The book review digest, Volume 13, 1917
Part 2 deals with ‘Government and the citizen’ and is made up of a
chapter on each of the following topics: suffrage and elections, other means of popular control, civil liberty and public welfare, public finance, city government, state and country government, the national constitution, and the national government. Part 3 is on the general topic, ‘Some public activities.’ Public health and welfare, labor and industry, commerce, other business activities, territories and public land, and foreign relations are the subjects considered. The appendix contains an outline of a course on civic problems. ... At the end of each chapter there is a list of general references on the material considered in the chapter, a series of topics for special consideration with exact references on each, a group of studies which contain material for brief daily reports, and, finally, a number of questions based, for the most part, on the text. Besides the foregoing aids the book contains some sixty-four well-selected illustrations and eight maps and charts.”—School R
“Equipped with excellent notes and teaching aids. The book has been recommended to teachers of citizenship for adults in the extension department of the Cleveland schools.”
+ =Cleveland= p135 D ‘17 90w
“If books like this could be placed in every school it is no rash prediction that the electorate of the next generation would view political issues more sanely and thoughtfully than this.”
+ =Ind= 91:235 Ag 11 ‘17 70w
“Singularly free from any partisanship. Written as a text for high schools, it may well serve as a handy reference to the general reader.” A. D.
+ =St Louis= 15:322 S ‘17 24w
“From the standpoint of teaching aids the book has much to commend it. ... There is also an abundance of marginal notes as well as footnotes. On the whole the book is a decided improvement over the traditional text on civics.”
+ =School R= 25:532 S ‘17 280w
=ASHLEY, W. B.=, comp. Church advertising; its why and how; papers delivered before the Church advertising section of the twelfth annual convention of the Associated advertising clubs of the world. il *$1 (4c) Lippincott 260 17-19521
“A series of lively discussions of church advertising and publicity methods by authorities on the subject, who presented their views at the first national conference on church advertising held in Philadelphia in June, 1916. Seemingly nothing has been omitted in the way of church advertising, from the out-of-door devices, steeples, bulletins, etc., to moving pictures and newspaper publicity.”—R of Rs
+ =Ind= 91:293 Ag 25 ‘17 100w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:125 Ag ‘17
+ =R of Rs= 56:331 S ‘17 90w
“This volume gives many useful suggestions for the church which is looking for ideas. Hesitating churches will likewise get inspiration. Tell the world about the gospel and do it in the 20th century way—advertising. That seems to be the burden of these exhortations.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p8 Ag 1 ‘17 250w
=ASHMUN, MARGARET ELIZA.= Heart of Isabel Carleton. il *$1.25 (2c) Macmillan 17-25745
A sequel to “Isabel Carleton’s year,” one of last season’s popular books for girls. The early scenes of the story are laid in London in the fall of 1914. Isabel and her cousin, Mrs Everard, who have been traveling on the continent, reach England just as war is declared. The second part of the story takes her back to Jefferson. She is joyfully received by her family and enters the state university with every promise for a bright future. But there is a dark cloud in her sky, for between herself and Rodney Fox, always her best and most understanding friend, there seems to be a barrier. But this situation is adjusted and Isabel is further made happy by the opportunity to do a service in memory of her friend, Molly Ramsay, whose death had been the tragic incident of the year before.
“Distinguished by its wholesome simplicity and its emphasis on natural interests and companionships. Not as sentimental as its title.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:135 Ja ‘18
+ =N Y Times= 22:547 D 9 ‘17 70w
“An agreeable story for girls.”
+ =Outlook= 117:432 N 14 ‘17 20w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p13 D 16 ‘17 140w
=ASHTON, HELEN.= Marshdikes. *$1.40 Brentano’s
“Marshdikes is the house on the coast of England where Michael and Celia Dittany have made their home, and where they each do their writing. In different ways each has a sincere fondness for Francis Harland and a deep desire to bring more happiness into his life, as well as to give him some real interest in existence. For this reason they invite him to Marshdikes, hoping that this intimate glimpse of their own happiness may bring him nearer to falling in love with Michael’s young half-sister Letty, who imagines herself tremendously in love with Harland. Through a series of clever chapters, Francis evades their efforts, always fearful of where they may lead him and always content with his rather superficial life. The way in which Celia gains her end, only to discover at last that she has made a mistake, is cleverly managed.”—Boston Transcript
“A certain gift of brilliant dialogue is the largest attraction of this novel by a new writer.”
+ — =Boston Transcript= p6 Jl 18 ‘17 320w
“The story, which begins simply as a gay and sparkling tale, becomes more serious as it proceeds.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:137 Ap 15 ‘17 250w
=ATHERTON, MRS GERTRUDE FRANKLIN (HORN).= Living present. il *$1.50 (2½c) Stokes 940.91 17-18157
Mrs Atherton spent several months in France in 1916 studying the work of French women. She devotes the major part of her book to the work they are doing to help win the war and to the changes that the war seems to be making in French life, especially in the re-action of the French woman to life. The last five chapters, under the caption “Feminism in peace and war,” discuss the present and probable future status of woman in the United States as well as in Europe.
=A L A Bkl= 14:17 O ‘17
“One gets a feeling of impressions caught at lightning speed and given out all the more personally for not having been mulled over and reasoned out.” Edna Kenton
+ =Bookm= 46:343 N ‘17 830w
“A distinctly valuable sociological contribution as well as a vivid record of contemporary women.” D. F. G.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Jl 11 ‘17 920w
“The second part of the present volume is worthless; but the first part where the author states facts, and does not attempt to philosophize, is interesting and even inspiring.”
+ — =Cath World= 106:124 O ‘17 570w
“Strongly tinged with Mrs Atherton’s personality and feministic views, the book is readable and provocative of thought.”
+ =Cleveland= p118 N ‘17 50w
“Mrs Atherton’s book, we believe, would have been more delightful, had she confined herself to portraiture and narrative, instead of undertaking, rather superficially, an abstract discussion of values.”
+ — =Dial= 63:166 Ag 30 ‘17 400w
=Ind= 91:352 S 1 ‘17 60w
+ =Lit D= 55:48 D 1 ‘17 200w
“Her book is a curious although intriguing jumble of prejudice, keen, swift insight, merciless observation and a good deal of perhaps unconscious snobbery. Only Mrs Atherton could have written it without misgivings.”
+ — =New Repub= 12:310 O 13 ‘17 450w
“She writes with frank and astonishing one-sidedness.” C. W.
— =N Y Call= p14 Ag 26 ‘17 180w
+ =N Y Times= 22:254 Jl 8 ‘17 950w
“Of some of the ideas she strikes out, one can say only that they show ability, not that they are inherently sound. The notion, for example, that there is among woman an instinctive tendency toward a return to the primeval matriarchate, though none too seriously advanced, is yet advanced with more seriousness than it probably deserves. Inherently sound ideas are, however, not lacking.”
+ — =No Am= 206:635 O ‘17 950w
+ =Outlook= 116:592 Ag 15 ‘17 90w
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:679 O ‘17 40w
“Her speculations as to the bearing of the war on the future course of feminism in France are also provocatively stimulating.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p579 N 29 ‘17 770w.
=ATKINSON, ELEANOR (STACKHOUSE) (MRS FRANCIS BLAKE ATKINSON).= Hearts undaunted; a romance of four frontiers. il *$1.30 (2c) Harper 17-31031
This story follows the forward movement of the frontier from northern New York to Chicago. The heroine, Eleanor Lytle, spends her childhood as a captive among the Indians. As a little girl of three, she attracts the attention of Chief Cornplanter, who kidnaps her and makes her an honored member of his tribe. She is grown to young womanhood before she is returned to her sorrowing mother. To make up to her for the years of suffering, Eleanor marries the man who is her mother’s choice, but later, after his death, she marries one she loves and goes westward with him, as a pioneer to the new frontier.
“Of limited appeal.”
+ — =A L A Bkl= 14:168 F ‘18
“Despite its interest, and the fact that it is based on historic truth, the book does lack the element of realism. It is glossed over with sentimentality; heroism and nobility are unrelieved by any mere human failing. It is, however, much more entertaining than the average romance, and the stressed historic note gives it an added interest.”
+ — =N Y Times= 22:500 N 25 ‘17 400w
=ATWOOD, ALBERT WILLIAM.= How to get ahead; saving money and making it work. *$1.25 (2c) Bobbs 331.84 17-6557
“The purpose of this book is to help young men and women of moderate earning capacity to save and invest money. Incidentally its aim is to show the advantages of thrift. The main purpose is the practical one of explaining actual, workable methods of saving and investment.” (Introd.) The author writes on: Money—its use and abuse; Real and unreal wants; Personal finance; Family finance; Saving on small wages; Making money work; Owning a home; Different kinds of desirable investments, etc.
“Author is a lecturer on finance at New York university.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:329 My ‘17
“There is not much in recognition of those ideals of life which are higher than money making and money saving. But there are a few reminders that many wage-earners are failing to make the most of their opportunities.”
=Boston Transcript= p6 Je 27 ‘17 350w
+ =Ind= 90:517 Je 16 ‘17 40w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:43 Mr ‘17
=Pittsburgh= 22:689 O ‘17 40w
+ =St Louis= 15:135 My ‘17 30w
=St Louis= 15:347 S ‘17
=AUMONIER, STACY.= Friends, and other stories. *$1 (2½c) Century 17-23334
“Stacy Aumonier, author of ‘Olga Bardel,’ is an Englishman well known in London as a landscape painter as well as a writer. This book contains three of his short stories, of which ‘The friends,’ which gives title to the volume, appeared in the Century Magazine. ... The other two, ‘The packet’ and ‘In the way of business,’ are similar in theme and treatment. ... All three deal with business men in London, salesmen and department managers of furniture or dry goods houses, and the central theme of all of them is the immense amount of alcohol these men consume by way of facilitating the conduct of their affairs. ... One of the stories, ‘In the way of business,’ deals with the business career of a hard-working, upright, morally fastidious man who does not like alcoholic drinks and to whom they are physically ruinous. The story tells how, notwithstanding his struggles, he cannot make a living for his family until, little by little, he comes round to the methods of the others, and what happened to him afterward.”—N Y Times
“The initial story is by far the best of the three. ... There is no air of preaching about it, no attempt to draw a moral. It is just a story told with such fine realism, such artistic and impressive selection and arrangement of incidents that it becomes wholly convincing.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:336 S 9 ‘17 470w
=AUSTIN, FRANK EUGENE.= Examples in battery engineering. il $1.25 Austin, F. E., Hanover, N.H. 621.3 17-20028
“‘Battery engineering’ is quite distinct from the subject of the chemistry, or chemical reactions accompanying the operation of batteries. The latter subject is not given extensive consideration in this book; it being deemed expedient to devote the discussion to those features that are of importance in the efficient industrial operation of any and all types or kinds of cells and batteries. ... The arrangement of the subject matter in lessons under important subject headings adapts the book for use as a textbook, while the discussion of the application of theory to practice renders the book useful to electricians, operators of submarines, and of automobiles.” (Preface) The author is a professor in the Thayer school of civil engineering connected with Dartmouth college.
=AUSTIN, FRANK EUGENE.= Preliminary mathematics. $1.20 Austin, F. E., Hanover, N.H. 512 17-11117
“This book is designed by its author, a professor in the Thayer school of civil engineering connected with Dartmouth college, to serve as a connecting link between the study of arithmetic and the study of algebra. The subject matter up to page 77 is suitable for pupils in the eighth grade and below, while the remaining portion of the text will prove of assistance to pupils in the high schools. ... Many points are explained herein that are passed over in ordinary text books. The chief object of this book is to show how to solve problems.” (Preface)
“Useful to one who has not had the advantages of school and wishes to take up arithmetic and algebra by himself.”
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:443 My ‘17 100w (Reprinted from Telephony p46 Ap 7 ‘17)
=Railway Mechanical Engineer= p175 Ap ‘17
=AUSTIN, MARY (HUNTER) (MRS STAFFORD W. AUSTIN).= The ford. il *$1.50 (1c) Houghton 17-11466
California is at once the scene and the theme of this novel. Steven Brent, one of those men who have an instinctive feeling for the soil, who are meant to be its tillers, has nurtured his ranch, Las Palomitas, till it is on the point of paying, when he yields to the persuasions of his wife and the promises held out by the speculators and goes into oil. But men of his calibre are not built for speculation. Financial failure and the wife’s death come together. The story thereafter is concerned with the two Brent children, Anne and Kenneth, whose dream it is to buy back Las Palomitas. In the end it is Anne who accomplishes it, for Anne proves to have the business sense that those two lovers of the soil for its own sake, Kenneth and his father, lack. Anne is the new woman at her best.
“Well written and more interesting for its atmosphere and character drawing than for its plot.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:448 Jl ‘17
“A story of fine feeling and (to use a wooden term) exceptional workmanship. Its four women might be taken as a microcosm of the modern world of women.” H. W. Boynton
+ =Bookm= 45:412 Je ‘17 550w
“The great social and commercial plot behind these children is strongly handled and conveys more than any other American fiction since Frank Norris of what Mrs Austin calls the ‘epic quality of the west.’” J: Macy
+ =Dial= 63:112 Ag 16 ‘17 380w
“The story is interesting, and yet it disappoints us in some way not easy to describe. There is a vagueness which allows the mind of the reader to wander and his interest to flag. ... Words cloud the plot and befog the issue.”
+ — =Lit D= 54:1858 Je 16 ‘17 180w
“In this book is a substance worthy of Mrs Austin’s rich and finished style.”
+ =Nation= 104:601 My 17 ‘17 680w
“Brooding deep beneath the ferocious animosities of capitalist and homesteader, Mary Austin has wrought in her still pastoral something of almost Biblical beauty. Some few novels of the year may offer as good construction; fewer as clear, racy diction; none a more satisfying picture than little dripping Kenneth with the drowned lamb in his arms.” T. D. Mygatt
+ =N Y Call= p14 Jl 1 ‘17 600w
+ =N Y Times= 22:157 Ap 22 ‘17 650w
“Industrial conditions, business intrigue, social reactions, and the temperaments of individuals are all constantly involved among the motives of this remarkable tale, and all are treated with knowledge, with insight, and with feeling. It is one’s final impression, however, that the story as a whole fails to attain a quite sufficient unity and strength. ... The reader is roused as by an impassioned plea; he is stimulated to the point of being ready to change his whole outlook upon life and yet in the end he cannot tell whether the thing that has so impressed him is Providence or the brute forces of life or the spirit of California. ... One must marvel at the degree of success which Mrs Austin has attained in treating a broad and complex theme both comprehensively and minutely, both psychologically and epically.”
+ =No Am= 206:132 Jl ‘17 1050w
“The description is clear and strong in its picture of industrial conditions. There are also charm and romance in the life of the young people. The plot and development are not as closely woven as one could wish.”
+ — =Outlook= 116:32 My 2 ‘17 50w
“Stands without a peer among recent books of fiction as a thoroughly characteristic portrayal of a typically American community of the West.”
+ =R of Rs= 55:663 Je ‘17 470w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p15 Jl 22 ‘17 500w
=AYDELOTTE, FRANK=, ed. English and engineering. *$1.50 McGraw 620.7 17-4324
A collection of essays for the use of English classes in engineering colleges. “A quotation from the introduction is the fullest explanation of Professor Aydelotte’s endeavor, and an index of the pedagogic value of his work: ‘To train the student to write by first training him to think—to stimulate his thought by directing his attention to problems of his own profession and of his own education and to the illumination of them which he can find in literature: these two tasks may be performed together—better together than separately—and with that double aim in view this collection has been made.’” (Engin Rec)
=A L A Bkl= 13:340 My ‘17
“An admirable collection of essays with a breadth and keenness of selection that certifies the right of its compiler to occupy the chair of English in one of our greatest engineering schools. Also a most commendable introduction whose ideas are unassailable and remarkably illustrated. ... In no sense can it be taken as a handbook. It needs the attrition of the class to make its somewhat hidden gold to glisten. To any except those who know writing and its methods, the collection of essays would prove a bewilderment.”
+ =Engin Rec= 75:275 F 17 ‘17 450w
“If this book is designed for use in a course in freshman composition, it has too limited a scope, if it is to be used for the specific purpose indicated above, as a part of a broader programme, it is an admirable volume.”
=Nation= 104:547 My 3 ‘17 400w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:61 Ap ‘17
=Pittsburgh= 22:204 Mr ‘17
“‘Collection of selected essays, some by famous authors and some by others of lesser note. ... A most interesting collection of good writings that any man will profit by reading, and it should find a welcome on the shelf of every technical man who aspires, as he should, to evaluate the place that his profession occupies in the affairs of the world.’” D. S. Kimball
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:332 Ap ‘17 60w (Reprinted from American Machinist p440 Mr 8 ‘17)
“The author is professor of English in the Massachusetts institute of technology.”
=St Louis= 15:117 Ap ‘17 12w
=AYDELOTTE, FRANK.=[2] Oxford stamp, and other essays. *$1.20 Oxford 378 18-390
“A group of essays forming the ‘educational creed of an American Oxonian’ is brought together in this volume whose writer is Professor Frank Aydelotte of the Massachusetts Institute of technology, and they are the fruits of his residence and study at the English university as a Rhodes scholar. ‘The holder of one of these appointments,’ he says, ‘who on his return from Oxford engages in university teaching in this country, inevitably makes comparisons, and looks at many of our educational problems from a new point of view. Much in the work and atmosphere of an English university is strikingly different from the adaptations of German university methods which have prevailed in our higher education for half a century. In the hope that this point of view may interest students of our educational problems, these essays are put together.’ Among their titles are ‘The Oxford stamp,’ ‘Spectators and sport,’ ‘The religion of punch,’ ‘A challenge to Rhodes scholars,’ ‘English as humane letters,’ and ‘Robert Louis Stevenson darkening counsel.’”—Boston Transcript
“Rarely before has the complex English college system and the unique English college life been described so clearly and so briefly.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 D 29 ‘17 950w
=AYSCOUGH, JOHN, pseud. (BP. FRANCIS BROWNING DREW BICKERSTAFFE-DREW).= French windows. *$1.50 Longmans 940.91 17-24699
The author of this book, the chapters of which originally appeared in the Month, an English periodical, was for the first eighteen months of the war attached to the British expeditionary force as chaplain to a field ambulance. The book does not describe military operations, but consists mainly of conversations with various French and British soldiers. Though John Ayscough is known as a writer of highly imaginative fiction, he assures us that every character and episode in these pages is taken from life, and that his first-hand impressions have not been retouched.
“It sounds like a contradiction of terms to speak of a charming war book; yet this is exactly what John Ayscough’s new volume is—a book of the war, written in the very heat of the war and out of its turbulent heart, throbbing with its deepest feelings, and yet charming beyond words. Whatever of self-revelation the soldier himself in this war may write, we can never again quite so penetratingly see into it as John Ayscough makes us see.”
+ =Cath World= 106:683 F ‘18 210w
=Cleveland= p85 Jl ‘17 60w
“The book is always sympathetic, often heart-breaking, almost always tender, and not easy to forget.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:558 D 16 ‘17 430w
“Episodes and characters are drawn from reality and each conversation is a portrait and a history.”
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:679 O ‘17 70w
“Some of the conversations are of so intimate a character that it almost seems indecent to have recorded them. Humour and pathos jostle one another in these fugitive pages. John Ayscough seems to realize that if things are tragic enough they are funny. Insight and understanding are in this book, and, in spite of a tendency to occasional gush and rhapsody, it has a value of its own. It reveals the simple greatness of the English soldier.”
+ — =Sat R= 123:sup6 My 19 ‘17 100w
“The point of view is that of a man of fifty-six, a Roman Catholic priest singularly devoid of any sectarian bias; one who, though not French, loves every field of France as if he had been born on it, and speaks her language fluently, if not idiomatically; a lover of his kind, ‘half priest and half poet’; and above all a thinker who looks at everything ‘sub specie æternitatis’, and even in the darkest hours remains undismayed and unshaken in his faith. ... This is a book which differs from most war books by reason of its aim. It shows that amid all that makes for brutalization and misery and despair in modern warfare, there are exultations as well as agonies, and that man’s soul remains unconquerable.”
+ =Spec= 118:61 Jl 21 ‘17 1650w
“Mr Ayscough evidently inspires affection in the young soldiers with whom he lives; he betrays his natural pleasure thereat, with undeniable egotism and he records far too categorically the terms in which that affection is conveyed.”
+ — =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p197 Ap 26 ‘17 320w
=AZAN, PAUL JEAN LOUIS.= War of positions; with a preface by Brigadier General Joseph E. Kuhn, U.S.A.; tr. at Harvard university. *$1.25 Harvard univ. press 355 17-22880
“The author of this little book is one of the group of officers sent over here by the French government to assist in the training of officers for our new American army. As chief of the military mission which was sent to the Officers’ reserve training camp at Harvard, he worked there all spring and summer, arousing the greatest of enthusiasm among the hundreds of men who were in training under him. ... The same principles of warfare which he expounded to his pupils there he has explained in this book. ... In part one the author considers the present war, its general characteristics, the different forms of warfare it has developed, the fronts, attrition, principles of offensive and defensive, the rôle of a high command in an offensive, the functions of the different arms of the service. The second part deals with ‘Positions,’ their organization, trench duties and relief, while the third and fourth parts develop the principles of attack on a position and defense of a position.”—N Y Times
=A L A Bkl= 14:75 D ‘17
“While written primarily for the instruction of American officers who are going abroad it is full of interest for the student of military history or for any intelligent reader.”
+ =Am Pol Sci R= 11:789 N ‘17 170w
“The book ought to be of the greatest value to all officers and non-coms of the new American armies and of their privates as well. In his capacity as director of officers’ schools in France, Colonel Azan has trained a large part of the French officers up to and including the rank of major. He has, therefore, learned how to teach.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:453 N 4 ‘17 450w
=St Louis= 15:417 D ‘17 20w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p571 N 22 ‘17 50w
B
=BACHELLER, IRVING ADDISON.= Light in the clearing; a tale of the north country in the time of Silas Wright. il *$1.50 (1c) Bobbs 17-11215
A story of northern New York state in the first half of the nineteenth century. Much of it is woven about the career of Silas Wright, an early governor of the state. It is told in the first person, however, by Barton Baynes, a boy who came under Wright’s protection early in his career and who was inspired by the older man’s encouragement and example. The early chapters, telling of Barton’s boyhood, spent with stern-faced Aunt Deel and big-hearted Uncle Peabody, give a good picture of the life of the times.
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:401 Je ‘17
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
+ =Bookm= 45:408 Je ‘17 650w
“Readers Mr Bacheller will have for his latest novel, and plenty of them, but it will not be long in passing into the dim obscurity of contemporary fiction. It is thoroughly out of date. It is not even a good example of the desirable things of the past, of those departed forms of fiction whose death we sometimes regret. It is distinctly the survival of the unfittest. Yet it is entertaining in its way.” E. F. E.
– + =Boston Transcript= p8 Ap 14 ‘17 1350w
+ =Cath World= 105:554 Jl ‘17 100w
“Told with simplicity, kindly humor, and genuine understanding.”
+ =Dial= 62:483 My 31 ‘17 200w
“Excellent as are Mr Bacheller’s other works—‘Eben Holden,’ ‘D’ri and I,’ and the ever-popular ‘Keeping up with Lizzie’—none of them equals this story of the forties, either in artistic finish or in breadth of spirit. It is a book we would like every American girl and boy to read.”
+ =Ind= 90:380 My 26 ‘17 150w
“The book is amusing and certainly uplifting in its influence, but sometimes a trifle artificial.”
+ =Lit D= 54:1856 Je 16 ‘17 210w
“‘The light in the clearing’ takes us, yet again, upon a sentimental journey, in a very good sense of the term, into the past. ... Mr Bacheller has the knack of making one’s throat swell with simple, homefelt emotion for the golden rule and other tritenesses which, for the most part, we are ready enough to abandon to the movies, literary and other.”
+ =Nation= 104:581 My 10 ‘17 560w
“Very different in method and purpose from any of his previous stories, Mr Bacheller’s new novel must be accounted, at the outset, as quite the most important piece of fiction he has put forth.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:125 Ap 8 ‘17 850w
“‘The light in the clearing’ is an exact complement to ‘Eben Holden,’ as unmistakably good, less idyllic, but stronger. The two together would seem in themselves to assure their author a considerable and permanent place in American literature.”
+ =No Am= 205:947 Je ‘17 1200w
“Sturdy American ideals are wholesomely offered to admiration and emulation.”
+ =Outlook= 116:32 My 2 ‘17 50w
“It is a story of simple, homespun life, full of wide, out-door freedom, and the healing, balsamic breath of a cleaner, younger world.” F: T. Cooper
+ =Pub W= 91:1316 Ap 21 ‘17 550w
“While the story is episodical, it is skilfully knit, and the reader’s attention never relaxes until the final page is turned. The book will have a host of contented readers.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p19 My 13 ‘17 650w
“The continual exaltation of commonplace virtues makes it a wholesome but somewhat tiresome story.”
+ — =Wis Lib Bul= 13:221 Jl ‘17 40w
=BACON, CORINNE=, comp. Children’s catalog of thirty-five hundred books; a guide to the best reading for boys and girls. (Standard catalog ser.) *$6 Wilson, H. W. 028.5 17-17986
The first edition of the Children’s catalog, a 1,000-title list, was noted in the Digest in 1916. The 3,500-title list includes a few books in French and German; also a few 1916 books published too late for inclusion in the 2,000-title list. 700 volumes have been analyzed. “The editor has been fortunate in securing the advice and cooperation of Miss Agnes Cowing, of the Pratt institute free library; Miss Alice I. Hazeltine, of the St Louis public library; Miss Hatch, of the Cleveland public library, and of the staff of the Carnegie library of Pittsburgh. ... The numbers in parentheses after titles indicate approximately the grades for which the books are suitable, and have been taken for the most part from various library lists. Two of the collaborators also made suggestions as to grading.” (Preface) The 1,000 list, buckram bound, sells for $2; the 2,000 list, for $4; the 3,500 list for $6. These catalogs are also issued in paper covers printed on light-weight paper for quantity use. These are for sale exclusively to those who have previously purchased at least one bound copy. They are sold in lots of ten or more at 15c, 25c, and 40c per copy.
=A L A Bkl= 13:272 Mr ‘17
“This compilation, by one whose work in other lines gives assurance of more than usual merit, is based on many selected lists, and is the result of the advice and co-operation of children’s librarians and others familiar with literature for children.”
=Bul of Bibliography= 9:112 Ja ‘17 170w
“All workers with boys and girls, and especially those who have to do with school and public libraries will be grateful to the compiler for the infinite pains she has taken to make sure of a wise selection of really good, wholesome books for young people. Parents will do well to consult the catalog in the public library which they patronize. It goes without saying that every public library will make available this unsurpassed list, without which no library can be said to be properly equipped.” F. H. P.
+ =Education= 36:660 Je ‘17 140w
“The author and publisher of this important book has done a great service to teachers in every grade of the elementary school. As the title indicates, the list is large enough to include the best in all of the more important fields of knowledge.”
+ =El School J= 18:77 S ‘17 350w
“A most valuable bibliography of elementary-school children’s books and books about such books.”
+ =English Journal (Chicago)= 6:207 Mr ‘17 20w
“It is needless to say the advice is trustworthy and of immense value to librarians, teachers and book purchasers.”
+ =Ind= 91:297 Ag 25 ‘17 60w
“Every school and every home needs it in order to buy books intelligently.”
+ =Journal of Education= 85:702 Je 21 ‘17 120w
“The catalog containing 2,000 titles and analyticals for 447 volumes has been practically tested in our children’s room and found to answer most of the demands, although for large collections the 3,500 list now [April, 1917] in preparation will of course be more satisfactory. ... The questions now asked by school children demand indexes that will lead directly to up-to-date reliable facts. How well this demand has been met may be judged by a few titles taken at random from the 2,000 catalog. ... The profession owes a debt of gratitude to Miss Bacon for supplying so indispensable a tool that will lessen the present duplication of effort and promote greater efficiency.” N. M. De Laughter
+ =Public Libraries= 22:148 Ap ‘17 400w
“The list will be useful to librarians for selection and for cataloging. The subject headings conform in the main to Miss Mann’s ‘Subject headings for use in dictionary catalogs of juvenile books.’ It will be useful at the librarian’s desk if checked with books in the library and used as a printed catalog. ... Extra copies would be useful for the public, for special use of teachers, or for catalogers.”
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 13:18 Ja ‘17 270w
=BACON, CORINNE=, comp. Prison reform. *$1.25 (1c) Wilson, H. W. 365 17-4496
This volume in the Handbook series is designed to give the reader a general knowledge of prison reform in the United States. The material of the book, a selection of the best articles from the literature on the subject, is arranged under nine headings: History of prison reform; Conditions and methods in prisons and reformatories; Sing Sing and Warden Osborne; Psychopathic clinics and classification of prisoners; Convict labor; Indeterminate sentence; Probation and parole; Jails; Centralized control of penal institutions. The bibliography, which is unusually full, follows a similar arrangement. A paper on “The prison of the future” has been written for the volume by Thomas Mott Osborne.
=A L A Bkl= 13:288 Ap ‘17
=Cath World= 105:835 S ‘17 140w
“There is an excellent bibliography.”
+ =Cleveland= p39 Mr ‘17 80w
“A timely and much-needed work.”
+ =Ind= 89:362 F 26 ‘17 20w
“It is a compilation of over 90 articles by students and experts covering almost the entire field of penology. ... In addition to the 300 pages devoted to the various aspects of reform within the walls, there is a valuable bibliography of 24 pages, listing books, pamphlets, reports, periodicals and many articles dealing with the general subject. ... We take pleasure in commending this book to all students and readers of penological problems.”
=Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy= n s 56:43 Mr ‘17 140w
=Springf’d Republican= p15 Jl 15 ‘17 180w
Reviewed by Philip Klein
=Survey= 38:46 Ap 14 ‘17 120w
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 13:59 F ‘17 60w
=BACON, GEORGE WASHINGTON.= Keeping young and well; annotated by W: T: Fernie. *$1 (3c) Clode, E: J. 613 17-24683
The author of “Health and longevity” packs these new chapters full of valuable matter which aims at a maximum of utility with a minimum of words. A long study of personal hygiene and a life-long practice of what the writer preaches give authority to his undertaking. Contents: Health hints for the home; Bodily organs and their functions; Our food, and errors in diet; The drink habit; Light, pure air and ventilation; Respiration and deep breathing; Cheerfulness and happiness; Exercise and rest; Sound sleep and its benefits; Vital energy—conserved or wasted; A long and healthy life; Fifty maxims and rules for the aged; Colds: causes, prevention, remedies; One hundred ailments—cause, prevention and home remedies; Our foods and their medicinal values; Medical glossary.
=BADLEY, JOHN HADEN.= Education after the war. *$1.25 Longmans 375 (Eng ed E17-671)
“The author has been for many years a leader in British education, especially in the Workers’ educational association, but he is best known for the demonstration school which he has maintained for twenty-four years at Petersfield in Hampshire. ... Mr J. H. Badley was trained at Rugby, at Cambridge and in Germany. He was interested with Cecil Reddie and Edward Carpenter in the opening of Abbotsholme, but turned from this work to the establishment of his old experimental school primarily because of his interest in coeducation. ... The book contains a careful consideration of the needs of each stage of life from the nursery up. The differentiation of workers and professional groups is well thought out. The plan for training for national service gives consideration to the claims of militarism.”—Springf’d Republican
“Mr Badley rightly says that all subjects will be equally narrowing in their influence if the value of any kind of work be judged by the direct help it will give to the earning of an income. He proposes that special work required for professional training should be begun during the last two years of the suggested longer school course, with the object of relieving the university of much of the preliminary work which now usually occupies the first year of its course. Stress is laid upon the value of research to university students.”
+ =Ath= p355 Jl ‘17 200w
“Of especial interest to Americans are the plans for training for national service. A positive program is given in detail but possibly of equal importance is the very clear showing of what is not essential to this training.” F. A. Manny
+ =Educ R= 54:191 S ‘17 600w
“America has much to learn from what he offers.”
+ =Ind= 91:296 Ag 25 ‘17 100w
“Those who have followed the author’s work will not be surprised to find the outline and details of this post-war program suggestive at many points for American needs.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ag 22 ‘17 400w
=BAGWELL, RICHARD.= Ireland under the Stuarts and during the interregnum. 3v v 3 *$5 Longmans 941.5
=v 3= 1660-1690.
“There are now six stately volumes written by Mr Bagwell, and in them he narrates the fortunes of his native land from the days of the Tudors to the fall of the Stuarts at the battle of the Boyne. ... In the larger part of the present book he has no other historian to fear, for he is the first to describe the reign of Charles II at any length or with any proper sense of the importance of its opening years. ... From measures to men there is an easy transition. The historian is quite at home in drawing the characters of men like Lord Robartes, Lord Berkeley, Essex, and Clarendon, who were the real governors of the country. ... Another prominent man is Tyrconnel, and a consideration of his strange career introduces quite naturally the revolution in Ireland. ... In the concluding chapters Mr Bagwell has a short account of the three churches and the social state of the country from the restoration to the revolution.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) For volumes 1 and 2 of this history, consult Digest annual volume for 1909.
“The first adequate account of Ireland during the restoration. That, in a sense, is the chief contribution of this present volume. ... From his pages are eliminated that passion which has made most Irish history all politics, and that memory of wrongs which has made most Irish politics all history.” W. C. Abbott
+ =Am Hist R= 22:645 Ap ‘17 1000w (Review of v 3)
“Though Irish by birth, Mr Bagwell is probably of Anglo-Irish stock. In politics he is a Unionist of the more positive type. This fact is, of course, sufficient to render his work unacceptable to a large part of the reading public in Ireland; for in spite of his almost painful effort to do justice to both sides in the controversies of Britain, it is quite clear that Mr Bagwell regards the union of Ireland with England as one that is necessary to both countries. Critics generally have, however, found much to praise in Mr Bagwell’s histories. His evident fairness, his judicial attitude, his restraint in drawing conclusions and in framing statements have been remarked upon by many reviewers. For his literary style there is very little to be said: it is clear but prosy and bald.” L. M. Larson
+ =Dial= 62:354 Ap 19 ‘17 1600w (Review of v 3)
“The first two volumes of ‘Ireland under the Tudors’ appeared in 1885. It was hailed in this Review as inaugurating ‘a new departure in Irish historiography,’ by its ‘judicial tone’ and its unprejudiced method of treating the political and ecclesiastical controversies of the sixteenth century. At the same time the complaint was made that ‘he crowded his canvas with too many facts to enable the student to realize quite distinctly the salient features of his subject.’ The present volume deserves the same praise, but is not open to similar criticism. Mr Bagwell’s six volumes (including in the total the three on ‘Ireland under the Tudors’) are a monument of well-directed industry, and he has gained in mastery of his materials as his work proceeded.” C. H. Firth
* + =Eng Hist R= 32:296 Ap ‘17 500w (Review of v 3)
“Ireland, more, almost, than any other land, demands the candor of impartiality in those who would narrate its history. To have achieved this with such splendid thoroughness is Mr Bagwell’s peculiar triumph. The period under consideration is one of the most crucial in all Irish history. ... To read intelligently the history of the nineteenth century in Ireland one must understand and appreciate the results of this distribution of territory in the seventeenth. ... The book is provided with helpful notes and a useful index.”
* + + =Nation= 105:128 Ag 2 ‘17 330w (Review of v 3)
“He does not describe the war after the Boyne, perhaps because Dr Murray has done this so thoroughly in his recent book. The chapters on social conditions and the churches are excellent but very brief. Dr Bagwell is reserved to a fault, but his history—the work of a whole generation—is the best and almost the only impartial account of Tudor and Stuart Ireland.”
+ =Spec= 117:sup533 N 4 ‘16 130w (Review of v 3)
“Since the death of W. E. H. Lecky, Mr Richard Bagwell is the foremost Irish historian. ... No one could adequately review a book like that lying before us, and hope to do full justice to its many-sidedness. All we can say is that we have been steadily using its two predecessors in the course of our work on the Stuart period and that the more we use them the more we admire them.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p496 O 19 ‘16 1700w (Review of v 3)
=BAILEY, EDGAR HENRY SUMMERFIELD.= Text-book of sanitary and applied chemistry; or, The chemistry of water, air and food. 4th ed rev *$1.60 Macmillan 660 17-13814
“Prof. E. H. S. Bailey’s ‘Sanitary and applied chemistry’ appears this year—the eleventh since its first publication—in a fourth, revised edition. Its persistence in recurring editions is testimony to the place it has won for itself in our colleges. Designed for students who have already had a course in general chemistry, it deals with the most important applications of chemistry to the life of the household, without attempting to cover the whole field of what may be called ‘chemistry in daily life.’ An important feature of the book is the introduction of directions for performing many well-chosen illustrative experiments. In this latest edition, the text has been corrected and much of it rewritten and brought down to date; and chapters on Textiles and on Poison and their antidotes have been added, increasing the contents by about sixty pages over the last previous edition of 1913. A good index enhances the working value of the text.”—Nation
“The chapters on the Purification of water and Sewerage have been revised and brought up to date. ... There is no bibliography in this edition.”
=A L A Bkl= 13:455 Jl ‘17
“It is not only an excellent textbook, but is written in such a clear style that it should prove valuable to housewives wishing a work of general information and reference on their everyday problems.”
+ =Ind= 91:264 Ag 18 ‘17 50w
+ =Nation= 105:275 S 6 ‘17 160w
=St Louis= 15:393 N ‘17 20w
“Throughout the text there are distributed 197 well selected experiments which will greatly help to fix important facts in the student’s mind.” W. P. Mason
+ =Science= n s 46:540 N 30 ‘17 100w
=BAILEY, HENRY CHRISTOPHER.= Highwayman. *$1.50 Dutton (Eng ed 15-19412)
“The hero of ‘The highwayman’ is of the type that the Baroness Orczy delights in drawing—imperturbable, expressionless, of an ironical turn of mind, and possessed of depths which a woman’s charm alone can stir. In the generation of Harry Boyce these qualities cried out for adventure and romance, for it was also the generation of the ‘good’ Queen Anne, of the Pretender, and of the great Duke of Marlborough. With all these did our hero have dealings, but more especially was he lured by the charms of the wayward Alison, whom fate and the impulse of a moment had given him to wife.”—Dial
“We should have been glad to see more of the historical characters introduced by Mr Bailey, for he succeeded in creating a fascinating illusion of their presence and speech. Praise is due to the excellent style of the novel, which is undoubtedly the work of an accomplished and conscientious draftsman.”
+ =Ath= 1915, 2:174 S 11 200w
“His wit is more after the manner of Fielding or of Wycherley than of the later and the modern historical sentimentalists. ‘The highwayman’ is a good brisk story for those not too squeamish.”
=Dial= 62:403 My 3 ‘17 120w
“Piquancy is the chosen note, and the performer thoroughly enjoys being piquant. ... There is great play of wit in these pages, as well as the play of swords; the author especially loves, and liberally presents, the naughtiness of polite humor in the reign of Queen Anne.”
=Nation= 104:460 Ap 19 ‘17 200w
+ =N Y Times= 22:136 Ap 15 ‘17 250w
“An over-mannered and not altogether agreeable tale of Queen Anne’s time.”
— =Outlook= 115:622 Ap 4 ‘17 10w
“A story most spirited, as is always Mr Bailey’s work, of the open road.”
+ =Spec= 115:513 O 16 ‘15 20w
=BAILEY, LIBERTY HYDE.= Standard cyclopedia of horticulture. 6v v 6 il *$6 Macmillan 634 (14-6168)
=v 6= “The last volume extends from S through Z. In addition there is a complete index to the six volumes, a finding list of binomials, a cultivator’s guide and a supplement of additional species which have been introduced to cultivation in this country since the first volumes were prepared. The list of collaborators contains the names of the most prominent men in horticulture and allied sciences in this country.”—Springf’d Republican
“It is to be expected that the nomenclature of this work will be adopted so far as possible by all nurserymen and landscape architects, so that there will be some uniformity. A finding-list is intended to accompany volume six, giving the various more important common and botanical names of plants, with a reference to the name under which the plant appears in the cyclopedia. A committee of the American society of landscape architects, the Ornamental growers association, and other bodies interested, is now working upon the subject of the standardization of the names of plants, and the finding-list will have the benefit of their labors to the date of its publication.”
=Landscape Architecture= 7:100 Ja ‘17 230w
=N Y Times= 22:165 Ap 29 ‘17 80w
“The sixth volume in every way upholds the high standard set by the preceding volumes. ... The cyclopedia is a work containing items of interest to the practical man as well as the scientist. Every group of plants is treated from both the practical side and the botanical viewpoint. ... It is of interest to the florist, market gardener, nurseryman, botanist, landscapist and all lovers of plant life. ... While there are many changes in nomenclature, they are such as have been recommended by the highest authorities in the country.”
+ + =Springf’d Republican= p15 Jl 22 ‘17 220w
=BAILEY, TEMPLE.= Mistress Anne. il *$1.35 (2c) Penn 17-11213
“Mistress” Anne Warfield was a young Maryland school-teacher with clear ideals and a belief in the dignity of work. She was also the granddaughter of Cynthia Warfield, an aristocrat of the older South. So when the quiet of the little southern village was invaded by a popular novelist, a New York doctor and his mother (who, however, were of the South), and some brilliant society women, Anne’s innate good breeding overcame her inexperience and comparative poverty and she found her place among them. The scene changes from the quiet Maryland riverside to fashionable New York and three love-stories run to a comfortable conclusion.
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:448 Jl ‘17
“It is written in the same vein as its successful predecessor, ‘Contrary Mary,’ but is neither so quaint nor so touching nor so piquant as the earlier book.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Je 9 ‘17 170w
=N J Lib Bul= p7 Ap ‘17 20w
+ =N Y Times= 22:250 Jl 1 ‘17 250w
+ =Ontario Library Review= 1:116 My ‘17 150w
+ =Outlook= 116:116 My 16 ‘17 20w
“Even more praiseworthy than the story itself is the atmosphere of the book. Avoiding the flippant optimism, which has of late been so heavily exploited, Miss Bailey employs a more sane and convincing treatment.” Joseph Mosher
+ =Pub W= 91:1319 Ap 21 ‘17 420w
“While it is primarily a wholesome love story, beneath the surface is a call to service in the great army that work for public weal. Anne Warfield is one of the most delightful heroines of the year’s novels.”
+ =R of Rs= 56:102 Jl ‘17 70w
“The author pictures the loyalty of southern folk to their ancestral homes and their spirit of noblesse oblige.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p19 Je 10 ‘17 330w
=BAIN, FRANCIS WILLIAM.= Livery of Eve. il *$1.50 (5½c) Putnam 17-14951
Another fairy tale in imitation of the Hindu. The tale is told by the Moony-crested god to the Daughter of the Snow, and at the end of it he propounds a conundrum. The tale is of Aparájitá, whose beauty was such that the only rival she had to fear was her own reflection in the pool, and of Kámarúpa, the barber, who was unrivaled for ugliness, and of Keshawa, the king, who cared nothing for women, altho he unfailingly attracted their love. To gain her own ends, Aparájitá makes use of the spell by means of which the soul may enter another body. The soul of the handsome king takes on the ugly body of the barber, and the ugly one finds himself enshrined in the body of the king. The conundrum at the end has to do with the old problem of women’s wiles.
“No other European writer gives us such a sense of being absolutely at home with the Pundits. Kipling, in comparison with the author of ‘A digit of the moon’ or ‘A draught of the blue’ or ‘Ashes of a god,’ seems to be a Cockney interloper.”
+ =Dial= 63:163 Ag 30 ‘17 370w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:123 Ag ‘17
“We assure those who have read ‘A digit of the moon’ and ‘The ashes of a god’ with amusement and joy, that they will find equal pleasure in ‘The livery of Eve.’”
+ =R of Rs= 56:102 Jl ‘17 150w
“Mr Bain shows us, with all his wonted mastery of picturesque simile and phrase, that the old Hindu spirit and imagination survive, after countless generations of foreign rule. He displays a Hindu literature, subtly blended with and purified by western poetic sentiment and western ethics. ... He has been more successful than most in creating in western minds the atmosphere of Indian romance.”
+ =Spec= 118:567 My 19 ‘17 1250w
“While rich in local color, the book is not by a great deal so rich as ‘A digit of the moon.’ One looks almost in vain for the telling phrases, the subtly cultivated rhythms which in the first work brought the exotic beauty of tropic nights and days home to us.”
=Springf’d Republican= p15 Jl 15 ‘17 250w
“We do less than justice to this book if we do not read it aloud, for each syllable has been hammered into place and is taking thrust and strain as in poetry.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p223 My 10 ‘17 1450w
=BAINVILLE, JACQUES.= Italy and the war; tr. by Bernard Miall. *$1 (1½c) Doran 945 (Eng ed 17-26484)
The author’s purpose is “to show Italy as the war has revealed her.” He says, “The Italian state is one of the most original and one of the most vigorous elements of modern Europe, and one of the richest in future promise. The war came at one of the most favourable moments of its growth and evolution. Italy was able to seize upon this moment, and to-morrow, we believe, she will count in the world for more than she counted yesterday.” He writes of: Italian opinions and intentions; The adaptations of the House of Savoy; The nationalist tradition; Italy is no longer the country of the dead; The Quirinal and the Vatican; From the Triple alliance to the Quadruple entente; The historic month in Italy; The future. The author is a Frenchman who has seen long service as a correspondent in Italy.
=A L A Bkl= 13:442 Jl ‘17
“M. Bainville’s work is of peculiar interest, and gives some idea of inner Italy, as well as of the motives which led to her intervention in the war.”
+ =Ath= p36 Ja ‘17 100w
=Boston Transcript= p6 My 29 ‘17 300w
Reviewed by H. J. Laski
+ =Dial= 63:15 Je 28 ‘17 30w
+ =Lit D= 55:36 S 15 ‘17 450w
“For us, his book is admirably informative.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:179 My 6 ‘17 750w
=Pratt= p44 O ‘17 20w
=R of Rs= 55:551 My ‘17 70w
=Springf’d Republican= p6 Ag 24 ‘17 430w
=BAIRNSFATHER, BRUCE.= Bullets and billets. il *$1.50 (3c) Putnam 940.91 17-3729
Bruce Bairnsfather is a cartoonist whose drawings picture the humor of trench life. In this book he has written of the early days of the war, illustrating the account with some of his own sketches. Modern warfare appears to be a muddy business, but the good humor of the author-artist and his pals seemed to be proof against all physical discomforts.
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:393 Je ‘17
“Among the trivial books growing out of the war, this one found its place abroad and it will amuse a certain (or uncertain) number here.”
=Boston Transcript= p8 Mr 14 ‘17 70w
Reviewed by P. F. Bicknell
+ =Dial= 62:306 Ap 5 ‘17 170w
“Unfortunately for us our officer-author gets him a man servant shortly after the book begins and moves out of the picturesque mud—had he seen less of his own class and more of his men this might indeed have been a book to rival ‘Kitchener’s mob.’” Robert Lynd
+ =Pub W= 91:213 Ja 20 ‘17 200w
“This volume is not in the least literary, but it bubbles over with laughter and a very human enjoyment of rare comforts. ... It is well illustrated, too.”
+ =Sat R= 122:580 D 16 ‘16 450w
“The drawings of Captain Bairnsfather have become so much of an institution in the army that they scarcely need an introduction. Personally we are not convinced that some type might not have been found equally comic yet standing less questionably for all that the war means to a democracy that goes forth to fight. ... The book before us shows how much Captain Bairnsfather has in him. His jokes are spontaneous, and, when he tries, they fit the drawings perfectly. He has, moreover, firmness and a power to charm when he pleases.”
+ — =Spec= 118:239 F 24 ‘17 150w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p19 Mr 25 ‘17 300w
“Here we have an army officer who invariably depicts his men (to whom his book is dedicated) as the very type which the army is anxious to suppress. ... It is not with Captain Bairnsfather’s humour that we quarrel, for his situations are invariably amusing. It is because he standardizes—almost idealizes—a degraded type of face.”
– + =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p621 D 21 ‘16 450w
=Wis Lib Bul= 13:123 Ap ‘17 80w
=BAKER, HARRY TORSEY.= Contemporary short story; a practical manual. $1.25 Heath 808.3 17-1356
“In the course of six chapters the author outlines in a lively manner the essentials of the American short story from both the editor’s and the reader’s point of view, drawing largely for his material upon his own personal editorial experience. ... ‘This volume,’ he says, ‘accordingly aims to teach promiscuous young authors, whether in or out of college, how to write stories that shall be marketable as well as artistic. It attempts to state succinctly, and as clearly as may be, some fundamental principles of short-story writing. ... Each chapter is followed by a series of suggestive questions for beginners in fiction, and at the end of his book are printed lists of American fiction magazines, books on the short story, and titles of representative short stories by English and American writers.’”—Boston Transcript
“The chief criticism has been that he forgets the ideals of the masters and preaches ‘popularity and financial success at all hazards.’”
=A L A Bkl= 13:301 Ap ‘17
“Its author’s qualifications for his task are set forth after his name in these words: ‘Instructor in English in the University of Illinois, formerly special reader of fiction manuscripts, International magazine company, publishers of Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazar, etc.’ ... It is obvious again and again, as we turn the pages of Mr Baker’s book, that his knowledge of what sort of short story will be profitable runs far in advance of his critical faculty.” E. F. E.
– + =Boston Transcript= p6 Ja 20 ‘17 650w
“Mr Baker’s drawback is that he has only one market in mind—the market represented by the American magazines that pay highest. ‘It pays, therefore,’ he writes ‘to find out in advance what American editors dislike’ ... But what is required is another standard altogether, not the raising of the commercial standard. A few editors might be induced to consider what discriminating minds approve of.” M. M. Colum
=Dial= 62:347 Ap 19 ‘17 500w
“Brief and ‘snappy’ book on manuscript salesmanship. ... If the author had only refrained from occasional references to art and artistry his little volume would have been wholly justifiable. For there is no reason in the world why short-story writers should not ply their trade for money. ... Only, when they do so, they should stop talking about art.”
=Nation= 104:548 My 3 ‘17 420w
— =New Repub= 10:108 F 24 ‘17 1350w
“There is a really illuminating chapter on ‘How magazines differ,’ followed by a description of a magazine office from the inside.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:162 Ap 22 ‘17 500w
“A commonsense little volume that should find an audience despite the fact that it is an addition to a long list of books whose excellence varies with their number.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ap 16 ‘17 260w
=BAKER, ORIN CLARKSON.= Travelers’ aid society in America; principles and methods. *$1 (6½c) Funk 910.2 17-14808
This little book, published under the auspices of the Travelers’ aid society of New York city at the close of the thirtieth anniversary of active travelers’ aid work there, deals with the “protection from danger and prevention of crime for travelers, especially young women, girls and boys traveling alone.” (Sub-title) The appendix gives Instructions to agents.
=BAKER, RAY STANNARD (DAVID GRAYSON, pseud.).= Great possessions. il *$1.30 (3c) Doubleday 17-28078
A slender volume which nevertheless can lure one for a brief respite away from the strident noises of a care-troubled world into a realm where loafing with one’s soul is encouraged. It is another adventure in contentment, Grayson leading the way this time to the country where he points out the well-flavored things of garden and field—the smells, sights, sounds, touches and tastes, two of which, the sense of taste and the sense of smell, having been shabbily treated, he thinks, in the amiable rivalry of the senses. Other essays in the group delve down to the wealth of love to be found in the hearts of humble men.
“Pleasant essays in the author’s familiar vein.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:84 D ‘17
Reviewed by A. M. Chase
+ =Bookm= 46:336 N ‘17 250w
+ =Cleveland= p132 D ‘17 40w
“A fitting successor to ‘The friendly road’ and ‘Adventures in contentment.’ A word should be said for Thomas Fogarty’s delightful drawings, which are entirely in harmony with the text.”
+ =Lit D= 55:43 D 8 ‘17 110w
“What we dislike chiefly, perhaps, is the complacency of his mellow hieratic chant, with its double appeal to those who incline to go ‘back to the land,’ and to those who are determined to be ‘glad,’ according to the current fashion (in fiction).”
– + =Nation= 106:118 Ja 31 ‘18 510w
=Outlook= 117:387 N 7 ‘17 40w
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:804 D ‘17 20w
“It is a privilege to come in contact with the type of mind here represented. He is eminently restful, and his attitude promotes a readjustment of values.” F: T. Cooper
+ =Pub W= 92:1379 O 20 ‘17 450w
“It is a delightful book; rich in its wisdom, redolent of nature, and bespeaking a love for humble things and men of gentle will.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p17 N 18 ‘17 370w
=BAKSHY, ALEKSANDR.= Path of the modern Russian stage, and other essays. il *7s 6d Palmer & Hayward, London 792 (Eng ed 17-17074)
“In these essays the author is largely concerned with the problem of representational versus presentational stage performances. Should illusion be carried to its furthest limits? Should the play be represented, as at the Moscow art theatre, as ‘an independent entity existing side by side with’ the observing audience? Or should it be presented through the medium of the stage? Other matters dealt with are the advantages and disadvantages of ensemble-acting, and long-run plays. The concluding essay treats of ‘The kinematograph as art.’”—Ath
=Ath= p541 N ‘16 70w
“Valuable is the author’s essay on living space and the theatre, and his criticism of Mr Gordon Craig’s theories. But abstraction seems pushed to the point where words become abstracted from meaning in the essay on a poet-philosopher of modern Russia, the whole sustained in the Nietzschean jargon of the mythic opposition between Dionysus and Apollo. In more than one sentence the old opposition of the classic and romantic spirit is all that is implied.”
+ — =Int Studio= 61:99 Ap ‘17 250w
“The impression left by Mr Bakshy’s very interesting book, which is full of suggestive remarks and illuminating criticism, is that there is very little future for naturalism.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p487 O 12 ‘16 1300w
=BANCROFT, GRIFFING.= Interlopers. il *$1.50 Bancroft co., 156 5th av., N.Y. 17-20421
“A study of the ‘yellow peril,’ as the subtle and irresistible absorption of California by the Japanese, whom the law has excluded from citizenship, but has failed to keep off the land. ... The central figure of the story is that of a young eastern-bred doctor, who makes himself an outcast among the ranchers in Eden valley by being friendly with the Japanese. In the event, he wins his lady and reëstablishes himself in the world by discovering a serum for Asiatic cholera. But he does not solve, or even help to solve, the problem of the Californian and his Japanese rival. Not all the white man’s law and gospel can dislodge the yellow man when he has once set foot in Eden valley—an interloper destined in no long time to be acknowledged as master of the premises. The Jap, in fact, is the lustier pioneer, and with a backing of oriental gold and oriental cunning more than a match for the western-born.”—Nation
“Though as a novelist Mr Bancroft still has something to acquire in coördinating the scenes of a story and in making his characters appealing, the book takes on a certain reality from the author’s extensive and affectionate knowledge of the country, and from his not altogether unsuccessful attempt to weave an interesting tale around his comment on the conditions introduced by the Japanese settlements. It is this last element that will make the book worth reading as evidence in a problem that is not without its possibilities as an international question.” F. I.
+ — =Boston Transcript= p6 S 8 ‘17 750w
“The matter of the story is better than its manner: the characters have an air of struggling against the language the author puts into their mouths; for he makes them all talk like a book. The action is impeded by various dissertations on fruit-ranching, Japanese customs, or Asiatic cholera—very interesting in themselves.”
=Nation= 105:247 S 6 ‘17 320w
“The plot is merely a thread on which the author has hung a rather interesting essay on the Japanese in California.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:303 Ag 19 ‘17 350w
=BANCROFT, HUBERT HOWE.= In these latter days. $2 Blakely-Oswald co., 124 Polk st., Chicago 304 17-25254
Mr Bancroft is a historian with a long list of volumes to his credit. He has for some time made his home in California, so it is natural that many of the papers in this new book should deal with the problems of the Pacific coast, notably with questions of Asiatic immigration. “Contents: A problem in evolution; Apocalyptic; Infelicities of possession; Germany and Japan; The still small voice; Life’s complex ways; The psychology of lying; China and the United States; The autocracy of labor; Municipal rule and misrule; The declination of law; Fallacies and fantasies; The economics of education; The mysterious history of the spirit creation; Spiritual and rational development; Ab ovo; As others see us; Spirit worship of today; The new religion; The war in Europe; Crystallized civilization; Why a world industrial centre at San Francisco bay? Revival of citizenship; The initiative; Assurances for the future.” (Pittsburgh)
=Boston Transcript= p9 O 20 ‘17 400w
=N Y Times= 22:581 D 30 ‘17 60w
=Pittsburgh= 22:687 O ‘17 90w
“This work of Mr Bancroft’s reveals the author’s pungency and individuality of mind, but reveals also signs of age. Mr Bancroft is eighty-five. Considering this fact, it is easy to understand his overwrought denunciations of current American life.”
– + =Springf’d Republican= p6 O 2 ‘17 270w
=BANG, JACOB PETER.= Hurrah and hallelujah; a documentation; from the Danish by Jessie Bröchner; with an introd. by Ralph Connor. *$1 (2c) Doran 940.91 17-10428
Dr Bang, of the University of Copenhagen, has collected excerpts from German poems, sermons, etc. His title is taken from a book of poems issued by a German pastor. His purpose is “to show, on the one hand, to what a pitch the contempt and hatred for things foreign has been carried, and, on the other hand, how widely the overestimation, not to say the worship, of things German has spread in Germany.” There are chapters on German prophets, German war poetry, The war in sermons, Speeches by German professors, etc. The book was prepared for publication in 1915.
=A L A Bkl= 13:393 Je ‘17
=Dial= 62:256 Mr 22 ‘17 130w
Reviewed by H. M. Kallen
=Dial= 63:263 S 27 ‘17 1100w
“We do not know among modern books any one volume which will give to the English reader in so brief a form so clear a reflection of the militaristic spirit which seems to possess, not only the military leaders, but the teachers of every description in Germany.”
=Outlook= 116:305 Je 20 ‘17 100w
“Those who have any lingering doubts as to the wisdom of the present course taken by the government will find in ‘Hurrah and hallelujah,’ a collection of documents edited by Dr J. P. Bang, of the University of Copenhagen, a terrific arraignment of Germany out of the mouths of her own poets, prophets, professors, and teachers.”
+ =R of Rs= 55:552 My ‘17 130w
“Prof. Bang, in his chapter on ‘The trend of German thought,’ makes the absurd mistake—or else the translation does—of classifying Nietzsche with Treitschke and Bernhardi as prophets of German world-power. Otherwise his observations are apparently correct. ... The numerous examples cited give the book its value.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ap 2 ‘17 950w
“Dr Bang, who is a professor of the University of Copenhagen, and himself a distinguished theologian, has done well to publish this book. ... It is a valuable supplement to Professor Nippold’s book on German Chauvinism, which appeared shortly before the war, and to the similar collections made by Mr Alexander Gray in his three pamphlets, ‘The new leviathan,’ ‘The upright sheaf,’ and ‘The true pastime.’”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p630 D 28 ‘16 1200w
=BANGS, JOHN KENDRICK.= Half hours with the Idiot. *$1.25 (5c) Little 817 17-14182
“Readers of Bangs are familiar with the boarding house of Mrs Pedagog for single gentlemen, where the Idiot, the Doctor, the Poet, the Bibliomaniac, and Mr Brief, the lawyer, assemble daily for refreshments. Over the waffles each morning the Idiot discourses of some theme of timely interest, like Christmas shopping, the income tax, medical conservation, etc.”—Springf’d Republican
=A L A Bkl= 13:439 Jl ‘17
“Not quite so spontaneous in their humor as the breakfast-table talks in ‘Coffee and repartee.’”
+ — =Cleveland= p104 S ‘17 50w
“Mr Bangs gives no intimation in this volume that his humor is in danger of going stale or ceasing. It is in his usual style, only more so, which is good enough for most of us.”
+ =Springf’d= Republican p17 Je 24 ‘17 160w
=BARBEE, LINDSEY.= Let’s pretend. il. 75c Denison 812 17-19694
A book of fairy plays for children, provided with notes on costume and properties, stage directions, etc. Contents: The little pink lady; The ever-ever land; When the toys awake; The forest of every day; A Christmas tree joke; “If don’t-believe is changed into believe.” In some of the plays the number of characters is large, making them suitable for school entertainments where many children take part.
+ =Ind= 92:444 D 1 ‘17 30w
“A book of delightful children’s plays. ... They are merry and whimsical and carry their little sermons unobtrusively.”
+ =R of Rs= 56:444 O ‘17 40w
“The value of these plays is increased by practical directions for costuming, by stage directions and by other helps to production.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 D 20 ‘17 80w
=BARBER, CHARLES H.= Besieged in Kut and after. *5s Blackwood, London 940.91
“Major Barber records his journey from Basra up to Kut, then the return of the army from Ctesiphon, the long-drawn siege, the hopes and disappointments, the surrender, life as a prisoner in Baghdad, his exchange, and the passage down the river again to the familiar lower reaches—familiar, but already transformed by the preparations for the new advance—and then the farewell to ‘the desert land where we had left only two good years of our life, measured by the standard of time, but a good ten by those of our feelings.’ What those feelings were it is easy to guess, though the author wraps them all in their wonderful natural cover of the soldier’s courage and hopefulness and kindness.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
+ =Sat R= 124:312 O 20 ‘17 250w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p371 Ag 2 ‘17 130w
“Major Barber’s book is a little epic. ... And it is none the less an epic for being in form an impersonal and matter-of-fact record of daily events. The sub-title might be ‘Endurance.’”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p374 Ag 9 ‘17 780w
=BARBER, FREDERIC DELOS, and others.= First course in general science. il *$1.25 Holt 502 16-17507
“This book is written for the American school child. It opens with the statement that ‘the primary function of first-year general science is to give, as far as possible, a rational, orderly, scientific understanding of the pupil’s environment to the end that he may, to some extent, correctly interpret that environment and be master of it. It must be justified by its own intrinsic value as a training for life’s work.’ Setting out with this idea, the authors take the various phenomena with which the child is likely to be confronted, and deal with them in a manner calculated to arouse his interest.”—Nature
“It covers somewhat the same field as Caldwell and Eikenberry (Booklist 11:299 Mr ‘15), but is, perhaps, more technical, fuller on physical science, heat, light, ventilation, and refrigeration, and contains less on biology and physical geography, has problems and exercises as well as more illustrations. ... A revision and enlargement of the author’s ‘Elements of physical science,’ published in 1906.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:379 Je ‘17
+ =Ind= 91:264 Ag 18 ‘17 120w
“Its facts in regard to physics and vital phenomena are carefully stated, and the many applications of elementary principles to human welfare are ingeniously and clearly presented.”
+ =Nation= 104:560 My 3 ‘17 150w
“Probably the best use of the book is as a teacher’s guide to give him ‘copy’ which he can work up and adapt to his own class.”
+ =Nature= 98:348 Ja 4 ‘17 400w
=BARBER, HERBERT LEE.= Story of the automobile; its history and development from 1760 to 1917; with an analysis of the standing and prospects of the automobile industry. il *$1.50 (2½c) Munson 629.2 17-16907
As one reads the sub-title of this book he wonders what Franklin had to do with the automobile. Specifically, the author accords Franklin, as the discoverer of electricity, the credit for the electrical automobile, and, in a more general way, shows that in his teachings of frugality and thrift he laid the cornerstone, 150 years ago, on which the superstructure of the automobile business has been erected. The 250 pages tell a concise story of the mechanical and commercial evolution of the automobile, its popularity and its democratization by Henry Ford. What will particularly interest makers and dealers is the analysis of the industry from a financial and investment standpoint, contributed by the Business Bourse International, Inc.
=BARBUSSE, HENRI.= Under fire; the story of a squad; tr. by Fitzwater Wray. *$1.50 (1½c) Dutton 940.91 17-23984
This book was first published in France, December, 1916, under the title, “Le feu,” and received the prize offered by the Académie Goncourt of Paris for the best book of the year. It has had a wide sale in France. The author is a French soldier who does not hesitate to relate the grim and sickening details of life at the front. He quotes a fellow-soldier as saying: “If you make the common soldiers talk in your book, are you going to make them talk like they do talk, or shall you put it all straight—into pretty talk?” And Mr Barbusse answers that he will not “put it all into pretty talk.” He has kept his word. The book is “not a chronicle, still less a diary, but combines pictures of men in masses, and of individual types, moralisings, impressions, observations, episodes, into a sort of epic of army life from the point of view of a private soldier.” (Bookm) And the soldier’s point of view on the war seems to be that while war has turned him and his fellows into “incredibly pitiful wretches, and savages as well, brutes, robbers, and dirty devils,” that, because they are fighting “for progress, not for a country; against error, not against a country” they must fight on until the spirit of war is slain, and, “there’ll no longer be the things done in the face of heaven by thirty millions of men who don’t want to do them.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:59 N ‘17
“Its realism is carried to the extent that some passages are more than merely painful to the reader: they are repellent. There is so much insistence upon the dirt, the vermin, the stench, and the sordidness in the battle zones, and so wrapped in a charnel-house atmosphere are many pages, that we think the artistry of the book has suffered in consequence. However, it is, we repeat, a remarkable production: and it must be admitted that this tale of soldiering in its grimmest and grimiest aspects is well worth reading.”
+ — =Ath= p470 S ‘17 170w
“The sub-title, the ‘Life of a squad,’ is somewhat misleading. There is much more than the life of a squad in this brilliant and varied narrative, which records or divines wide areas of experience.” F. M. Colby
+ =Bookm= 46:90 S ‘17 1250w
“In contrast to his book, the others seem like documents, or pious memorial volumes, or collections of extracts from the average war articles in the magazines. Whether this difference will appear to those who read it only in the present English version it is hard to say, for the translator has come down upon it rather heavily.” C. M. Francis
+ — =Bookm= 46:451 D ‘17 150w
“But a short time ago it would have been thought impossible that the war’s abominations could be restated with such force and vividness as to make them appear almost new to us, yet this is what has been accomplished here by a master hand exercising extraordinary gifts of expression with unrestricted freedom. The book is an achievement that will endure. If it reaches the huge sales here that are recorded of it in France, much credit will be due to the translator, who has done his work extremely well.”
+ =Cath World= 106:409 D ‘17 850w
“He is magnificently indifferent to the curious editorial taboo which results in the frigid brevity of the war dispatch and the inhuman abstractions of Mr Frank H. Simonds. To a man tremendously in earnest who wanted to make those at home see and feel the war—yes and smell it too—any squeamishness would naturally be a simple irrelevance. It would not be thought of, and M. Barbusse hasn’t thought of it. The result is a book of terrific impact, a horrible and fascinating document that brings one nearer to the desolation and despair of No Man’s Land than anything else I have read.” G: B. Donlin
+ =Dial= 63:455 N 8 ‘17 1550w
“Barbusse has the essentially French ability of creating atmosphere. The action moves in vivid patches and flashes of color against a gray background of mud and drizzling rain.”
+ =Ind= 92:561 D 22 ‘17 630w
“It is unnecessary to have been at the front to judge of M. Barbusse’s veracity. It is a book that is no more to be questioned than the diary of Captain Scott or the deathless pages of Tolstoy.” F. H.
+ =New Repub= 12:358 O 27 ‘17 1700w
“‘Under fire’ is an example of genre art, crude often, as Rodin’s casts are crude, as Millet’s paintings are crude. ... The greatest chapter in the book is the last called ‘The dawn.’” B. H.
+ =N Y Call= p14 N 25 ‘17 1550w
“M. Barbusse has succeeded in giving an unforgettable impression of the war as it exists, and in offering us a new point of view from which to consider it and its fighters.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:360 S 23 ‘17 700w
=Pittsburgh= 22:651 O ‘17 60w
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:748 N ‘17 70w
“Makes most other war books—barring perhaps Hugh’s letters from the trenches in ‘Mr Britling’ and Donald Hankey’s ‘Student in arms,’ first series—seem flat and soulless—merely pictorial, a kind of motion picture. We laugh with Empey in ‘Over the top,’ but here one doesn’t read to laugh.” Robert Lynd
+ =Pub W= 93:213 Ja 19 ‘18 600w
=BARCLAY, FLORENCE LOUISA (CHARLESWORTH) (MRS CHARLES W. BARCLAY).= White ladies of Worcester. *$1.50 (1½c) Putnam 17-29023
A novel which views such mediaeval matters as cloisters, feudal pomp and chivalry in the light of our twentieth century breadth of view. The hero possesses all the qualities of the knight of chivalry, its heroine is a cloistered maiden who humbly relinquishes her religious vows for love. But here is the modern note. The Bishop of Worcester not only brings the lovers together but in so doing voices the following sentiment: “Methinks these nunneries would serve a better purpose were they schools from which to send women forth into the world to be good wives and mothers, rather than storehouses filled with sad samples of nature’s great purposes deliberately unfulfilled.” The setting and atmosphere are true to the twelfth century.
=A L A Bkl= 14:129 Ja ‘18
“The book, which is overloaded with sentiment, does not carry conviction.”
— =Ath= p679 D ‘17 90w
“Except for an occasional ‘methinks,’ and incidental allusions to palfreys and battlements, the cumbersome trappings of mediaevalism, the battles, the conclaves, the obsolete language, are absent from the book. It is rather in the substance of the story that the spirit of an earlier day is felt.” Joseph Mosher
+ =Pub W= 92:1375 O 20 ‘17 450w
“The story has an excellent plot, and is told with commendable restraint, and without the cloying sentimentality and wearisome artificialities characterizing so many of the author’s stories heretofore.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11 Ja 27 ‘18 300w
“A pleasing, sentimental romance. ... The whole is too obviously conceived in a modern spirit: we feel the medievalism is but stage scenery and the sentiments those of the twentieth century.”
+ — =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p530 N 1 ‘17 280w
=BARKER, ERNEST.= Ireland in the last fifty years (1866-1916). pa *1s 6d Oxford 941.5 (Eng ed 17-14126)
“The author begins with a survey of the period to which his book relates, and proceeds to discuss the Irish church and education, the agrarian question, and the government of Ireland. The latter part of the book deals with Ireland to-day. Mr Barker regards the rebellion of 1916 as ‘a rebellion of those extremists who have, during the last fifty years, found their enemies no less in the Home rule party of Ireland than in the British government.’”—Ath
=Ath= p203 Ap ‘17 70w
“This well-written pamphlet gives a dispassionate account of Irish affairs during the last half-century. ... We must demur to Mr Barker’s suggestion that the Unionist party has accepted Home rule. He should have explained more clearly the position of protestant Ulster, which is imperfectly appreciated by those who do not know Ireland and her history.”
+ — =Spec= 118:210 F 17 ‘17 90w
“Nor does he stop with the Church and Land acts—he goes on to discuss in some detail the whole agrarian problem in Ireland as the long series of Land acts has left it, with a peasantry relieved of ‘landlordism’ and turning to a variety of boards, departments, and associations for help and guidance in the new problems that confront them. This is the really valuable part of Mr Barker’s book, and it can be heartily recommended to all who wish to understand the present economic situation in Ireland.”
+ — =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p44 Ja 25 ‘17 650w
=BARKER, GRANVILLE.=[2] Three short plays. *$1 Little 822 17-30424
“Rococo,” the first of the three plays, written in 1912, is a farce-comedy with scene laid in an English vicarage. “Vote by ballot,” dated 1914, is a comedy of English politics. The third “Farewell to the theatre,” written in 1916, is a conversation between two persons, a man and a woman, the second of whom is leaving the stage after a long career.
“These plays are tempered with the thin, keen edge of Barker’s fastidious intellectualism. ... In this trifle [’Farewell to the theatre’], hardly a play, Barker is more the poet, or the symbolist, of ‘Souls on Fifth’ than the dramatist.”
+ =R of Rs= 57:109 Ja ‘18 190w
=BARKER, HARRY.= Public utility rates. *$4 McGraw 658 17-10566
“A discussion of the principles and practice underlying charges for water, gas, electricity, communication and transportation services.” (Sub-title) “After eight years of collection, comparative analysis and study the author has brought to fruition his effort to present “a comprehensive discussion of (1) such corporation and municipal activities as affect service and rates, (2) the trend of public opinion and court and commission decisions, and (3) the most important engineering and economic problems involved.” This he has done ‘in the hope’ that the mere presentation, in one volume, of the diverse phases of rate making may be of service in provoking thought—‘in spite of the inherent shortcomings of the text.’” (Engin News-Rec)
“Perhaps the most orderly and generally comprehensive of the many engineering treatises on valuation and rate making. ... The discussion is carefully balanced, and it offers many excellent criticisms and suggestions. The author appears public-spirited, with possibly an over-confidence that his own state of mind is that of public service corporation officials. If space permitted, many minor points might be profitably discussed or criticized.” J: Bauer
+ =Am Econ R= 7:636 S ‘17 140w
“In its good style and thoroughly readable quality, the book reflects the author’s experience as an editor of one of the most successful technical weeklies (Engineering News). Though it treats a highly technical subject, it does so in a manner to command the interest of the reader, introducing him with a brief and pertinent historic sketch to a logical presentation of the subject, adding breadth and perspective by a discriminating analysis of the essential differences in the rate-making problem of different utilities. Its chief value lies in the comparison of the differences in the nature and past solutions of the problem. ... It should be particularly helpful to the young student.”
* + =Engin News-Rec= 79:322 Ag 16 ‘17 1450w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:90 Je ‘17
“‘What is needed to save the observer from being swamped with facts in decisions and froth in partisan theories is just such a clear and unbiased analysis as Mr Barker’s work. ... The volume is the result of painstaking editorial observation over a period of eight years. ... Where there are two sides to a question each is given a fair statement.’”
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:444 My ‘17 60w (Reprinted from Municipal Journal p539 Ap 12 ‘17)
=Pratt= p27 O ‘17
=St Louis= 15:171 Je ‘17
=BARKER, W. H., and SINCLAIR, CECILIA=, eds. West African folk-tales. il *7s 6d Harrap & co., London 398.2
These thirty-six tales are “based upon the folk-lore of the natives of the Gold coast.” (Ath) “The subject-matter has been obtained largely from native school teachers. ... Different versions of the same story have been collated, spurious additions discovered and discarded, and the common framework isolated and established. We are told that all the material thus collected will be available eventually for the use of the student of folk-lore; but in the meantime the authors have contented themselves with trying to interest a different and wider public in the subject by retelling the original basic stories as simply and directly as possible. ... [The book includes] the primitive version of a classic story which the negro slaves took with them across the Atlantic, and which emerged from the mouth of ‘Uncle Remus’ ... as the immortal adventure of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.” (Spec)
“A curious feature of the Gold coast folk-stories is the number of Anánsi or spider tales.”
+ =Ath= p463 S ‘17 150w
“The tales are mostly of the explanatory ‘Just-So’ type which Kipling popularized, and although they have none of Kipling’s wonderful power of personification or triumph of linguistic invention in the telling, they are quite as ingenious and convincing in substance. ... The illustrations are delicately and imaginatively drawn, and exactly right to convey the spirit of the letterpress and to stimulate the curiosity of a child.”
+ =Spec= 119:247 S 8 ‘17 800w
“These West African stories do not ‘grip’ as some others of their kind succeed in doing. ... They are not as dramatic as some, nor are they so surprising. ... The human element is lacking to them also; they throw little light on the manners and customs of the story-teller and his friends. ... A word may be said in appreciation of the illustrations. Their white outline on black ground is most effective.”
– + =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p388 Ag 16 ‘17 900w
=BARNARD’S= Lincoln, the gift of Mr and Mrs Charles P. Taft to the city of Cincinnati. il *50c (6½c) Stewart & Kidd 17-21909
The most interesting contribution to this little volume is that of the sculptor, George Grey Barnard, who tells what the statue means to him and what he tried to make it express to others,—“Lincoln, the song of democracy written by God.” In addition the book presents various documents connected with the unveiling of the statue in Cincinnati: a poem by Dr Lyman Whitney Allen, the presentation address of William Howard Taft, and the speech of acceptance by George Puchta, mayor of the city. There are five illustrations from photographs, and one from an etching by E. T. Hurley.
=Ind= 92:384 N 24 ‘17 400w
=N Y Times= 22:476 N 18 ‘17 580w
“Mr Taft’s address is a broad and true appreciation of Lincoln’s character.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p17 N 18 ‘17 650w
=BARNES, JOHN BRYSON (O. N. E., pseud.).= Elements of military sketching and map reading. 3d ed rev il *75c (5c) Van Nostrand 623.71 17-14002
“The publication of this book was undertaken with a view of providing a textbook suitable for beginners in the subject of military sketching. To the original book has been added chapters on map reading and landscape sketching.” (Preface) The book is illustrated with diagrams and sketches accompanying the text and folding maps are provided in a pocket at the end.
=N Y P L New Tech Bks= p13 Jl ‘17
=BARNETT, GEORGE ERNEST, and MCCABE, DAVID ALOYSIUS.= Mediation, investigation, and arbitration in industrial disputes. *$1.25 (6c) Appleton 331.1 16-23810
“The book is based on a study of the activities of the American national and state agencies of mediation and arbitration. The elements of weakness in the present system are analyzed, and the necessary conditions for the successful working of such systems are set forth. After giving due consideration to the experience of other countries in dealing with the problem of industrial disputes, particularly to the Canadian experience under the law for the compulsory investigation of such disputes, the authors present a plan for the reorganization of the existing systems.”—N Y Call
Reviewed by E. L. Earp
+ =Am J Soc= 23:559 Ja ‘18 300w
“Authoritative study. Useful for debates.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:5 O ‘17
“The attitude of the authors is impartial and practical, and the treatment of the subject is scholarly. It might be wished that the results of the last three years be included in the book. The appendices contain the Newlands act and the recommendations of the Industrial commission on mediation, arbitration, etc.” J. T. Y.
+ =Ann Am Acad= 71:230 My ‘17 200w
=Engin N= 77:108 Ja 18 ‘17 130w
+ =Ind= 89:508 Mr 19 ‘17 150w
=N Y Call= p14 D 10 ‘16 80w
“This volume is one of rather more than ordinary value. ... As a historical study and book of reference, trade unionists and Socialists should find this book a valuable addition to their material on the highly important and timely subjects of which it treats.” C. M. W.
+ =N Y Call= p14 Mr 18 ‘17 300w
“The book is timely and useful, particularly in its tendency to convince the unions that they are too successful for their own interests in some respects. Partisanship may win a battle or two, but fairness is needed to win the campaign for public sympathy and support.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:270 Jl 22 ‘17 620w
=Pratt= p11 O ‘17 10w
“The authors of this book, who hold chairs, respectively, at Johns Hopkins and Princeton, submitted a report in June, 1915, to the United States Commission on industrial relations. The present volume is based on that report but illustrated material has been added and the statements have been brought down to date. In this form it is the best available discussion of the subject in English.”
+ =R of Rs= 55:220 F ‘17 60w
=St Louis= 15:47 F ‘17
“The classifications in the book are admirably arranged, and its conclusions and recommendations are clearly set forth. It is somewhat unfortunate, however, that a book dealing with such an important problem does not contain more vitality. On the whole, the monograph is to be heartily recommended to everyone interested in social readjustments for its careful analysis and its timely suggestions.” H. W. Laidler
+ — =Survey= 39:45 O 13 ‘17 740w
=BARR, MRS AMELIA EDITH (HUDDLESTON).= Christine, a Fife fisher girl. il *$1.50 (1½c) Appleton 17-22293
The scene is laid in the little fishing village of Culraine, Scotland, some seventy years ago. Christine’s parents are hard-working, upright, shrewd, deeply religious fisher-folk, whose great ambition is to educate their son, Neil, as a dominie. With the help of Christine, who is intellectually the abler of the two, Neil prepares for the university, but chooses the law instead of the church, and while taking from his parents and Christine all that they can give, grows more and more forgetful and neglectful of them. The tragedy of the ungrateful son is balanced by the love story of the dutiful daughter, whose chief admirers are Angus Ballister, a gentleman, and Cluny Macpherson, a fisherman. The end of the story leaves her not only a happy wife, but a successful authoress.
=A L A Bkl= 14:129 Ja ‘18
“A love story of characteristic sweetness and charm.” H. W. Boynton
+ =Bookm= 46:340 N ‘17 40w
“Age can not wither nor custom stale Mrs Barr’s infinite variety. Her writing days have spanned many generations yet no more vigorous character has been given novel readers this year than her Christine.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 O 3 ‘17 270w
“One carries away from this story a pleasant impression of fresh breezes, of a people strong and upright and generally goodhearted. ‘Christine: a Fife fisher girl,’ is a novel which will be warmly welcomed by Mrs Barr’s many admirers.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:333 S 9 ‘17 700w
“As heretofore, the story betrays a high moral tone, which makes her novels well-nigh unique among the light fiction of the present day.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p13 D 16 ‘17 220w
=BARR, MRS AMELIA EDITH (HUDDLESTON).= Joan. il *$1.50 Appleton 17-3151
“Mrs Barr has gone to the mining region of Yorkshire for her latest novel, and has drawn a clear and convincing picture of the mining folk and the industry. A very different affair is Yorkshire mining from mining here in America, and in a foreword Mrs Barr explains the root of this difference. It lies chiefly in the fact that the miners in England are sons of the soil, men who have grown to maturity in the neighborhood in which they work, and who have followed their fathers ‘down pit.’ ... There is plenty of romance in the new story by a born writer of love stories, Joan being a winsome lass, with spirit and courage and beauty. Her fate is a man some years older than herself, and there is wealth and splendor, too, and many happy occurrences. Each character is well visualized; there is a human directness in Mrs Barr’s writing that becomes more pronounced as time passes.”—N Y Times
=A L A Bkl= 13:401 Je ‘17
=Boston Transcript= p8 F 21 ‘17 500w
“Pleasing in its freshness and sincerity and especially interesting as the work of an author in her eighty-sixth year, who in this book is depicting the scenes with which she was familiar in her girlhood.”
+ =Cleveland= p33 Mr ‘17 70w
+ =N Y Times= 22:59 F 18 ‘17 650w
=BARRETT, SIR WILLIAM FLETCHER.= On the threshold of the unseen. 2d rev ed *$2.50 Dutton (*6s 6d Kegan Paul, London) 134 17-29365
“Sir William Barrett, who was for many years professor of experimental physics in the Royal college of science for Ireland, was one of the principal founders of the Psychical research society in 1882, and his interest in and close attention to the subject has been continuous for over forty years. In 1908 he published a book (written many years previously) containing his critical investigations under the title ‘On the threshold of a new world of thought.’ His present publication is in the nature of a new edition of that work, including fresh evidence (obtained independently of any professional mediums) as to survival after death. The book is in six parts. It opens with general matter on psychical research and the objections of science and of religion. Part 2 discusses ‘the physical phenomena’—rappings, levitations, &c. ... Canons of evidence, mediumship, the subliminal self, &c., are then discussed. Part 4 collects particulars of apparitions, automatic writing, and other evidence of survival. Part 5 deals with clairvoyance, trance phenomena; considers difficulties; and advances various corrections and suggestions; and in Part 6 the deeper aspects of the matter are explored—the lesson of philosophy in the interpretation of nature; the mystery of personality; reincarnation; the implications of telepathy.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) Sir William Barrett is also the author of the volume on “Psychical research” in the Home university library.
=Ath= p406 Ag ‘17 50w
“It seems impossible for any reasonable man to dispute the case for further study, philosophic and scientific, of the evidence so far collected, and admirably presented in the volume here reviewed.” T. W. Rolleston
+ =Hibbert J= 16:172 O ‘17 1700w
“The author has passed the psalmist’s warning milepost of threescore and ten, but his handling of evidential matter and his discussions in this volume show that his mind is still keen and fresh and has lost none of its habitual scientific method and temper. ... He discusses most interestingly his idea of an unseen world evolving in harmony with our own. This idea, it is apparent, is closely akin to that of a finite, evolving God which has been developed by philosophical writers from Kant down to William James and has just had forceful presentation by H. G. Wells. But Sir William nowhere intimates perception of the kinship of the two ideas.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:281 Jl 29 ‘17 1150w
“What is of most immediate interest at the present moment is his account of certain very recent personal experiments conducted with well-known amateurs.”
+ =Spec= 118:612 Je 2 ‘17 1150w
“The present short volume presents evidence and considerations on the spiritualist side with a welcome absence alike of credulity and of rhetoric.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p251 My 24 ‘17 300w
“The chief interest of this book, primarily a clear and temperate presentation of the case for scientific spiritualism, is its suggestion that there is such a thing as a scientific spirituality. ... It is another matter when we can feel that the slow patient gropings of science are inspired by a spiritual aim. ... It is this that Sir William Barrett, like Sir Oliver Lodge, does not neglect. He keeps the reader aware that psychical research is the beginning of an attempt to test an intuition of reality. This is a real meeting ground for discussion.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p280 Je 14 ‘17 950w
=BARRIE, ROBERT.= My log. il *$2 Franklin press 17-22077
“Robert Barrie was fortunate in having a father able to give him advantages in youth that many never attain to. When he was nearing the age of twenty-one he had his heart set on a bigger boat than those he had been sailing, and ‘the governor’ had the $2000 ready for it, but asked the boy to go around the world instead. He accepted on condition that his brother of seventeen should go with him, and that trip, which lasted well past a year, is the main part of ‘My log,’ written thirty years later for a birthday gift to ‘the governor.’ ... Paris bulks large in the later chapters, the Paris of the studios.”—Springf’d Republican
“He brings back a life, seemingly as far removed from us today as that of the moyen age. A life whose freedom from wars and rumors of wars seems now well-nigh incredible. Of those moyen days Mr Barrie is delightfully reminiscent, rambling along from one subject to another, in the friendliest of ways which renders negligible any ‘barrier of limit,’ and makes the reader a ‘comrade of the road.’”
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 S 12 ‘17 450w
“The book has its entertaining aspects, but as a whole belongs to the class of autobiographies which are more interesting to the author’s own personal friends and to himself than to the public at large.”
– + =Outlook= 117:64 S 12 ‘17 40w
“Mr Barrie is a good raconteur and while his father and friends will appreciate the book more than anyone else, it has merit and style; and its make-up is such as one might expect in a gift from one maker of fine books to another.”
+ — =Springf’d Republican= p8 O 11 ‘17 180w
=BARRON, CLARENCE WALKER.= Mexican problem. il *$1 (4c) Houghton 917.2 17-20844
Mr Barron, for ten years reporter on the Boston Transcript, is now manager of the Wall Street Journal, Boston News Bureau and Philadelphia News Bureau. He is also the author of “The audacious war” and “Twenty-eight essays on the Federal reserve act.” He went to Mexico to study the oil situation and found in that situation the solution of the Mexican problem, which he had “failed to find in railroad, agricultural or mining development.” The result of his observations is embodied in this book, the greater part of which “is devoted to an account of the development of the oil industry in Mexico, to its various conflicting interests, and to the influence and work of Edward Doheny, the man who ‘has always stood by’ and who is as much concerned with the social as with the commercial problem of Mexico.” (Boston Transcript) There are a number of illustrations from photographs, and, at the end, a map showing the lands of the Mexican petroleum company. The preface is by Talcott Williams.
=Am Econ R= 7:840 D ‘17 30w
=A L A Bkl= 14:52 N ‘17
=Am Pol Sci R= 11:794 N ‘17 40w
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 15 ‘17 450w
=Cath World= 106:392 D ‘17 200w
=Cleveland= p123 N ‘17 40w
“Granting that all the facts are so stated by Mr Barren, that he is not far out of the way in his deductions, and that his little book is worthy of attention, he but touches the surface of the Mexican problem as it exists to-day.”
– + =Dial= 63:400 O 25 ‘17 450w
“Mr Barron writes himself down as 100 per cent plutocratic, and even Prussian in his outlook upon life. ... Mexico is a great country. Mr Barron looks at it only as a means of getting oil for American and foreign capitalism. Mexico has been in disorder for years. He wants tranquility. And he has written this book as a means of arousing American public opinion to consent to intervention in the unhappy nation to the south.” W: M. Feigenbaum
— =N Y Call= p15 S 30 ‘17 480w
“Mr Talcott Williams’s preface is only some twenty-five pages in length, but it compacts the thought and experience of a lifetime by a man with peculiar opportunities for a just judgment upon conditions like Mexico’s. ... Both Mr Barron and Mr Williams draw an attractive picture of the Mexican people.”
* =N Y Times= 22:305 Ag 19 ‘17 1350w
“Supplies fresh and valuable information on the petroleum industry in the Tampico-Tuxpan oil fields.”
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:759 N ‘17 60w
“This book supplies fresh and valuable information concerning one major economic interest in Mexico—petroleum. But quite outside its purview lie four others—agriculture, mines, rubber, henequen. It surveys with some degree of intimacy five to ten thousand square miles of territory. Mexico has over 750,000. No reader of the volume can afford to forget these limitations. Within them it is an excellent piece of work. ... Mr Barron is sympathetic in his attitude toward the Mexican people ... but rather sharp with the Mexican government. He is also impatient with Washington.” G. B. Winton
+ =Survey= 38:551 S 22 ‘17 410w
=BARROW, GEORGE ALEXANDER.= Validity of the religious experience. *$1.50 (2c) Sherman, French & co. 201 17-13311
As a preliminary study in the philosophy of religion, the author makes an examination of religious experience. He accepts religious experience as a fact, as something which happens. He says, “In raising the question of validity, whatever we may mean, we do not mean to question the fact of its existence or what its existence includes. We do not ask whether any given case of religion is or is not a true religious experience. We are concerned only with the form of the religious experience and the questions we ask are questions of possibility and of implication. Our analysis is therefore to be an analysis of concepts.” The book consists of seven lectures delivered originally at Harvard university. Contents: The problem of a philosophy of religion; Religion real and unique; The source of religion; The test of religion; Human and superhuman; Personality; A foundation for theology.
“His work will satisfy the scholar, but it is too ponderous and heavy for the average reader. If his thesis could be set forth in half the words and in more popular style it would insure itself of wider reading.” G. F.
+ — =Boston Transcript= p6 S 19 ‘17 470w
“The effort, unusual in these days, to determine the real by analysis of the mere form of experience, produces here, as it has so often done, abstractness of treatment and dryness of style.” G: A. Coe
– + =Educ R= 54:523 D ‘17 400w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:117 Ag ‘17
=BARRY, WILLIAM FRANCIS.= World’s debate; an historical defence of the Allies. *$1.25 Doran 940.9
“The peace of Westphalia, the execution of Charles I, Washington, Napoleon, the Vatican council, not to speak of the real protagonists, Bismarck and the German emperor, the Boer war, Queen Victoria, and President Wilson all contribute to Dr Barry’s picture of ‘The world’s debate,’ which we need not say is the debate between civilization and kultur, between the Catholic Christian ideal of France and England and the heathenism of Prussia.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) The author says, “‘Autocracy in its assault on democracy was my subject; but my hope was to prove by facts and history two things: first that absolute power is doomed ... and, in the second place, that democracy and Christianity ought to recognize each other as by origin and spirit of the same nature.’” (The Times [London] Lit Sup Ag 23 ‘17)
“The whole method of handling bears the stamp of originality. When the historian combines with scientific exactness the imagination of the poet and the vision of the preacher he holds a powerful weapon with which to drive home truth.” A. M.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 N 14 ‘17 750w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p407 Ag 23 ‘17 50w
“Dr Barry is a pleasant guide; often rambling and discursive, with no very deep display of learning, he gives us his interpretations of the moral of modern history, and from time to time illustrates his story by the personal reminiscences which make the book resemble a pleasant conversation.”
+ — =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p411 Ag 30 ‘17 850w
=BARTLETT, FREDERICK ORIN.= Triflers. il *$1.40 (2c) Houghton 17-10201
A man and a woman, Americans, who meet by chance in Paris, decide in a most commonsense and business-like way to marry. They have known one another for ten years altho they have seen little of one another. The serious responsibilities of marriage are distasteful to both of them, but the marriage they agree upon is to have no responsibilities. Marjory, for her part, desires freedom. The working out of the experiment is the theme of the story. Their meeting with an old lover of Marjory’s induces the two triflers to look at life seriously. By this time too they have fallen deeply in love with one another.
“Brightly written and entertaining in its way.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:401 Je ‘17
“Having begun with an arbitrary and improbable, if not impossible, situation, the author is at some pains to motivate fully the rest of his tale. He has succeeded in tracing real character development, and has subordinated circumstances to it in a large measure.” R. W.
+ — =Boston Transcript= p8 Ap 14 ‘17 440w
“Mr Bartlett has so much skill and charm, his style is so clear and pleasing that some day he will surely write a less trifling book.”
– + =Dial= 62:528 Je 14 ‘17 100w
=Nation= 105:16 Jl 5 ‘17 130w
+ =N Y Times= 22:214 Je 3 ‘17 280w
“A somewhat improbable romance. ... The book is hardly on the level with Mr Bartlett’s ‘Wall street girl,’ which was notably original and true to life.”
– + =Outlook= 115:710 Ap 18 ‘17 80w
“The reader is not denied a happy ending, but the suspension of interest coincides with the interjection of the false note.”
– + =Springf’d Republican= p17 My 6 ‘17 280w
=BARTLEY, MRS NALBRO ISADORAH.= Paradise auction. il *$1.50 (1c) Small 17-23973
The influence of one gracious and beautiful woman on the lives of four young people is the central theme of this story. “Darly,” so called from her son’s childish name for her, had been a famous English actress in her youth, but she had given up the stage and had come to a small American city in order to give her child a simple and wholesome bringing up. His playmates from childhood, Paul and Natalie Kail and Molly Brene look up to Darly as Jack himself does. Paul and Molly marry early but Natalie, who loves Jack, and Darly, his mother, suffer together the pain of seeing him marry a shallow, flippant little parasite who is destined to make marriage a mockery. It seems for a time that the mother’s life of sacrifice has been in vain; but it has not, and not only Jack, but the others as well, find, even after her death, that their destinies are shaped by her ideals.
=A L A Bkl= 14:25 O ‘17
“We follow the separate destinies with an interest which does not wane through a long story.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 18 ‘17 300w
“It is a rather futile and exhausted subject, handled in a manner that is skilful, though lamentably typical of modern magazine fiction.”
– + =Dial= 64:78 Ja 17 ‘18 60w
+ =Ind= 91:188 Ag 4 ‘17 70w
“Though the novel is much too long, it holds the reader’s interest fairly well. The people are real with a possible exception of the somewhat too remarkable and admirable Darly.”
+ — =N Y Times= 22:222 Je 10 ‘17 430w
“The characters move without artificial stimulus. This is particularly true in the cases of the actress-mother and the son’s parasitic wife. The dialog is spontaneous.”
+ — =Springf’d Republican= p15 Ag 26 ‘17 500w
=BARTON, BRUCE.= More power to you. *$1 (2½c) Century 170 17-23552
Fifty editorials from Every Week which are really sermonettes. They are tiny doses of American idealism offered to business men who are in danger of sacrificing home life, friends, books, even dreams on the altar of business success. The writer shows that many a man has, as a by-product of his building, strengthened the character and lifted the ideals of hundreds of his associates, and helped in the regeneration of entire communities. There is some good advice concerning how to achieve that by-product.
=A L A Bkl= 14:38 N ‘17
“Mr Barton has the honest American respect for material ‘progress’ and business ‘success.’ But he is not sentimental on the one hand or materialistic on the other. ... ‘More power to you’ is a stimulating, vigorous, wholesome little book.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:347 S 16 ‘17 400w
=St Louis= 15:386 N ‘17 20w
“It is a little book that bids us stop for a moment and examine our rushing world. It is a book of simple aphorisms phrased so cleverly that the advice is often concealed for the moment by the sugar coating.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p17 N 4 ‘17 160w
=BARTON, GEORGE AARON.= Religions of the world. (Handbooks of ethics and religion) *$1.50 Univ. of Chicago press 209 17-20653
The author is professor of biblical literature and Semitic languages in Bryn Mawr college, Pennsylvania. The book “opens with an outline of primitive religions, and then, having stated the main elements of religion in Babylon and Egypt, goes on to deal with the religion of the ancient Hebrews, Judaism, and Mahommedanism. The next section of the book is concerned with Zoroastrianism, from which it passes to the religions of India, China, and Japan. Chapters on the religions of Greece and Rome follow, and the book closes with a section on Christianity.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) “At the close of each chapter supplementary readings are given. These are divided into two classes, one for extended work, and one for those who have but a limited time to give to the subject. At the end of the volume there are lists of books on special subjects for the teacher, topics for study, and an ‘outline of a book to be written by the student.’ There is a good index.” (Boston Transcript)
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:148 F ‘18
“The volume is meant to be a textbook, and as such it is admirable.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 Ag 15 ‘17 480w
“His work is colored throughout by the conviction of the Protestants that man is saved by faith alone; his book is little more than a summary of the views which various peoples have entertained in regard to God, the soul, immortality, and so on.”
— =Dial= 64:74 Ja 17 ‘18 850w
=Ind= 91:293 Ag 25 ‘17 90w
“An admirable text-book for the study of comparative religions. Without being controversial it is animated throughout by the characteristic spirit which recognizes that pagan religions are the product of the soul’s quest after God.”
+ =Outlook= 117:309 O 24 ‘17 60w
“A terse, well-written text-book packed with the facts concerning the great religions of the world.”
+ =R of Rs= 56:329 S ‘17 80w
“Valuable to all who want a concise and accurate survey of the ideals and growths of the religious systems of the world. ... The book fills a real need in the popular religious literature of the day.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ag 17 ‘17 300w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p408 Ag 23 ‘17 180w
=BARTON, GEORGE EDWARD.= Re-education. *$1 (7c) Houghton 362 17-31277
A fearless analysis of the institutional system of the United States by a business man and for business men. The writer believes that there are some fundamental weaknesses or fallacies in our present system of dealing with education, sin, insanity and disease. He bases objections to the existing institutional system on the failure to do more than prevent, during the period of incarceration, the act of which the prisoner or patient has been guilty. He would build up a system of re-education which would make producers of inmates of institutions with an increase of efficiency. The thought underlying the inquiry and arraignment emanates from the best social theory of the day.
=BASHFORD, HENRY HOWARTH.= Songs out of school. (New poetry ser.) *75c Houghton 821
There is a note of quiet happiness in this small book of poems. Even “The vision of spring, 1916,” the one piece in the book that touches on the world tragedy, speaks with the voice of hope. Other poems are, The high road, Little April, Litany in spring, Lullabies at Bethlehem, Cradle songs, River songs.
“A small collection of verses, most of which appeared in the Spectator, the Nation, the Outlook, and Country Life.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:389 Je ‘17
+ =Ath= p478 O ‘16 30w
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Mr 21 ‘17 140w
“There are serious and elegant poems which comport themselves becomingly, but the zest of the book lies in the pattering and twittering verses which in five or six instances overleap that elusive but difficult barrier that divides mere attractiveness from authentic charm.” O. W. Firkins
+ =Nation= 104:710 Je 14 ‘17 180w
“The difference between a minor and a sub-minor poet is something to be felt rather than explained, yet there is a definite line between. ... Mr Jeffers is a conventional minor poet; Mr Arensberg is an unconventional one; we catch, out of the corner of our eye, a glint of wings, spite of the manifest failures of each. Mr Bashford, on the other hand, without a failure to his credit, is distinctly a sub-minor. ... The trouble with his verses is that they lack something vital, a distinctiveness, a tang, the scent of personality.”
=N Y Times= 22:257 Jl 8 ‘17 180w
+ =Outlook= 115:116 Ja 17 ‘17 180w
=BASSETT, JOHN SPENCER.= Middle group of American historians. *$2 (2½c) Macmillan 928 17-2031
The “middle period” of which the author writes is not exactly defined. Its beginning is placed at some time following the close of the War of 1812, its ending at the time when the scientific spirit gained dominance over the patriotic school of historical writing. 1884, the year of the founding of the American historical association, is suggested as the closing date of the period. The author’s purpose is to treat of the men who were writing history during this time, Jared Sparks, George Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Peter Force. There is an introductory chapter on Early progress of history in the United States, and a concluding chapter on The historians and their publishers.
“His chapters on Sparks and Bancroft make the largest contribution of fresh material, for many unpublished passages are drawn from the Sparks manuscripts in the Harvard college library, and still more from the Bancroft manuscripts in the keeping of the Massachusetts historical society.” M. A. DeW. Howe
+ =Am Hist R= 22:879 Jl ‘17 650w
=A L A Bkl= 13:304 Ap ‘17
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 F 24 ‘17 120w
“A distinguishing characteristic of the work is that it has to do with historians rather than with history: the author is far more interested in the men themselves and in their activities than he is in the books they wrote. ... The book is itself a piece of careful research rather than a contribution to historical criticism or the history of ideas; and taken for what it is, it will be found, by professional historians at least, and one would think by a rather wide reading public as well, a very useful book and an extremely interesting one.” Carl Becker
+ =Dial= 62:301 Ap 5 ‘17 1800w
=Eng Hist R= 32:460 Jl ‘17 70w
+ =Lit D= 54:2000 Je 30 ‘17 430w
“The book is eminently readable and is valuable for its appreciation, sympathetic and yet critical, of the men who made this middle period a golden age of historical writing in the United States.”
+ =Nation= 104:631 My 24 ‘17 900w
+ =N Y Times= 22:143 Ap 15 ‘17 450w
=Pittsburgh= 22:209 Mr ‘17
=St Louis= 15:119 Ap ‘17 50w
+ =Spec= 118:417 Ap 7 ‘17 130w
“Offered as the understudy of a more elaborate work which the author hopes to produce if the future favors.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p17 Je 24 ‘17 720w
=BASSETT, LEE EMERSON.= Handbook of oral reading. *$1.60 Houghton 808.5 17-2347
“This book is the outgrowth of several years of classroom instruction and practice based on the theory that effective oral expression is the result of clear thinking.” (Preface) The first of the three parts into which the book is divided is devoted to the problem of thought-getting and to the modulations of the voice that serve to make meaning clear to others. Part 2 is devoted to the problem of the imaginative and emotional response to thought. The technical problems of tone production are treated in part 3. The book is well supplied with illustrative material. The author is associate professor of English at Leland Stanford Junior university.
“Sensible ideas, well expressed. Everts’ ‘The speaking voice’ (A L A Catalog 1904-1911) will be sufficient in the average library.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:389 Je ‘17
=Cleveland= p122 N ‘17 50w
“Good selections, a clear statement of principles, and a full outline for teachers.”
+ =Ind= 91:234 Ag 11 ‘17 30w
=St Louis= 15:183 Je ‘17 10w
“The high-school teacher of public speaking will be interested in this book, which sets forth very forcibly the principles of natural oral expression. ... The book might be more attractive to the high-school student if more of the selections were from contemporary literature.” E. F. Geyer and R. L. Lyman
+ — =School R= 25:608 O ‘17 100w
=Springf’d Republican= p8 Ap 25 ‘17 150w
=BASSETT, SARA WARE.= Story of sugar. il *75c (2½c) Penn 17-16751
Uniform with the stories of cotton, gold and silver, lumber, wool, iron, leather and glass. It is written for boys and girls from seven to twelve and has a thread of plot upon which hang bits of true information about the history and manufacture of sugar. A real sugaring-off in the maple woods, a visit to a sugar refinery, and another to a candy factory are narrated with emphasis on the processes that children can readily grasp. The sport and adventure intermingled are wholesome, the sort that live boys and girls have a big appetite for.
+ =Outlook= 117:574 D 5 ‘17 60w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p15 D 1 ‘17 100w
=BASSETT, SARA WARE.= Wayfarers at the Angel’s. *$1.25 (3½c) Doran 17-28601
This is another Cape Cod story by the author of “The taming of Zenas Henry.” A wooden angel, long ago a ship’s figurehead, guards the door of the “straggling house on the bluff, half buried in vines and flowers,” which is the home of three bachelors; John Bartlett, retired captain of the life-saving station; Timothy Talbot, with his Civil war relics and his seven pairs of shoes, which he wears in unvarying rotation, and David Furber, the happy-go-lucky sailor lad whom the life-savers have rescued from a foundering barque, and who after being wrecked twelve times, has now elected to stay ashore. Into this household comes Ann, who is “better’n a trained nurse, she’s a born one,” to nurse David through a fever, and life becomes a different thing to all three men. It also changes greatly for Ann, whom one of the three persuades to stay with him always as “angel of the grey house—a sight better one than that wooden image over the door.”
“The little tale is slight, but rather pleasant. There are some amusing bits, and only one disagreeable character in the book, all the rest being virtuous to a degree.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:442 O 28 ‘17 150w
“Sara Ware Bassett writes another buoyant ‘Cape’ story which nowise infringes upon the rights and prerogatives of Mr Lincoln.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p15 D 23 ‘17 290w
=BASSETT, WILBUR.=[2] Wander-ships; folk-stories of the sea, with notes upon their origin. *$1.50 Open ct. 398.2 17-27992
“The book under the above title—‘Wander-ships’—is a small collection of some of the stories about wonderful and strange ships that have been reported as sailing the seas, from and to no port or haven. ... To further emphasize the stories, for the benefit of the student of such literature, copious notes on the various tales are appended. ... The volume is something of an encyclopædia on the subject of ghostly craft and vessels, the origin and voyages of which are lost in the shades of earliest tradition.”—Boston Transcript
“The several tales are interesting, whether the reader is or is not familiar with such ‘yarns,’ and the volume is a distinct contribution to the literature of the sea.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ja 5 ‘18 280w
“The work is a very unusual one, but will be a source of delight to those who love to dig down into fundamentals, for even if the superstitions of past ages are taken as the subject, the work is in itself essentially a scientific one.” J. W.
+ =N Y Call= p14 D 29 ‘17 800w
=Outlook= 118:31 Ja 2 ‘18 70w
=BATCHELDER, ROGER.= Watching and waiting on the border. il *$1.25 (3c) Houghton 355.7 17-13927
The author writes of his experience on the Mexican border with one of the Massachusetts regiments of the National guard. His first purpose is to answer the many questions asked him since his return: “Was it hot down there?” “What are the Mexicans like?” and so on. His second is “to show, by narrating the story of the mobilization and the subsequent service of the National guard, how pitifully incompetent and unprepared it was and is, to form the reserve military force of the United States.” The book has an introduction by E. Alexander Powell.
=A L A Bkl= 14:17 O ‘17
=Cleveland= p116 S ‘17 40w
“While Private Batchelder is frankly outspoken in discussing these questions, he writes with the good sense and judgment born of experience. As a record of personal service in what may fairly be termed a hard country physically, his book is well worth reading by every recruit as a helpful guide to his duty and conduct.”
+ =Ind= 91:108 Jl 21 ‘17 300w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:102 Jl ‘17
=Pittsburgh= 22:684 O ‘17 40w
=Pratt= p45 O ‘17 40w
“To those interested in military life with just a dash of adventure thrown in there is an especial appeal in ‘Watching and waiting on the border.’”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p15 Ag 26 ‘17 130w
=BAYLEY, WILLIAM SHIRLEY.=[2] Descriptive mineralogy. il *$3.50 Appleton 549 17-21365
This work, prepared as a textbook for students, is designed to give “a comprehensive view of modern mineralogy rather than a detailed knowledge of many minerals.” The author says, “It does not pretend to furnish a complete discussion of the mineral kingdom, nor a means of determining the nature of any mineral that may be met with. The chapters devoted to the process of determinative mineralogy are brief, and the familiar ‘key to the determination of species’ is omitted. In place of the latter is a simple guide to the descriptions of minerals to be found in the body of the text.” The three parts of the book are devoted to: General chemical mineralogy; Descriptive mineralogy, and Determinative mineralogy. Lists of minerals are given in appendixes; also a list of references. Hintze’s “Handbuch der mineralogie” has been drawn on for matter in the text, and “Mineral resources of the United States” has been used as a basis for the statistics. The author is professor of geology in the University of Illinois.
+ =Pittsburgh= 22:814 D ‘17 80w
=BAYLISS, WILLIAM MADDOCK.= Physiology of food and economy in diet. *65c Longmans 613.2 Agr17-520
“‘The physiology of food and economy in diet’ is a rather academic manual which has arisen, Professor Bayliss tells us, from a course of lectures given at University college, London, in November, 1916. ... After a brief résumé of the problem as a whole, Professor Bayliss studies the uses of food, the classes of foodstuffs, the question of quantity, accessory factors, digestibility, alcohol, vegetarianism, exercise, the value of cooking, characteristics of certain articles of diet, and possibilities of economy. As a general summary of his directions, he concludes with the aphorism, ‘Take care of the calories and the protein will take care of itself.’”—N Y Times
“The American reader will perhaps turn with especial interest to the study of the work of the Commission for relief in Belgium as an example of good food ministration and control.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:395 O 14 ‘17 150w
=Pratt= p19 O ‘17
=St Louis= 15:327 S ‘17 10w
“In a hundred pages he presents in clear, concise and fascinating language the fundamental principles of nutrition. Bayliss, though noted for his work on the secretory glands and not recognized as an expert on nutrition, has nevertheless written with the appreciative touch characteristic of the master mind.” Graham Lusk
+ =Science= n s 46:18 Jl 6 ‘17 50w
+ =Spec= 118:520 My 5 ‘17 180w
Bayonet training manual used by the British forces. (Van Nostrand’s military manuals) il *30c Van Nostrand 355
This pocket manual is a reprint of material which appeared in the Infantry Journal for May, 1917. The copyright is held by the United States Infantry association. The preface states that the instructions are from the latest British training manual (1916), and that they are based on experience in accordance with which the forces are now being trained.
=BEACH, HARLAN PAGE.= Renaissant Latin America. il $1 (2c) Missionary educ. movement 266 16-22287
“An outline and interpretation of the Congress on Christian work in Latin America, held at Panama, February 10-19, 1916.” The author has prepared a condensed account of the congress, quoting as largely as was consistent with his purpose from speeches and reports. Contents: The story of the Congress; Re-discovering Latin America; Interpretation, message, method; Latin Americans and education; Leaves for the healing of nations; The upbuilding of womanhood; The Latin evangelical churches; The home fulcrum; Unity’s fraternal program; Congressional addresses; Aftermath and estimates.
“The volume is interesting from beginning to end and for the busy reader meets an urgent need.” J. W. M.
+ =Am J Theol= 21:480 Jl ‘17 90w
“Much suggestive and stirring material is contained in this condensed review of Christian work.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Mr 3 ‘17 300w
“The exchange of ideas was noteworthy as delegates were present from nearly all over the world, and from these workers Dr Beach has collected a most interesting fund of facts.”
+ =Ind= 90:257 My 5 ‘17 60w
“While the enthusiasm of the author for the South Americans carries him perhaps a little too far, yet the book is well worth reading.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p17 Ap 8 ‘17 140w
=BEACH, REX ELLINGWOOD.= Laughing Bill Hyde, and other stories. il *$1.35 (1c) Harper 17-30123
The title story is a tale of Alaska, so is the one following, “The north wind’s malice.” Among the others, several are stories of business, one is a newspaper story. Some of the titles are: His stock in trade; With bridges burned; With interest to date; The cub reporter; Out of the night; The real and the make-believe; Running Elk; The moon, the maid, and the winged shoes; Flesh. The book is printed without table of contents.
“He excels in one kind of fiction which is purely American: the business story.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 D 22 ‘17 300w
“There is nothing particularly original or striking in any of these tales, but many of them will no doubt furnish amusement for an idle hour. They are written in Mr Beach’s well-known and rather agreeable style.”
+ — =N Y Times= 22:516 D 2 ‘17 800w
=BEALS, MRS KATHARINE (MCMILLAN).= Flower lore and legend. *$1.25 Holt 716.2 17-23777
The author has brought together a store of miscellaneous information—myth, legend, and fancy, with quotations from poetry,—connected with thirty-five of our common flowers. Chapters are given to the snowdrop, arbutus, crocus, narcissus, dandelion, violet, pansy, mignonette, buttercup, etc.
=A L A Bkl= 14:75 D ‘17
=BEAN, C. E. W.= Letters from France. il *5s Cassell & co., London 940.91
“Mr Bean, war correspondent for the Commonwealth of Australia, has not attempted to narrate the full story of the Australian imperial force, but gives graphic accounts of the first impressions of some of the Australians in France, of their life in the trenches and in billets, of the share of the Australians in the Somme advance and in the fighting at Pozières, and of their bravery at Mouquet Farm.”—Ath
=Ath= p420 Ag ‘17 110w
“The simple, easy style of these letters shows us clearly what the Australians have done in France.”
+ =Sat R= 123:552 Je 16 ‘17 1050w
“It is a wonderful story, and it is told with great spirit. Mr Bean warns his readers that the Australian troops hate to be called ‘Anzacs,’ just as they hate being called ‘Colonials.’”
+ =Spec= 118:675 Je 16 ‘17 120w
=BEARD, FREDERICA=, comp. Prayers for use in home, school and Sunday school. *60c Doran 248 17-24844
The author has assembled a number of prayers for children and young people. In those for little people she appeals to the child’s natural love of rhythm and repetition. Those for older boys and girls are drawn from many sources and are characterized by a spirit of reverence. They are arranged in four groups: Prayers for little children; Prayers for boys and girls; Prayers for young people; For use on special occasions.
“A beautiful collection.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:73 D ‘17
“Tho not many are adapted to use in public schools, in private schools, in the home and Sunday school, they would provide splendid suggestive training.”
+ =Ind= 91:354 S 1 ‘17 60w
=Ind= 92:449 D 1 ‘17 30w
=BEAUFORT, J. M. DE.= Behind the German veil; a record of a journalistic war pilgrimage. il *$2 (2c) Dodd 940.91 17-14977
Before going to Germany in 1914 as the representative of a London newspaper, the author had spent three years in journalistic work in New York, and he acknowledges a debt of gratitude to his American training. He is a Hollander by birth and parentage and as a boy was sent to school in Germany. His sympathies, even before starting on his mission to Germany, were strongly pro-Ally. He says, “I started on my mission and entered Germany with as far as possible an open mind. I could not honestly say at that time that I hated the Germans; I merely had no use for them.” All his experiences within the German empire intensified his feeling. The book consists of four parts: General impressions; My trip to the eastern front and visit to Hindenburg; An incognito visit to the fleet and Germany’s naval harbours; Interviews.
“He relates his experiences and impressions in journalistic and entertaining fashion.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:17 O ‘17
“The style in which the book is written is not attractive, but the matter is undeniably of interest.”
+ — =Ath= p204 Ap ‘17 170w
“The material is interesting but the writer dilates rather too freely on his own shrewdness and ‘nerve.’”
+ — =Cleveland= p101 S ‘17 60w
“If there is anything ‘Behind the German veil’ which is particularly worth disclosing, it has not been revealed by J. M. de Beaufort.”
— =Nation= 106:70 Ja 17 ‘18 160w
“Offers some of the most interesting firsthand accounts that have come out of Germany. ... Mr de Beaufort writes vivaciously, although somewhat garrulously, and his book is full of interesting matter of much importance for Americans if they would understand the German spirit. He was in Europe as the correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:215 Je 3 ‘17 600w
=Pittsburgh= 22:680 O ‘17 20w
+ =R of Rs= 56:107 Jl ‘17 90w
=BEAVERBROOK, WILLIAM MAXWELL AITKEN, 1st baron.= Canada in Flanders. maps *1s 3d Hodder & Stoughton, London 940.91
The second volume of the official story of the Canadian expeditionary force covers the period between September, 1915, and July, 1916. For an account of the first volume consult the Digest annual, 1916, under Aitken, Sir William Maxwell—the name of Lord Beaverbrook before he was raised to the peerage.
“The descriptions of the dash and vigour of the Canadian troops are graphic and inspiring.”
+ =Ath= p258 My ‘17 70w
=St Louis= 15:417 D ‘17 20w
“Lord Beaverbrook’s second volume concerning the Canadians, which is written by him as the Canadian ‘Eyewitness,’ contains a most readable and workmanlike account of the long and bitter struggles first at St Eloi and then at Hooge, in the Ypres Salient, which ended a fortnight before the battle of the Somme began.”
+ =Spec= 118:675 Je 16 ‘17 120w
“It is difficult to conceive of anything more likely to stimulate zeal and efficiency than volumes of this kind. The general public cannot master an official dispatch, so long after the event, without considerable explanatory notes and plans. The whole scheme of the volumes at present issued is to present a coherent account of an action as a whole, and at the same time to signalize individual acts of gallantry.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p110 Mr 8 ‘17 600w
=BECHHOFER, C. E.=, ed. Russian anthology in English. *$1.50 Dutton 891.7 A17-1637
“Translated extracts in verse and prose from twenty-five authors (of whom only one, Volynsky, is new to English readers), with some ballads and folk songs.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
=A L A Bkl= 14:119 Ja ‘18
“This collection of extracts from Russian verse, drama, and prose is too fragmentary to be satisfying. In some of the examples, such as the excerpt from ‘The idiot’ by Dostoevsky, the absence of context makes for obscurity and a sense of incompleteness. Other examples are enjoyable, such as Gogol’s idyllic ‘Old-world gentle-folk,’ ‘The death of Ivan’ by Alexis Tolstoy, Pushkin’s poem ‘The three sisters,’ Leo Tolstoy’s thoughtful criticism of Maupassant, and the slyly humorous sketch by Chekhov, ‘A work of art.’ Many prominent modern Russian authors are represented, though we miss the names of Gorky, Grigorovitch, Artsibashev, and Sologub.”
+ — =Ath= p360 Jl ‘17 100w
+ — =Boston Transcript= p7 N 3 ‘17 230w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p214 My 5 ‘17 20w
=BECKLEY, ZOË, and GOLLOMB, JOSEPH=, comps. Songs for courage. *$1 Barse & Hopkins 821.08 17-15993
Courage is one of “the subjects made prominent by the war” to which librarians are officially advised to give special attention in book selection. In this collection of over 100 titles we find the old favorites, such as Henley’s “Invictus,” Sill’s “Opportunity,” Matthew Arnold’s “Self-dependence,” together with the work of more recent writers.
=Cleveland= p121 N ‘17 50w
“Many old favorites are here. ... There are also many unworthy verses. The inferior verse far outranks the worthy. And it is surprising to note how many of the poems of revolutionary courage are missing.” Clement Wood
+ — =N Y Call= p14 Je 24 ‘17 120w
=BEECROFT, WILLEY INGRAHAM=, comp. Who’s who among the wild flowers and ferns. new and combined ed il *$1.50 Moffat 582 A17-406
“The outstanding feature of the work and the one which commends it to the ordinary student, is that a person need not be a botanist to use Mr Beecroft’s guide.” (Springf’d Republican) “The flowers are classified by colors, as in most volumes of the kind, and under, the name of each flower ample description is detailed for identification. There are blank pages for notes.” (Boston Transcript)
=A L A Bkl= 13:361 My ‘17
+ =Boston Transcript= p13 Ap 7 ‘17 150w
“The inclusiveness of ‘Who’s who among the wild flowers and ferns’ will rightly make it a popular guide.”
+ =Ind= 91:109 Jl 21 ‘17 40w
“While scientific and accurate, it is entirely untechnical.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p17 Ag 29 ‘17 130w
=BEER, GEORGE LOUIS.= English-speaking peoples; their future relations and joint international obligations. 2d ed *$1.50 (2c) Macmillan 327.73 17-17291
Mr Beer was formerly lecturer in European history at Columbia university, and is the author of “The old colonial system, 1660-1754,” etc. He recalls in his preface Admiral Mahan’s essay of 1894 entitled “Possibilities of an Anglo-American re-union,” and goes on to say: “What in 1894 was unripe and academic, has today become urgent and practical.” A series of notes is appended which furnish a running bibliography to easily accessible and non-technical literature. Some of the material in the book appeared originally in the Political Quarterly, New Republic, and elsewhere.
+ =Am Econ R= 7:840 D ‘17 60w
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:112 Ja ‘18
=Ath= p463 S ‘17 60w
“Valuable as the author’s opinions are, it is no discourtesy to him to say that the facts, figures, and references appended to the book in some forty pages of ‘Notes’ are in some respects even more valuable; for facts on these contentious subjects are often ignored and sometimes very difficult to get at, and Mr Beer has a genius for relevant documentation.”
+ =Ath= p505 O ‘17 1600w
=Cleveland= p138 D ‘17 60w
“Mr Beer’s argument is logical and forceful. He has scrupulous regard for the facts of history and economics; his views are the outcome of a lifetime of study of British imperial and colonial affairs and of international politics. Many, perhaps most, of his readers will shrink from his conclusions. But no one will be justified in withholding from this book the tribute of candid and thoughtful consideration.” F: A. Ogg
+ =Dial= 63:520 N 22 ‘17 1100w
=Ind= 92:60 O 6 ‘17 70w
Reviewed by Sinclair Kennedy
=J Pol Econ= 26:101 Ja ‘18 470w
“The valuable references and notes are sure to be of immediate help to every thoughtful reader interested in this absorbing and timely question.”
+ =Lit D= 55:45 O 13 ‘17 300w
“The volume is easily one of the most weighty pieces of writing about the war that has yet appeared in this country, and should be widely read.”
+ =Nation= 105:322 S 20 ‘17 560w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:133 S ‘17 30w
“A factor of the first importance in the molding of public opinion in this country. ... In three remarkably thoughtful concluding chapters Mr Beer discusses the predominant factors in the unity of English-speaking peoples, the economic possibilities in co-operation, and the community of Anglo-American policy toward China and Latin America. The chapter on the growing economic interdependence of the world is, in particular, closely reasoned.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:356 S 23 ‘17 1200w
“Without necessarily giving full credence to ideas that are indeed but tentatively advanced, one may affirm that ‘The English-speaking peoples’ is a statesmanlike book. In its grasp of the ends to be wished for, in its perception of present realities, and in the caution of its conclusions, Mr Beer’s book differs essentially and completely both from those forecasts of the future which are more or less frankly utopian and from the desperately opportunistic proposals which the present world-crisis has called forth from certain would-be practical idealists. Although his style is of the plainest (in both senses of the word), the author possesses an unusual power of extracting fundamental truths from a great mass of conflicting facts. ... The book will prove valuable for its broad and illuminating criticisms of such general ideas as that of nationality, and of such programmes or proposals as pan-Americanism and the League to enforce peace.”
+ + =No Am= 206:478 S ‘17 950w
=Outlook= 117:64 S 12 ‘17 150w
“He states his arguments cogently, but without heat, and fortifies every position he takes up with a full reference to facts and authorities. We regret only that in the effort to be at once condensed and accurate he has allowed his style to become, at times, so abstruse and technical as to prevent his volume from appealing to the widest possible public.”
+ — =Spec= 119:sup472 N 3 ‘17 800w
“We are bound to demur to his too facile assumption of the abandonment of free trade by Great Britain.” R: Roberts
=Survey= 38:549 S 22 ‘17 650w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p395 Ag 16 ‘17 50w
“It is one of the best, most original, and judicious attempts to construct out of the political anarchy of these times new organizations. ... Mr Beer modestly describes his book as a livre de circonstance dealing with an unpredictable future. It is in reality a valuable addition to political science. ... This book, with its earnest appeal for support to a permanent, loosely knit association between Great Britain and the United States, is to be welcomed by every one who has at heart the ideals which these two countries represent.”
+ + =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p422 S 6 ‘17 620w
“The book is the work of a scholar, and it is, as scholars say, thoroughly documented. But it is not primarily addressed to scholars, and it is not a dry-as-dust performance. It is addressed to thinking people who are ready to consider seriously and with care the duty of the nation in this great crisis, and it abounds with fresh suggestions and arguments which are bound to excite interest and open new channels of thought.” G. B. Adams
+ =Yale R= n s 7:416 Ja ‘18 1200w
=BEERS, HENRY AUGUSTIN.= Two twilights. *$1 Badger, R: G. 811 17-25112
“This volume includes selections from two early books of verse, long out of print; a few pieces from ‘The Ways of Yale’; and a handful of poems contributed of late years to the magazines and not heretofore collected.” (Preface) The author has been professor of English literature in Yale university since 1880.
=BEITH, JOHN HAY (IAN HAY, pseud.).= All in it; “K (1)” carries on. *$1.50 (2½c) Houghton 940.91 17-29361
This is the continuation of “The first hundred thousand,” promised us by Captain Beith. “‘The first hundred thousand’ closed with the battle of Loos. The present narrative follows certain friends of ours from the scene of that costly but valuable experience, through a winter campaign in the neighbourhood of Ypres and Ploegsteert, to profitable participation in the battle of the Somme.” (Author’s note) Captain (now major) Wagstaffe and Private (now corporal) Mucklewame reappear in this volume.
“Told with the same humorous turns and descriptions that made the first book so readable.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:88 D ‘17
“Bit by bit Major Beith pieces together the tale of the fighter in the present war. He does not minimize its horrors, but he does not over-emphasize them. Through his entire story runs an undercurrent of optimism.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p8 N 7 ‘17 1500w
=Cleveland= p130 D ‘17 60w
=Ind= 93:128 Ja 19 ‘18 50w
“Ian Hay’s own narrative is full of the brightest humor, not untouched with an equally bright cynicism. ... And yet it would be a grave mistake to assume that because he writes brightly, and often humorously, Major Beith’s is a ‘light’ book. It is far from that. ... In ‘All in it’ the heroism is present always. The terrible things are not glossed over.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:462 N 11 ‘17 750w
+ =Outlook= 117:520 N 28 ‘17 100w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11 Ja 27 ‘18 580w
=BEITH, JOHN HAY (IAN HAY, pseud.).= Getting together. *50c (6½c) Doubleday; Houghton 940.91 17-6208
In this little book, Captain Beith, who has been lecturing in the United States, attempts to bring Briton and American to an understanding of one another. He answers some of the questions that have been put to him: How about that blockade? What are you opening our mails for? Would you welcome American intervention? etc.
“Appeared in the Outlook, F 7 ‘17.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:345 My ‘17
+ =Cath World= 105:843 S ‘17 180w
+ =Cleveland= p102 S ‘17 50w
“A sincere and fine-spirited effort to explain misunderstandings between the citizens of Britain and the United States.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:45 F 11 ‘17 800w
Reviewed by Joseph Mosher
=Pub W= 91:593 F 17 ‘17 350w
“His brief account of the voluntary help rendered by America to the Allies before she came into the war will surprise many people. ... His manly and sensible little book should do good.”
+ =Spec= 118:678 Je 16 ‘17 140w
“Ian Hay’s little essay in Anglo-American propagandism will not increase his literary reputation. ... There is no need of a presentation of the case of the Allies to intelligent Americans, and this book is not so conceived as to win over old-fashioned Yankees who entertain animosity toward Great Britain. The softness of the language defeats its own purpose.”
– + =Springf’d Republican= p15 Mr 4 ‘17 400w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p203 Ap 26 ‘17 220w
=BEITH, JOHN HAY (IAN HAY, pseud.).= Oppressed English. *50c (6½c) Doubleday 941.5 17-18156
The author of “The first hundred thousand” and “Getting together,” a Scotsman, has some witty and practical things to say on the world attitude toward the “English” as distinct from the “British” people. He writes: “In the war of to-day, for instance, whenever anything particularly unpleasant or unpopular has to be done—such as holding up neutral mails, or establishing a blacklist of neutral firms trading with the enemy—upon whom does the odium fall? Upon ‘England’; never upon France, and only occasionally upon Great Britain. ... On the other hand, ... a victory gained by English boys from Devon or Yorkshire appears as a British victory, pure and simple.” The fourth and fifth chapters make clear some of the answers to: “Why can’t you people settle the Irish question?”—the claims of the Nationalists, the Unionists, and of the Sinn Fein being put side by side for study by outsiders.
“Good-natured, humorous, but very lucid explanation of the Irish question.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:18 O ‘17
+ =Cleveland= p131 D ‘17 70w
“As is apt to be the case with a book of this kind, Mr Hay’s desire to make his humorous periods leads him sometimes to sacrifice the exact truth. He exaggerates the idiosyncrasies of the Englishman to make his satire carry over. Once you have forgiven that, however, you find the little book pleasant reading.”
+ — =Dial= 63:461 N 8 ‘17 190w
“The Irish rebellion was not made in Germany. It was made in England, and not a little part of it was made by just such dunderheads as Captain Beith, with their inaccurate talk of beneficences that were never really conferred and freedom that never existed.” F. H.
— =New Repub= 13:188 D 15 ‘17 1400w
“As a specimen of dry Scotch humor carrying with it a large volume of matter for serious consideration, Mr Hay’s little book is unrivalled in its way, though it is, perhaps, not exactly the ‘sense of humour’ that is likely to appeal to ardent Irish patriots. ... The book contains much matter of considerable interest to Americans, for the author has much more than an ordinary grasp of the psychology of the peoples he deals with in this little volume.” J. W.
+ =N Y Call= p14 Jl 15 ‘17 650w
=Pittsburgh= 22:674 O ‘17 70w
=Pratt= p46 O ‘17 20w
=St Louis= 15:379 O ‘17 10w
“An amusing comment on British characteristics.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p10 O 4 ‘17 300w
=BEITH, JOHN HAY (IAN HAY, pseud.).= “Pip”; a romance of youth. *$1.50 (2c) Houghton 17-9709
A happy story of irresponsible youth. Half the book is taken up with the schoolday adventures of the young hero. Pip is a valiant cricketer and when he leaves school he becomes something of a nation-wide figure. The death of his father sends him into the world to earn his living. He does so for a time as a chauffeur. There is a girl in the story, of course. Pip met her first as a friend of his sister’s, when she was sixteen. She is older and so is he when the book closes, ending with a golf match that decides an important matter for Pip.
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:354 My ‘17
“Up to the outbreak of the war Ian Hay was known in this country as the author of six books, all of them fiction. ... Prior to these, however, he had written another book. Its title is ‘Pip.’ ... Its understanding of childhood, youth and early manhood is keen, its ability to make the most of the zest of delicate comedy is complete.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Mr 17 ‘17 1500w
+ =Lit D= 54:1089 Ap 14 ‘17 200w
“Captain Beith writes with genial humor, and his account of the making of Pip into a man, and a man who is a thorough Englishman, is likely to bring many a smile to the face of his reader. Having been, in the days before the war, a schoolmaster himself he knows much about the life of British schools and the character of the men who conduct them.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:93 Mr 18 ‘17 500w
+ =Outlook= 115:622 Ap 4 ‘17 60w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p17 Ap 22 ‘17 250w
“As a school story it is inferior to ‘David Blaize,’ and the detailed descriptions of cricket contests are beyond the American reader, but it is nevertheless a story of decided interest.”
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 13:126 Ap ‘17 50w
=BELL, ARCHIE.= Trip to Lotus land. il *$2.50 (4c) Lane 915.2 17-30747
The author outlines a six-weeks’ itinerary for the tourist to Japan, and states that his purpose is to convey to the reader something of the joys that such a tour holds for a traveler. He says that the book is not a guide book. “Mr Terry’s ‘Japanese empire’ and the excellent publications of the Imperial Japanese government railways” supply that need, and his pleasant narrative account of his own travels will serve to supplement them. Yokohama, Kamakura, Miyanoshita, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Kobe, Nagasaki and Nikko are among the points visited. There are over fifty illustrations.
Reviewed by A. M. Chase
+ =Bookm= 46:335 N ‘17 40w
“Both instructive and entertaining.”
+ =Lit D= 56:40 Ja 12 ‘18 170w
+ =N Y Times= 22:579 D 30 ‘17 100w
“[Fulfills its purpose] admirably both in text and illustrations.”
+ =Outlook= 117:615 D 12 ‘17 60w
+ =R of Rs= 57:219 F ‘18 50w
=BELL, FREDERICK MCKELVEY.= First Canadians in France; the chronicle of a military hospital in the war zone. il *$1.35 (2½c) Doran 940.91 17-28775
Colonel Bell, attached, as medical director, to the first contingent of Canadian troops overseas, was detailed to found a Canadian hospital near Boulogne. He chronicles the progress of that undertaking among the heterogeneous lot of men whom “the hammer of time,” with many a nasty knock, welded together. The quality that made Colonel Bell the one force that held the boys together is responsible for the grip the book gets on the reader. It is a simple recital of every day routine, without central theme or plot, told in a realistic, colloquial, normal, human fashion with an eye keen to every humorous incident that livened camp monotony.
“The writer confesses to a flavor of romancing in his story, but the reader will not feel like criticising this or seeking too closely the line between fact and imagination.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p9 N 10 ‘17 400w
“Clever characterization, and many amusing anecdotes.”
+ =Cleveland= p130 D ‘17 30w
+ =Ind= 93:128 Ja 19 ‘18 170w
“Certainly, this excellent book should be read. It is so human.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:448 N 4 ‘17 700w
=Outlook= 117:387 N 7 ‘17 30w
=BELL, JOHN JOY.= Kiddies. *$1.50 (2½c) Stokes
A collection of seventeen stories about children by this well known Scottish humorist, author of “Wee Macgreegor.” That young hero appears in several of the stories. Among the titles are: Habakkuk; Little boy; Some advantages of being an aunt; The good fairy; Mr Logie’s heart; An early engagement; Silk stocking and suedes; The ugly uncle.
“The stories are canny and full of dry humor and quaint pathos.”
+ =Ind= 92:604 D 29 ‘17 200w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:63 Ap ‘17 50w
“The humorous tales are, generally speaking, the best, the serious and pathetic ones being somewhat conventional and oversentimental.”
+ — =NY Times= 22:500 N 25 ‘17 240w
+ =Outlook= 117:475 N 21 ‘17 20w
=BELL, JOHN JOY.= Till the clock stops. *$1.35 (2c) Duffield 17-5450
The clock, with its diamond-studded pendulum, stood in a secluded house in Scotland. It was guaranteed to go for a year and a day after the pendulum was set in motion—that being done on the death of its owner Christopher Craig. It was in some way to watch over the green box full of diamonds and the other fortune reserved for Christopher’s nephew, Alan Craig, supposedly lost in the Arctic. Its enemy was Bullard, London member of a South African mining syndicate, who knew of the existence of the diamonds and its guardians were a dense green liquid with which the case was partly filled, placed over the ominous word “Dangerous,” Caw, the faithful servant of the dead man, and Marjorie Handyside, the daughter of a doctor and neighbor. How these and others played their respective parts, and the surprise in store for all when the clock stopped make a thrilling tale. The writer is the author of “Wee MacGreegor.”
=A L A Bkl= 13:401 Je ‘17
“The story is well planned, and full of excitement and suspense up to the last chapter.”
+ =Ath= p101 F ‘17 30w
+ =N Y Times= 22:110 Mr 25 ‘17 250w
=Outlook= 115:668 Ap 11 ‘17 20w
“A melodrama full of alarms and surprises.”
=Spec= 118:241 F 24 ‘17 7w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p17 Ap 8 ‘17 210w
“Mr J. J. Bell may have had the cinematograph in mind in writing ‘Till the clock stops.’ Hidden diamonds form the mainspring of the story, and propel it forward mechanically through its allotted span; and one can imagine the pistol shots, explosions, and so forth which arise out of the search for them being reduced to a series of highly effective pictures.”
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p44 Ja 25 ‘17 200w
=BELL, JOHN KEBLE (KEBLE HOWARD, pseud.).= Gay life. *$1.30 (2c) Lane 17-6536
A happy and wholesome story of theatrical life. The author has written it to counteract some of the sensational ideas that prevail concerning the stage. Jilly Nipchin is an attractive and impudent little Cockney who determines to put her twin gifts, mimicry and an agility in turning handsprings, to use on the stage. Her family is in need, and Jilly chooses this way of helping them. The story follows her progress with a traveling company in the provinces, in the music halls, in a repertory company, and finally takes her to America. The hero, Ed Chauncey, the world’s greatest equilibrist, is as worthy in his way as is Jilly.
+ =Ath= p414 Ag ‘17 90w
“The wholesome story shows a thorough knowledge of the external life of the stage, but not very deep understanding of universal human nature. The author is a theatrical manager and producer, and the editor of the Sketch, a semi-theatrical publication.”
=Cleveland= p63 My ‘17 70w
“The thorough knowledge of the stage and of all things stagey which the author obviously possesses apparently does not include the capacity for understanding the forces that underlie the struggles and the successes of its workers. ‘The gay life’ is superficial, occasionally clever, and of fleeting value.”
— =Dial= 62:247 Mr 22 ‘17 110w
+ =Ind= 90:84 Ap 7 ‘17 100w
“The novel is clever, amusing and graphic in its account of stage life, though developed in a somewhat jerky manner. The theme recalls certain of Leonard Merrick’s delightful tales, and of course this story suffers from the comparison, but it is an entertaining piece of work, with an attractive, very human heroine and several interesting and well-drawn characters.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:69 F 25 ‘17 350w
“The book on the whole is pleasant reading.”
+ =Spec= 119:169 Ag 18 ‘17 30w
“Mr Howard weaves a colorless romance into the narrative, but Jilly’s adventures and high spirits hold the attention without outside aid.”
+ — =Springf’d Republican= p17 D 9 ‘17 220w
“It is a jolly tale, an amusing tale, a good-natured tale. There is general truth in portions of his book, which the tale as a whole lacks.”
+ — =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p334 Jl 12 ‘17 500w
=BELL, JOHN KEBLE (KEBLE HOWARD, pseud.).= Smiths in war time. *$1.40 (2½c) Lane 17-30282
This story, by the author of “The Smiths of Surbiton,” “The Smiths of Valley View,” etc. is written in a lighter vein than most of the novels dealing with England in war-time. It tells us how Mr Smith, aged seventy-three, and his devoted wife, tried to help their country; how they rented their pleasant villa at Surbiton and attempted to live in a cottage; how they decided to dismiss Edith, one of the three maids who kept them so comfortable; how Mr Smith tried to observe a meatless day and fell into temptation; how he tried to drill for home service; and how “young George,” the Smith’s idolized grandson, was “reported missing” but returned in safety by aeroplane to his anxious relatives.
“The book is written with a thoroughly delightful mixture of humor and pathos; if we laugh at Mr Smith, it is very tenderly, and we are all the fonder of him for his whimsies and absurdities, just as his wise, sweet wife was. They are people we are glad to know, quiet, simple, human, ‘ordinary,’ and very lovable people, with something big and fine in them underneath it all.”
+ =N Y Times= 22:475 N 18 ‘17 550w
“A charming story; an epitome of the spirit that is making the sacrifices and upholding the nation’s determination that the sacrifices shall not be in vain.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p15 D 23 ‘17 300w
=BELL, RALPH W.=[2] Canada in war-paint. il *$1.25 Dutton 940.91 17-13337
“‘Canada in war paint’ is a series of sketches, mostly of the humorous type, of the Canadian forces across the water. Its author, Capt. Ralph W. Bell, dedicates its pages to the ‘officers, N. C. O.’s and men of the 1st Canadian infantry battalion, Ontario regiment,’ of which he is a member. He has striven to portray types rather than individuals, or as he himself puts it in the preface to give ‘vignettes of things as they struck me at the time, and later.’”—Springf’d Republican
“Among the brightest and most cheerful of the war stories from the men at the front is this crisp and relishing offering. Only a small portion is devoted to the rough and cruel side.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p8 N 10 ‘17 150w
“Captain Bell writes light-heartedly, and makes the best of the everyday events of life in the war zone, in the somewhat fragmentary jottings which he calls ‘Canada in war paint,’ but there is pathos, too, intermingled with the humor of his book.”
+ =Sat R= 123:556 Je 16 ‘17 310w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 D 28 ‘17 130w
=BELLAMY, FRANCIS R.= Balance. il *$1.35 (1c) Doubleday 17-4706
The author has told the true story of S. Sydney Tappan, playwright, who in the later days of his fame was made the subject of an adulatory biography. To the author, the hero is always Sammy Tappan, never S. Sydney. He was always Sammy to Carrie Schroeder too. When Sammy went to New York to win fame, Carrie remained at home in Melchester, but because she was a modern young woman, requiring a purpose in life, she went into a settlement. In the settlement Carrie came face to face with reality. She learned many things, one of them that men do not throw dynamite for the fun of it. From this background she goes to see Sammy’s first play, his brilliant, shallow and suggestive “Lady in the lion skin.” The shock of this play to her newly awakened social conscience and the hopelessly diverging viewpoint which it discloses leads to the break between her and Sammy. It is not bridged until Sammy, thru suffering and defeat and personal contact with the monster, Poverty, learns to see things as she does and to use his talent for better ends.
“Above and beyond the story itself, it is the fine spirit of humanity pervading the book that makes it notable. It is free from didacticism and sermonizing; it presents no programme, but it is lighted with the flame of a great conviction and charged with human sympathy and emotion.” J. T. Gerould
+ =Bellman= 22:160 F 10 ‘17 600w
“The book is full of charm and as a whole rings true.” H. W. Boynton
+ =Bookm= 45:95 Mr ‘17 550w
“If his first novel is any index of those to come, he is an author who bids fair to make his mark in American fiction.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p8 Ja 24 ‘17 300w
“You will rarely find in the writers of this country such poise, and justifiable assurance, and true sense of proportion. ... The finest thing about this exceptional novel is the masterly way in which the author has evolved his characters through the actions and incidents rendered inevitable by those characters themselves. It is this conviction of truth that remains to exhilarate, long after the story has been finished.” Ruth McIntire
+ =Dial= 62:102 F 8 ‘17 1150w
“The story is logical and true to life.”
+ =Ind= 90:256 My 5 ‘17 190w
+ =Nation= 104:270 Mr 8 ‘17 350w
“Mr Bellamy has, indeed, a decided gift for character drawing, and most of his people are clearly sketched, definitely individualized. ... ‘The balance’ is a first novel, and the plot is not always well handled.”
+ — =N Y Times= 22:24 Ja 21 ‘17 500w
“Mr Bellamy has something serious to say, and at the same time he writes a story which will probably attract a large market.” Joseph Mosher
+ =Pub W= 91:207 Ja 20 ‘17 450w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p15 F 18 ‘17 500w
=BEMAN, LAMAR TANEY=, comp. Selected articles on prohibition of the liquor traffic. (Debaters’ handbook ser.) 2d and rev ed *$1.25 (1c) Wilson, H. W. 178 17-12265
A second edition of the debaters’ handbook on Prohibition containing new material. The first edition was published in 1915, since which time prohibition has made great gains. Among the new reprints are articles for the affirmative by Arthur Capper and William J. Bryan and articles for the negative by John Koren and Rev. J. A. Homan.
=A L A Bkl= 13:456 Jl ‘17
=BENAVENTE Y MARTINEZ, JACINTO.= Plays; tr. from the Spanish, with an introd., by J: Garrett Underhill; authorized ed. *$1.50 Scribner 862 17-14040
“The plays chosen are not the best known. But they are well selected to show the author’s wide range. They are all recent and illustrative of Benavente’s latest manner. The first, ‘His widow’s husband,’ is a farcical depiction of social and political life in a provincial town. ‘The bonds of interest’ is an ingenious, modern adaptation of the old Italian comedy of masks. Crispin, Harlequin, Columbine, and Pantaloon discourse airily on important themes. ... ‘The evil doers of good’ flagellates the busybodies of a small village, who, under the guise of philanthropy, work harm with their meddlesome interference in the affairs of others. ... ‘La malquerida’ is not a thesis-drama like the rest, but a peasant play after the manner of Guimerá.”—Nation
“Well selected to represent the author’s wide range and latest manner.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:119 Ja ‘18
“Mr Underhill does yeoman’s service in the cause of the Spanish stage, showing us how very much we have to learn in America from dramatists already popular in Spain and South America.” T: Walsh
+ =Bookm= 46:607 Ja ‘18 100w
“Mr Underhill’s translation is fluent and generally satisfactory. Occasionally he uses ‘misery’ where ‘poverty’ seems to be the word—a common mistake in translating French and Spanish words. There are a few passages where the sense seems to be somewhat misinterpreted. ... But for the most part one forgets that one is reading a translation.” N. H. D.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Jl 25 ‘17 750w
“Had Mr Underhill presented us with only two of the four plays that are in this volume—with ‘The bonds of interest’ and ‘La malquerida’—we should have been inclined to accept his high estimate of the dramatic power of Jacinto Benavente.” Padraic Colum
— =Dial= 63:393 O 25 ‘17 750w
“His psychology is more brilliant than profound, and the great passions are beyond his power to portray. He is preëminently a satirist. ... But tho his satire is cynically keen, it is never bitter, and never constructive. ... The volume commends itself to a frequent reader of printed plays for one rare virtue. These are absolutely free from the ponderous mass of descriptions, suggestions, interpretations and stage directions which encumber the text of so many modern dramas. Neither characters nor settings are described at all, and no directions are given. One is not even told the heroine’s age. ... His peasants are not real peasants, but members of le grande monde masquerading in poor clothes. The roughnesses and brutalities of life are as foreign to his genius as are the great emotions.”
+ + — =Ind= 91:183 Ag 4 ‘17 460w
“Jacinto Benavente is the central figure among contemporary Spanish dramatists, the continuator of Galdós and Echegaray. Like Galdós, he is interested in social reform, but presents his message with a delicate irony of which that ponderous declaimer is incapable. And if he is less of a stage technician, in the narrow sense, than Echegaray, he interests by his very departure from theatrical convention. In his lightness of touch he is akin rather to Bretón de los Herreros than to either of his more immediate predecessors. His range is surprisingly great. He has attempted nearly every kind of play with scarcely a failure to mark his course. ... He is chiefly known as the satirist of modern social conditions in Spain. ... It is exceptionally difficult to render into English an author so subtle as Benavente, one whose effects depend so much upon lightness. Imagine Shaw in German! But Mr Underhill has been more than successful. One detects no trace of foreign idiom in his English. His biography of Benavente and critical estimate of that writer’s work is the best yet attempted in English.”
* + + =Nation= 105:264 S 6 ‘17 600w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:108 Jl ‘17
+ =N Y Times= 22:325 S 2 ‘17 260w
“Benavente is a prolific and versatile writer and it would be impossible fully to represent his accomplishment with four plays, but those selected for this volume are sufficiently varied in theme and treatment to suggest the inclusiveness of his talent.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 D 3 ‘17 380w
=BENECKE, ELSE C. M., and BUSCH, MARIE=, trs. More tales by Polish authors. *$1.50 Longmans A17-369
The first volume of “Tales by Polish authors” appeared last year. “Two of the names that appeared in the first volume are to be found in the second also—Adam Szymanski and Waclaw Sieroszewski; and Szymanski’s two newly translated tales and Sieroszewski’s one take us again to Siberia. In Szymanski’s ‘Maciej the Mazur’ and ‘Two prayers,’ the engrossing topic is the home-sickness of the Poles in Siberia. Perhaps the ache of home-sickness has never been so ruthlessly forced home as it is in ‘Two prayers.’ ... The other stories are taken from authors not included in the first volume. The longest and the most striking is ‘The returning wave,’ by Boleslaw Prus, whose real name seems to be Alexsander Glowacki.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup)
=Cath World= 105:553 Jl ‘17 130w
“The short stories in ‘More tales by Polish authors’ grip from the first to the last page by their earnestness and the power of their different authors to portray characters quite out of the ordinary. The style is exceptionally free from the abruptness so common in Slavic translations.”
+ =Ind= 90:298 My 12 ‘17 60w
“Unfortunately, half of the first volume is taken up by a tale of Sienkiewicz, ‘Bartek the Conqueror,’ which was already accessible. Chief in merit among the pieces here rendered for the first time are, perhaps, the three Siberian sketches by Szymanski. The English of the translators is excellent, with only the very smallest traces of foreign idiom.”
+ =Nation= 105:93 Jl 26 ‘17 650w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p560 N 23 ‘16 1100w
=BENÉT, WILLIAM ROSE.= Great white wall. il *$1 Yale univ. press 811 16-24833
“Timur, the Tartar, has long been a favorite subject for literary treatment. Marlowe wrote one of his best plays about this great, barbaric nomad, and later Rowe made him a dramatic hero. In ‘The great white wall’ William Rose Benét seizes upon this ancient and cruel autocrat for the central figure of a singularly thoughtful narrative poem. It is the story of Timur’s attack on the great wall of China, and the story is mostly a series of pageants.”—Springf’d Republican
“In Mr Benét’s inimitable rhythmic flare.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ =Bookm= 45:435 Je ‘17 30w
“Elements of fantasy are happily combined with the epic story.”
+ =Ind= 89:235 F 5 ‘17 50w
“Benét, equally with Vachel Lindsay, is restoring the chant to its proper place in modern poetry; his work is always interesting and frequently completely successful.” Clement Wood
+ =N Y Call= p14 Ap 29 ‘17 170w
+ =St Louis= 15:183 Je ‘17 20w
“There is a wealth of descriptive verse here, as well as insight into moral truths.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Ap 24 ‘17 250w
“The poet’s metrical gifts have the fullest play here, and the verse must be heard to be fully appreciated. Mr Benét’s powers of description were never better used than in this tale of far-off things and battles long ago. The book is original in its workmanship, full of vivid description, and interesting in the life and animation that pervades it. It is Mr Benét at his best.” E: B. Reed
+ =Yale R= n s 6:862 Jl ‘17 120w
=BENNETT, ARNOLD.= Books and persons; being comments on a past epoch, 1908-1911. *$2 (4c) Doran 824 17-21768
“The contents of this book have been chosen [by Hugh Walpole] from a series of weekly articles which enlivened the New Age during the years 1908-1911, under the pseudonym ‘Jacob Tonson.’ ... Mr Frank Swinnerton approved the selection and added to it slightly. In my turn I suggested a few more additions. The total amounts to one-third of the original matter. ... I have left the critical judgments alone, for the good reason that I stand by nearly all of them, though perhaps with a less challenging vivacity, to this day.” (Prefatory note) Some of the authors included are: Wordsworth, Joseph Conrad, W. W. Jacobs, Anatole France, Swinburne, Tchehkoff, Trollope, Brieux, Henry James, and Mrs Elinor Glyn. There are also essays on such topics as “French publishers,” “The book-buyer,” “Middleclass,” “Censorship by the libraries,” etc.
“Librarians will be interested in the papers on censorship by the libraries.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 14:85 D ‘17
“The strife about the six-shilling and the sevenpenny novel, the attempts to censor certain novelists, and the stupid animosities of the middle class, are considered from the point of view of a wholehearted disciple of the great French realists.”
+ =Ath= p467 S ‘17 220w
“With entertainment as his special aim, and sportiveness as his deliberate manner, Mr Bennett rambles hither and thither among the books and writers of the three-year period during which he posed as Jacob Tonson.” E. F. E.
— =Boston Transcript= p7 O 10 ‘17 600w
“I think the book is chiefly interesting as a record of the casual judgements—casual in form only—of a tremendous expert on his fellow-craftsmen.” G: B. Donlin
+ =Dial= 63:523 N 22 ‘17 1500w
“The volume is always readable, it is often ‘intime,’ and it is nearly always baffling. ... His judgments seem often to issue from a mind that is constitutionally fussy rather than judicial.”
+ — =Nation= 105:671 D 13 ‘17 300w
“Mr Bennett knows what he is talking about in respect of Dostoievsky, as in respect of Conrad, Henri Becque, François de Curel, Tchekoff, Wilfred Whitten. But here as elsewhere he is dealing in stimulant, not criticism. He is imposing his will. ... Only when he is writing of H. G. Wells is he sufficiently moved by his subject to lose the coolness of a shrewd and judicious informant and become a passionate critic. ... In regard to W. W. Jacobs and Rudyard Kipling and Conrad and Henry James and Meredith there are exceedingly pertinent discriminations, but absorbed or inspired interpretation in no case outside Mr Wells.” F. H.
+ — =New Repub= 12:332 O 20 ‘17 1150w
=N Y Br Lib News= 4:181 D ‘17 190w
“In the main neither sufficiently important in theme nor sufficiently careful in treatment to be worthy of permanent publication in book form.”
– + =Outlook= 117:575 D 5 ‘17 30w
“When Mr Arnold Bennett appears as a critic of men and books many of his judgments strike us as irrational, or partial, sometimes to the point of absurdity. His infatuation about Mr H. G. Wells may be the fruit of friendship, but it is not justifiable on literary grounds, not even on the grounds advanced by Mr Bennett. ... Surely Mr Bennett is paradoxical when he praises Mr Henry James for clarity.”
— — + =Sat R= 124:49 Jl 21 ‘17 1350w
“Of mid-Victorian novelists he has a poor opinion. ‘There is not one of them that would not be tremendously improved by being cut down to about one-half’; moreover, ‘they are incurably ugly and sentimental.’ Some of us will wonder to find the author of ‘The old wives’ tale’ casting this reproach in particular at Thackeray and Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Mrs Gaskell; but it is only Mr Bennett’s humor.”
=Spec= 119:301 S 22 ‘17 130w
“This book of literary causeries is a collection of articles published in 1908-1911 in a socialist journal of somewhat exasperating and provocative type called the New Age. They are mostly skits. They are not literary criticisms, though they often reflect literary opinions—rather opinionated opinions, it may be said. ... They have no importance and for American readers no interest at all. ... The one thing that gives flavor outlasting the ephemerality of the subject is Mr Bennett’s pointed journalistic style and pungent choice of epithet. Those who are engaged in the author’s trade and are familiar with the journalists and critics of London may, therefore, read these records of a ‘past age’ with some interest. But of sound instruction or authentic inspiration they have little. To a limited extent they are diverting.”
– + =Springf’d Republican= p19 O 14 ‘17 1300w
“Mr Arnold Bennett is one of the few who can catch their sayings before they are cold and enclose them all alive in very readable prose. That is why these aged reviews (some are nearly ten years old) are as vivacious and as much to the point as they were on the day of their birth. They have another claim upon our interest. They deal for the most part with writers who are still living. We do not think this is a book of first rate criticism; but it is the book of an artist.”
+ — =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p319 Jl 5 ‘17 1150w
=BENNETT, HELEN MARIE.= Women and work; the economic value of college training. *$1.50 (2c) Appleton 174 17-11904
A study of the place of the college-trained woman in the modern world. In the past half century the type of girl entering college has changed; rather, many types now enter where once there was but one. The standards demanded of women have also changed, and, to some extent, college curricula have been modified to meet the new demands. All these matters are taken into account by the author, who, as manager of the Chicago Collegiate bureau of occupations, writes from the vocational expert’s point of view. She writes of: The inflorescence of the new education; College training and working efficiency; The problem of the college girl; The problem of the vocational adviser; The psychology of the girl as related to her occupation; The physiology of the girl as related to her occupation; The girl with the dramatic temperament; The philosophic temperament; The scientific temperament; The interdependence of occupations; The college girl—her own employer; The college girl and women.
“There is a specially good chapter on the problem of the vocational adviser.”
+ =A L A Bkl= 13:426 Jl ‘17
“A suggestive book for women in and out of college, and for the college faculty as well.” Edna Kenton
+ =Bookm= 46:345 N ‘17 280w
“Packed with common sense.”
+ =Ind= 91:136 Jl 28 ‘17 50w
“She has made a mistake in adopting a more pretentious title for her work than the results of her efforts warrant. The book falls far short of being an adequate discussion of ‘Women and work.’”
+ — =J Pol Econ= 25:856 O ‘17 200w
“Those parts of the book which deal with the specific problem of finding jobs are interesting and valuable, but when the author attempts to characterize human traits or to give the results of psychology and philosophy she shows a plentiful lack of knowledge. ... The reader of the book is likely to be exasperated by the inexcusable irregularity of the style.”
+ — =Nation= 104:739 Je 21 ‘17 400w
=Pittsburgh= 22:532 Je ‘17 70w
=Pratt= p16 O ‘17 20w
“With its sociology Miss Bennett’s book has combined some helpful information for the college graduate who is intelligently trying to choose work to fit her abilities.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 Jl 10 ‘17 480w
“Written in entertaining style, and useful not only to the girls themselves but to any one helping to educate or ‘place’ them.”
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 13:153 My ‘17 80w
=BENNETT, HENRY EASTMAN.= School efficiency; a manual of modern school management. il $1.25 (1c) Ginn 371 17-21650
The author is professor of education in the College of William and Mary, Virginia. He has had in mind, in writing this book, the average community school of medium size, and the teacher of average ability. “It is the only book that has come from the press in recent times which presents in non-technical language a discussion, both of the specific problems of instruction and of the broad questions of administration and supervision. The book is really a treatise on the principles and practice of education.” (El School J) The book includes a consideration of the school plant and two chapters deal with “Community coöperation” and “School extension.” “Problems” and “Readings” are appended to the various chapters.
“While the style of the book is distinctly non-technical the author presents the content of the most recent scientific investigations in the various fields of education.”
+ =El School J= 18:72 S ‘17 450w
=BENNETT, ROBERT JOSEPH.= Corporation accounting. (Ronald accounting ser.) il $3 Ronald 657 16-25224
“This is much more than a book on corporation accounting; it is more properly a treatise on organization from the legal, industrial, financial and accounting standpoints. It appears in seven parts: Part 1 describes the process of organizing a corporation, discusses the different classes of capital stock and shows the purpose of the various corporate meetings; Part 2 takes up the special books and records required by corporations, and analyzes the distinctive corporate accounts relating to capital stock, bonds, surplus, dividends and reserves; Part 3 is devoted to special descriptions and accounting entries relating to stocks, dividends and processes of incorporation; Part 4 treats bond issues, including a description of the different classes of bonds, their security, methods of issue, amortization of discounts and premiums, sinking funds and redemption;