style and admirably translated.” R. C. Brooks
+ =Am Pol Sci R= 14:514 Ag ’20 330w
=Booklist= 17:50 N ’20
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 18 ’20 220w
+ =Cleveland= p90 O ’20 40w
=N Y Times= p19 Ag 22 ’20 3000w
=Outlook= 126:558 N ’21 ’20 180w
+ =R of Rs= 62:109 Jl ’20 80w
“We recommend those who are interested in the theory and art of modern politics to read this volume of Mr Felix Bonjour with attention, even though they may be bored occasionally with its inevitable parochiality.”
+ − =Sat R= 130:119 Ag 7 ’20 750w
“A book such as M. Bonjour’s was much needed.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p416 Jl 1 ’20 950w
=BOOK= of Marjorie. *$1.50 (6½c) Knopf
20–4704
The book is an idyl of married life told by the husband. It begins with that night in spring when he first told Marjorie that he loved her and makes the reader a confidant of all the intimate details that lay between then and the time when they both bent over Peter’s bassinette and knew that they “should live forever in Peter and Peter’s children.”
* * * * *
“The book offers no unusual problems and its reactions are simple and happy.” D. L. M.
+ =Boston Transcript= p11 Ap 17 ’20 800w
=Nation= 110:402 Mr 27 ’20 250w
“The telling is graceful and natural; the little autobiographical fragment is a thing to cherish.” C. W.
+ =N Y Call= p11 My 16 ’20 180w
“‘The book of Marjorie’ is a simple description of a happy marriage by a writer whose main charm is simplicity.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:164 Ap 11 ’20 650w
=BORDEN-TURNER, MARY.= Romantic woman. *$2 (1½c) Knopf
20–15390
The story of a Chicago heiress who marries into the British aristocracy. It opens in Chicago, here lightly disguised as “Iroquois,” with the heroine’s own account of her democratic and rather hoydenish girlhood and an introduction to the childhood friends, Louise, Phyllis, Jim Van Orden and Pat O’Brien, who play a
## part in her later life. Perhaps she should have married Jim and
settled down to a conventional and comfortable American life, but traveling with her father in India she falls romantically in love with a handsome cavalry officer, not knowing that he is heir to a dukedom. He, on his part, tho genuinely attracted to the girl, is not unconscious of her wealth. Marriage brings disillusionments and introduces the naïve American into a society whose standards are quite incomprehensible. There is considerable analysis of the two contrasting points of view and the story ends with a glimpse of the war.
* * * * *
“If you can find either constructive idea or positive personality in this book, I cannot; and therefore it remains for me, despite its clever elaboration of detail, that thing which Mr Hewlett rightly dismisses as not worth the name—a string of anecdotes, and no more.” H. W. Boynton
− =Bookm= 52:71 S ’20 560w
“Her picture of that city [Chicago] and its people is one of the very brilliant things in recent literature. Its temper is not harsh, but it has an edge and the edge cuts clean every time. Always she conveys the richness, the distinction, and the vigor of an arresting character and mind.”
+ =Nation= 110:625 My 8 ’20 900w
“Miss Borden is not a little pretentious. She does not avoid trying to take more soul out than she has really put in. At the same time, she has a rich theme and she knows her theme. She has a real Englishman in hand and she knows him; and she has a vitality almost as good as the vitality of art. Hers is not the detachment of art or the sincerity of artistic self-expression. It is the drive of emotion, the sincerity of a personal confession told in provisional terms.” F. H.
+ − =New Repub= 22:290 Ap 28 ’20 1650w
“Except where it becomes too involved the book is well written. Where its author has been most successful is in the atmosphere of dull discontent, of poignant disillusion, which she evokes throughout. There are neat characterizations, epigrammatic bits of phrasing and some passages written with unblushing frankness.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:208 Ap 25 ’20 600w
“It is a book worth reading slowly and must be so read, for it is told in that peculiar manner practiced by Conrad. It is a taxing style, but it has its fascination.” M. K. Reely
+ − =Pub W= 97:1288 Ap 17 ’20 300w
“The work is characterized by contrasts, there are times when the climaxes and the description are vivid but between these there are pages where the writing is labored.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p11a Je 6 ’20 220w
=BOSSCHÈRE, JEAN DE.= City curious. il *$3 Dodd
20–18755
A fantastic fairy tale, retold in English by F. Tennyson Jesse. Smaly and Redy, husband and wife, who live in a charming little white house, regret that they haven’t three daughters to occupy their little bedrooms. They wished for them and said a magic verse, but nothing happened. Then they set out to look for them. The story follows their strange adventures and describes the very curious people they meet. The grotesque pictures by the author are in keeping with the text.
* * * * *
=Lit D= p96 D 4 ’20 30w
“The Belgian turns of thought and imagery have been kept, but not at the expense of good English, as is sometimes the case in a translation.”
+ =Spec= 125:745 D 4 ’20 260w
“It is really ingenuous of M. de Bosschère and his admirers to imagine him as qualified to draw for children. We should hide all his pictures from them.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p830 D 9 ’20 330w
=BOSTWICK, ARTHUR ELMORE.= Librarian’s open shelf; essays on various subjects. *$3 (3c) Wilson, H. W. 814
20–26990
“The papers here gathered together represent the activities of a librarian in directions outside the boundaries of his professional career, although the influences of it may be detected in them here and there.” (Preface) The book forms a companion volume to “Library essays” and like that volume is composed of collected papers and addresses prepared for various occasions. Partial list of contents: Do readers read? What makes people read? The passing of the possessive: a study of book titles; Selective education; The uses of fiction; The value of association; Modern educational methods; Some economic features of libraries; Simon Newcomb, America’s foremost astronomer; The companionship of books; Atomic theories of energy; The advertisement of ideas.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:91 D ’20
=BOSTWICK, ARTHUR ELMORE.= Library essays. *$3 (2c) Wilson, H. W. 020
20–26991
The author celebrates his twenty-fifth year of librarianship with the publication of this volume of collected essays and addresses. They are arranged chronologically and “reflect to a certain extent the progress of library work during the past quarter century.” (Preface) Among the subjects covered are: Pains and penalties in library work; How librarians choose books; The work of the small public library; Lay control in libraries and elsewhere; The whole duty of a library trustee, from a librarian’s standpoint; Library statistics; The love of books as a basis for librarianship; The library as the educational center of a town; The librarian as a censor; How to raise the standard of book selection; The library and the business man; The future of library work; The library as a museum; The library and the locality. There is an index.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:91 D ’20
=BOSWELL, A. BRUCE.= Poland and the Poles. il *$4 (4½c) Dodd 943.8
20–26318
The book is based on a study of Poland extending over many years and on personal contact with Poles during a five year’s residence of the author in their country. It is rather a series of essays than a continuous narrative and aims to treat Poland ethnically rather than politically and to describe all the region where Polish civilization is an important element. The contents are: The land; The people: National characteristics; The past of Poland; Divided Poland; Political parties; The country-side; Commerce and industry; The Ukraine question; Work at the foundations; The capital city; The great romantic poets; Modern currents in Polish literature; Education and science; Art and music; The war; Three maps, numerous illustrations and an index.
* * * * *
“A valuable contribution to the literature dealing with a country of which too little is known by the English reader. The Polish national characteristics are very clearly described.”
+ =Ath= p1243 N 21 ’19 70w
“We would draw attention to Mr Boswell’s able summary of the Ukrainian problem.... On the other hand, although he devotes a whole chapter to Polish affairs during the war, his treatment of the Teschen question is, in our opinion, neither adequate nor correct. The purely informative sections of Mr Boswell’s book are accurate and thorough. His treatment of ethnographical matters is particularly good, while the two chapters he devotes to Polish literature cover a large amount of fresh ground.” P. S.
+ − =Ath= p1396 D 26 ’19 700w
+ =Booklist= 16:240 Ap ’20
“One of the foremost impressions made by the book is that of the earnest effort of the author to give a truthful delineation of the country and the people of whom he writes. This after the long years of propaganda on the part of both Germany and Russia is too important to be overlooked.” D. L. M.
+ =Boston Transcript= p4 My 19 ’20 600w
=Ind= 104:68 O 9 ’20 50w
+ =R of Rs= 61:446 Ap ’20 100w
“A readable and instructive book by a competent authority. The concluding chapter gives a useful sketch of Polish policy during the war which was very perplexing for western readers.”
+ =Spec= 124:21 Ja 3 ’20 140w
“Unlike some supporters of the Polish cause he has no need to make up in sentiment what he lacks in knowledge; on the contrary his knowledge saves him from an unqualified and undiscriminating enthusiasm. The historical and political side is naturally the most important at the present time, and it is in regard to this that Mr Boswell’s work is most illuminating.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p659 N 20 ’19 850w
=BOSWORTH, THOMAS OWEN.= Geology of the mid continent oilfields. il *$3 Macmillan 553
20–26532
A work covering the oil fields of Kansas, Oklahoma and north Texas. A bibliography of four pages following the introduction shows the sources on which the author has drawn. The sections of the book are then devoted to: Geographical and geological situation of the mid continent oil region; History of the development of the mid continent oil region; Geological structure of the mid continent oilfield region; Geological history of the oil bearing deposits; Stratigraphy and the oilfields; The oil accumulations and their relation to geological structure; Character of the oil; The natural gas; Production of gasoline from natural gas; Salinity of oilfield waters; Some general conclusions. There is a folding map showing the region under consideration, with additional maps and drawings and eight illustrations from photographs. The book is indexed.
* * * * *
“Although the vocabulary of the book is more or less technical, nevertheless the lay reader may pursue it with comfort and understanding.” I: Lippincott
+ =Am Econ R= 10:588 S ’20 410w
“There is certainly nothing strikingly new in Dr Bosworth’s book, and one further perceives in the work a strong undercurrent of bias to prevalent American opinion. For the rest, the book certainly contains some useful features.” H. B. Milner
+ − =Nature= 105:608 Jl 15 ’20 750w
=Spec= 125:541 O 23 ’20 160w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p639 S 30 ’20 60w
=BOUCICAULT, RUTH BALDWIN (HOLT) (MRS AUBREY BOUCICAULT).= Rose of Jericho. *$1.90 (1½c) Putnam
20–6707
Sheelah Brent was literally picked up by a traveling theatrical company and pressed into their services as substitute for a sick stage child, when she was only seven. For six weeks she thus tided over, with her earnings, a crisis in her family while her widowed father was ill from overwork. Later, when she came to choose her own course, it was the theater. She made good in her profession and in due time became an artist. Towards this latter development her love experiences as a woman helped. But it meant struggle and heartache for Sheelah and defiance of all conventions. Heart solitude once more overtakes her when her son Michael, the fruit of her first girlish and illicit love, is sent to school in England under the guidance of his English father. It is then that she finds so much solace in a book that she writes to the author for more spiritual help. With the coming of the war both Michael and his father volunteer and the latter rescues his son at the cost of his eyesight. The usual thing follows but not before Sheelah has turned to religion, Michael has been killed and she has discovered in her former lover the author of the helpful book.
* * * * *
“A good deal of the novel is well written, particularly the first two ‘books,’ but it drags badly toward the close.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:170 Ap 11 ’20 350w
“The beginning is cleverly human, but the close is strongly-presented pathos of the type commonly classed as ‘sob stuff.’”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p11a Je 13 ’20 190w
=BOUCKE, OSWALD FRED.= Limits of socialism. *$1.50 (1½c) Macmillan 335
20–7869
After having made it clear that he considers socialism as neither a chimera nor a crime the author makes an attempt at a sympathetic examination of its various tenets with a view to laying bare its weak points and demonstrating the necessity for amendments of the original creed. “Revision is a step in the onward march of civilization. Science itself is nothing if not continual growth and redefinition of terms, whose finest fruit is the advancement of humanism.” The book falls into two parts. Part 1, The limits in theory, contains: The problem; Karl Marx and the economists; The economic interpretation of history; Justice. Part 2, The limits in practice, contains: The limits in production; The limits in distribution; The limits in consumption; The limits in government; A petition. There are seven statistical tables and an index. The author is professor of economics at Pennsylvania state college.
* * * * *
“In regard to the program of socialism, the author makes a worthy contribution to a much neglected subject in that he points out the difficulties which socialists will encounter in trying to realize their ideals, and the limited success which they are likely to attain.” J. E. Le Rossignol
+ =Am Econ R= 10:860 D ’20 780w
=Booklist= 17:50 N ’20
“When he leaves the field of economics he is less convincing. The book will prove rather stiff exposition to the general reader, who will be annoyed at the needlessly scientific vocabulary.”
+ − =Nation= 111:304 S 11 ’20 340w
“The book is stimulating to thought because it is itself thoughtful, a model in manner and temper, a better antidote to socialism’s errors than denunciation or denial of the evils it seeks to cure.” E: A. Bradford
+ =N Y Times= p12 S 12 ’20 2000w
“There is much good stuff in the book, some shrewd ideas, and some sound generalizing, which if turned into language understanded of the people would be valuable.”
+ − =Review= 3:112 Ag 4 ’20 320w
=R of Rs= 62:672 D ’20 20w
=BOULENGER, JACQUES.= Seventeenth century. *$3.50 (2c) Putnam 944.03
20–26872
This work forms one of the volumes of the National history of France. It is preceded by “The century of the renaissance” by L. Batiffol, published in 1916, and is followed by “The eighteenth century,” by Casimir Stryienski, also issued in 1916. Contents: The youth of Louis XIII; Richelieu; The preponderance of France (1630–1643); The kingdom under Louis XIII; The beginnings of society and of classic literature; The Fronde and Mazarin; The “Roi-soleil”; The glorious years, 1661–1678; Decline; Religious matters; Sunset; The kingdom under Louis XIV; The great age. References come at the end of the chapters and there is an index.
* * * * *
“Distinctly a readable book.”
+ =Booklist= 17:64 N ’20
“This new presentation of the greatest period in the history of France is brilliantly written.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Jl 24 ’20 700w
+ =Ind= 104:217 N 13 ’20 50w
“Boulenger has undertaken a difficult task, and he has done it well. Though treating the general history of a whole century in some detail, he is neither superficial nor tiringly technical. One feature of his
## book is especially commendable; the author’s desire to be
non-partisan. It may be well to bring out the fact that, for the real or quasi-specialist, Boulenger treats his subject too much from the outside, and thus fails to emphasize sufficiently at least one feature of much importance for the proper understanding of the epoch he treats.”
+ − =Review= 3:503 N 24 ’20 1900w
=R of Rs= 62:223 Ag ’20 30w
“His portraits of Richelieu, Mazarin, Colbert and the great King himself are vivid and unforgettable. M. Boulenger is a learned historian but, like so many French scholars, he wears his learning lightly.”
+ =Spec= 125:344 S 11 ’20 150w
“M. Boulenger’s subject is relatively simple, but it is a big one, and it has the disadvantage of being hackneyed. The best praise that can be given to his book is to say that it is on a level with M. Madelin’s ‘French revolution,’ and superior to any other volumes in this attractive series.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p436 Jl 8 ’20 700w
=BOULNOIS, HENRY PERCY.= Modern roads. il *$5.75 (*16s) Longmans 625.7
(Eng ed 20–9208)
“The author was a member of the British Advisory engineering committee appointed in 1910 as a result of the increasing dust nuisance due to poorly constructed roads. Much information regarding British conditions was obtained and standard specifications produced. This
## book covers in a comprehensive way the subjects of motor traffic, the
various kinds of roads and details of construction, waves and corrugations, slippery streets, with appendices relating to traffic regulations.”—N Y P L New Tech Bks
* * * * *
=N Y P L New Tech Bks= p28 Ap ’20 70w
=Spec= 122:145 Ja 31 ’20 420w
=BOURNE, RANDOLPH SILLIMAN.=[2] History of a literary radical; and other essays. *$2 (3c) Huebsch 814
This collection of essays, reprinted from various magazines, is edited with an introduction by Van Wyck Brooks. The latter is a sketch of the author’s intellectual development which is corroborated in the first essay, “History of a literary radical.” What Bourne stood for, says Van Wyck Brooks, was a new fellowship of the youth of America, a league of youth, for the purpose of creating, out of the blind chaos of American society, a fine, free, articulate cultural order. “He, if any one, in the days to come, would have conjured out of our dry soil the green shoots of a beautiful and a characteristic literature: he knew that soil so well, and why it was dry, and how it ought to be irrigated!” (Introd.) The essays are: History of a literary radical; Our cultural humility; Six portraits; This older generation; A mirror of the Middle West; Ernest: or Parent for a day; On discussion; The puritan’s will to power; The immanence of Dostoevsky; The art of Theodore Dreiser; The uses of infallibility; Impressions of Europe; Trans-national America; Fragment of a novel.
* * * * *
“The essay which gives its title to the book is a piece of intellectual biography which is worth the careful study of everyone who is puzzled by the open revolt of the choicest intellects in our undergraduate bodies against the ideals and discipline of our universities. In ‘The Puritan’s will to power’ and in ‘Transnational America’ Randolph Bourne’s feelings were perhaps too deeply involved to permit him to attain the complete clarity and cogency usual with him. But the gently whimsical ‘Ernest, or Parent for a day’ would be a sufficient compensation for any imperfections there might be elsewhere in the book.” Alvin Johnson
+ =Freeman= 25:293 F 2 ’21 880w
“It is impossible, in spite of all that makes it valuable, to read this book without a final sense of disappointment. Randolph Bourne’s interests were as wide as the world; his views were true and tempered; his style is simple, and it is effective chiefly because the words he uses are wise and exact rather than original; but his appeal, after all, is very narrow. He is the pure intellectual addressing the ‘younger intelligentsia,’ and his exclusiveness gradually becomes slightly tiresome even as the phrase quoted becomes irritating.” Freda Kirchwey
+ − =Nation= 111:619 D 1 ’20 1050w
=BOURNE, RANDOLPH SILLIMAN.= Untimely papers. *$1.50 (3½c) Huebsch 320.4
20–26319
For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.
* * * * *
“Written during America’s war preparations, these papers are well named untimely, for they question with the rigor of a clear minded, uncompromising pacifist and idealist, America’s attitude in combating the spirit of the war lord with war. They are an interesting portrayal of the courage in his belief of the author.”
+ =Booklist= 16:219 Ap ’20
“Dying just when he should have come into his own, Randolph Bourne left behind him a set of brilliant essays on the political life of yesterday. These have been gathered and edited by James Oppenheim with a foreword perhaps a thought too laudatory. Yet much can be said for Mr Bourne’s keen insight and flashing style. His sentences are diamond cut, his reasoning clear even to the most undiscerning.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ap 28 ’20 240w
Reviewed by E. C. Parsons
+ =Dial= 68:367 Mr ’20 1500w
“They are courageous papers in that they represent an unwincing defence of an attitude which can never have been at all popular. They are turned from protest into positive statement by a long and unfinished essay on the state, in which Mr Bourne was clearly searching to vindicate the ultimate rights of personality against the demands of authority outside. The whole essay is a superb cry of anger against a tyranny which he felt to be grinding. Yet I venture to think that the essay is in fact largely devoid of realistic basis. It has a specialized motivation which makes it valuable as the record of a personal experience, but impracticable as a contribution to political science.” H. J. Laski
+ − =Freeman= 1:237 My 19 ’20 1150w
“It is the book of a too sensitive spirit, dying brokenhearted in a world that seemed hopelessly insane and misdirected. Whatever we may think of the substance of these essays there can be no question of the delicate beauty of their expression or the evidence they give of the patrician dignity and courage which marked the author’s personality.”
+ =Ind= 102:234 My 8 ’20 100w
“No educated, honest, able-bodied man can read the war essays of Randolph Bourne without some degree of admiration for their dead author and some sort of shame for himself. What we say now without being either brave or original he said then, not, perhaps, with the maturity of a Bertrand Russell or a Romain Rolland, but at least with fine courage and imagination. It may turn out that the cleanest picture of ourselves when we were not ourselves is here in these two hundred and thirty pages.”
+ =Nation= 110:522 Ap 17 ’20 380w
“The unfinished fragment on the state, which was to have been so great a book, is still a keen and impressive analysis of social psychology.... And after the self-styled peace what would Randolph Bourne have added, what doubly bitter denunciation, to the temperate ironies of these searching papers? Perhaps nothing but the tolerant smile of one who foresaw.” Marion Tyler
+ =Socialist R= 8:251 Mr ’20 550w
“Academically, his arguments may have been right, but it is obvious that they were uttered at a time when they must have proved the reverse of helpful. They may now be read with the dispassionate calm to which they are entitled, and they well repay careful consideration.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p13a F 22 ’20 220w
“He proved right in many of the pronouncements which can now be weighed against actual happenings; and for this reason there is hope that a kindly hearing may yet be given to the essays here reprinted.”
+ =Survey= 44:291 My 22 ’20 150w
“These papers are overshadowed by the war; and as the war figured in Bourne’s outlook as a tragic impertinence which had rudely choked the young shoots of a new life in America with which his dearest hopes were bound up, there is a steady undertow of resentment which disturbs the balance of his thought. But all the same, these papers were worth printing as a historical document to show the generations to come how the war struck a profound and honest mind that had enthroned the spirit of life and was already seeing afar off the triumph of life over the forces of death.” R. R.
+ − =World Tomorrow= 3:157 My ’20 160w
“He could write—there is no question about that—and he could think, but these two fine qualities do not excuse the fact that his first principles are nearly always wrong.” M. F. Egan
− + =Yale R= n s 10:188 O ’20 380w
=BOWEN, WILLIAM.=[2] Enchanted forest. il *$2.50 Macmillan
20–20549
In this series of fairy tales a forest is turned into paper, its brooks petrified and the voice of the birds stilled by the bad temper of a king. How the forest was redeemed by Bilbo the woodcutter’s son, who thereby won the princess; how the pair cured the old king’s temper through an “Interrupter” and his “Encourager”; and how little Prince Bojohn and his playmate Bodkin had many adventures with elves and fairies, is all told in these tales with delightful humor. The book is illustrated by Maud and Miska Petersham.
=BOWER, B. M., pseud. (BERTHA MUZZY SINCLAIR) (MRS BERTRAND WILLIAM SINCLAIR).= Quirt. il *$1.75 (2½c) Little
20–8857
Lorraine Hunter lives in Los Angeles and has absorbed her ideas of the “West” from the movies. She has never known her father, a rancher in Idaho, but she pictures him as a cattle king and sees herself in the rôle of cattle king’s daughter. She finds the Quirt, Brit Hunter’s ranch, a very different place from her imaginings. It is one of the few small ranches allowed to survive in the shadow of the great Sawtooth cattle company’s holdings. Other small owners have been absorbed or have met “accidental” deaths, but Brit and his partner, as two highly respected old-timers, have remained unmolested. On the night of her arrival Lorraine loses her way and finds herself mixed up with one of the “accidents” referred to. She talks, and talk is dangerous to the Sawtooth. In the fight that follows Lone Morgan lines up with the Quirt but it is Swan Vjolmar, the seemingly innocent Swede, who plays the final card.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:350 Jl ’20
“The tale begins interestingly enough, but what with deeds of violence, and thunderstorms of a like violence, soon passes into the realms of mediocrity.”
− + =Boston Transcript= p7 Je 23 ’20 300w
=Cleveland= p71 Ag ’20 60w
“The story moves briskly, with plenty of sensational incident, while all its detail, as always in B. M. Bower’s novels, is colorful and convincing.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:22 Je 27 ’20 370w
=Outlook= 125:507 Jl 14 ’20 40w
=Springf’d Republican= p11a Je 20 ’20 200w
“A story of western life that is both fresh and plausible.”
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 16:193 N ’20 160w
=BOWMAN, ARCHIBALD ALLAN.= Sonnets from a prison camp. *$1.50 Lane 811
20–8620
The author, professor of philosophy at Princeton university, says of these sonnets written in captivity that they “stood between my soul and madness,” and hopes that what has meant so much to him under one of the heaviest blows that can befall a soldier will have some general human interest. They are grouped as follows: In the field; The nadir; On the march; Rastatt; Hesepe; Thoughts of home; Influences; Watchwords and maxims; England and Oxford; Home thoughts once more; Interlude; England.
* * * * *
“When he begins to write of those reflective themes to which the sonnet form is fitted, Mr Bowman reveals himself as an interesting and talented writer. Mr Bowman’s chief defect is a certain stiltedness and overnobility of language, which sometimes leads him to talk of prosaic or trivial things with a pomp which does not become them.”
+ − =Ath= p429 Mr 26 ’20 180w
“Benvenuto Cellini also wrote sonnets in captivity: and they are as perfunctory and uninspired as are Professor Bowman’s.” R. M. Weaver
− =Bookm= 52:63 S ’20 70w
Reviewed by Marguerite Williams
=N Y Times= p24 Ag 22 ’20 100w
=Sat R= 129:110 Ja 31 ’20 200w
“Grave and eloquent sonnets, a little sententious and here and there a little prosaic.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p755 D 11 ’19 80w
=BOYER, WILBUR SARLES.= Johnnie Kelly. il *$2 (3c) Houghton
20–16092
Johnnie Kelly is a red-headed Irish boy of thirteen when he makes his debut at Public school 199, Amsterdam ave., the Bronx. The teachers regard him as a terror, but one instructor, Daniel Parks, takes enough interest in him to try to show him how he can be a leader. His various escapades fill the book, culminating in his being elected vice-president of the Amsterdam Republic, and receiving the wrist watch which is offered to the pupil who sells the most liberty bonds. Incidentally, he plays no small part in the romance that develops between Mr Parks and the pretty new teacher, Helen Bouck.
* * * * *
“Many schoolmasters are of a cut-and-dried sort, who cut circles in deep ruts and see nothing in life beyond the daily routine of the schoolroom. But Mr Boyer sees beyond this and has made a natural study of the boy and his characteristics. Not this alone, but he himself has a rare gift of humor, and the two are combined in ‘Johnnie Kelly.’”
+ =Boston Transcript= p5 N 6 ’20 190w
“The efforts of a ‘Bronix’ policeman’s son to attain popularity in a Manhattan public school are amusing enough, and he and his young associates are human and healthy.” M. H. B. Mussey
+ =Nation= 111:sup672 D 8 ’20 150w
=BOYNTON, PERCY HOLMES.= History of American literature. *$2.25 Ginn 810.9
20–3784
Omitting authors of minor importance the book has been written “with a view to showing the drift of American thought as illustrated by major writers or groups and as revealed by a careful study of one or two cardinal works of each.... The growth of American self-consciousness and the changing ideals of American patriotism have been kept in mind throughout.... As an aid to the student, there are appended to each chapter (except the last three) topics and problems for study, and
## book lists which summarize the output of each man, indicate available
editions, and point to the critical material which may be used as a supplement, but not as a substitute, for first-hand study.” (Preface) Beginning with the 17th century, the contents contain chapters on the earliest verse, the poetry of the revolution and the early drama, all our American classics as: Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Mrs Stowe and Holmes, the later poetry and Walt Whitman, the rise of fiction and contemporary drama. There are also two maps, three chronological charts, an appendix characterizing the most significant American periodicals and an index.
* * * * *
=Boston Transcript= p7 Ja 28 ’20 750w
“The style throughout is marked with a crispness and vivacity that are missing in too many textbooks in the same field. The author’s scientific knowledge and scholarship are winningly displayed on every page of his book.”
+ =School R= 28:315 Ap ’20 220w
=BRACKETT, CHARLES.= Counsel of the ungodly. *$2 (3c) Appleton
20–13703
When Peter van Hoeven, scion of an old and wealthy New York family, lost his fortune at the age of sixty-two, he determined to earn his living as a butler. Luck brought him into a newly rich family, mother and daughter, of whom the mother is exuberantly vulgar and the daughter sensitively aware of their short-comings. Jacob Smith, alias Peter van Hoeven, becomes Mary’s guardian angel and she relies on him and confides in him more and more. When it is subsequently discovered that Mary is not Mrs Davison’s daughter, as the long lost husband with the real daughter turns up, Peter resolves to adopt Mary as his niece, trumping up a story of a lost brother Richard whose daughter she is. That she really is his niece becomes probable later. He now makes himself known to his family to whom he introduces his niece. He also undertakes to cure her of an undesirable love affair by first engineering her into and then out of an engagement by ungodly counsel. As the right fellow is waiting just around the corner it all ends well.
* * * * *
“Light and fairly amusing.”
+ =Booklist= 17:70 N ’20
“It is a delightful atmosphere into which you are led in this swiftly moving story, where almost every one is pleasant to know.”
+ =Lit D= p92 O 23 ’20 1550w
“The author’s flexible style and skill in drollery, distinctly above the average, makes one regret that he has not employed his literary ability in a less inconsequential plot.”
+ − =N Y Times= p24 Ag 29 ’20 330w
=BRADFORD, GAMALIEL.= Prophet of joy. *$1.50 Houghton 811
20–14773
This tale in verse relates the career of a millionaire’s son, a golden-haired vision of a boy, imbued with a faith that it was his mission to redeem the world with the gospel of joy. His first convert was a spinster cousin, Theodora, who undertook to stand between him and his stern father, to be ever his haven of refuge and to smooth the way for him generally. His exploits are many and fantastic. He meets all manner of people, the lowly and the artists, the pious and the rich, and he meets them all alike with laughter, gaiety, and love. With this love and joy in life he at last undertakes to assuage a striking mob and meets his death. The woman agitator whose method, unlike his, had been to stir up hatred and revenge as a means of salvation, but who had long loved the boy, vows before his body that violence must die and dedicates herself to “joy’s pure torch” and to love as the “Star of immortal hope to mortal men.”
* * * * *
“Characters, incidents and beauty of telling combine to make an interesting story and a poem of wide appeal.”
+ =Booklist= 17:60 N ’20
“What fun the author must have had composing all this! He has not only worked with his subject, he has played with it. He keeps up his own and the reader’s courage, sometimes by whistling. It is one of the most original contributions to literature that I have seen, and I know nothing in American literature which it resembles. And it is written in the American, not the English language.” W: L. Phelps
+ =Bookm= 52:170 O ’20 1400w
“When the ‘prophet of joy’ is killed in an attempt to mediate between a band of strikers and their employer, there is little sense of pathos because the character has been largely a creature of fancy and as such has engaged the reader’s attention rather than his affection. But Mr Bradford is fluent and dexterous and the rhymes carry one along through one hundred and ninety-three pages of easy and agreeable reading.” L. M. R.
+ − =Freeman= 2: S 29 ’20 300w
“He takes pains to show what it is that he is not talking about—Christian Science, Sunday school morality, silly altruism—but we are never sure what it is that he is talking about, and never sure that his is not the nambiest-pambiest of palliatives.”
− + =Nation= 112:86 Ja 19 ’21 230w
“Mr Bradford is a poet, and a good one. Much of the present poem shows a deftness and a skill that place him high among writers of light verse. But in all fairness he must leave his ivory tower and acquaint himself with causes he dislikes before writing unfairly of them. The book, barring this one capital fault, is a capital one, and as such may be recommended.” C. W.
+ − =N Y Call= p10 S 12 ’20 700w
“It seems to the present reviewer, indeed, the most stimulating and absorbing volume that has appeared in American poetry since ‘The Congo’ and ‘Spoon River.’ It is not an imitation but a vital incarnation of the Byronic satire, proving that modern life may be dressed in an ancient mode at least as effectively as in the fashions of the hour. The ‘Prophet’ should find an audience for many years to come; should even, one is tempted to say, win a permanent place among the classics of lighter American verse.” C: W. Stork
+ =N Y Evening= Post p5 O 23 ’20 1150w
“Nothing can be gayer, idler, saucier, easier, more winningly devious and desultory than his treatment of the eight-line Italian epic stanza. The story is agreeable, and the only point of failure is the point in which in a poem of this kind failure is most forgivable and least important—the nature and handling of the thesis.”
+ − =Review= 3:390 O 27 ’20 310w
=BRADLEY, ARTHUR GRANVILLE.= Book of the Severn. il *$5 Dodd 914.2
(Eng ed 21–834)
“The ancients had river gods; we too have them in our minds and feel their qualities. For rivers are things of life and personality, of soul and character.... Some of our river gods are men and some are women.... Father Thames has proclaimed his sex for all time; but the Severn has been a lady since literature began.” (