Book Review Digest Devoted to the Valuation of Current Literature Reviews of 1917 Books (continued 8)
Reading edition
“During the bitter years 1758-1760 Catt kept a very brief diary of all the conversations and journeys with the king. Many years later he artistically amplified the diary into ‘Memoirs.’ ... The former, not here translated, consists of disconnected jottings and is wholly without literary form. It is of much value, however, to the meticulous biographer of Frederick, because of its unvarnished accuracy. The ‘Memoirs,’ on the other hand, put together in pleasing narrative form, have doubtless much greater interest for the general reader, but are not quite so trustworthy. Admitting, however, that there is a mixture of ‘dichtung und wahrheit’ in the ‘Memoirs,’ they nevertheless give a generally veracious, favorable, and intensely human picture of a really great man.” S. B. Fay
+ — Am Hist R 23:146 O ‘17 700w
“The book is of great interest, and has appeared opportunely.”
+ Ath p50 Ja ‘17 230w
“A document of great human interest, a faithful portrait of a monarch working at concert pitch with an intensity and application truly marvelous, Catt’s memoir is of even greater value as the chronicle of the sowing of a seed which only now has reached its sinister harvest. ... The translator has done a difficult work well. The original ‘abounds in solecisms and faults of style’; the translation has both character and lucidity. The work will join that company of distinguished biographies which is as exclusive as the host of ordinary biographies is numerous.” R. W.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ap 21 ‘17 1050w
Lit D 54:1855 Je 16 ‘17 1000w
“Carlyle, in writing his life of Frederick, would have been only too delighted with these memoirs, had he been acquainted with them. They would have formed a welcome oasis in the desert of Dryasdusts against whom he loved to fulminate.”
+ Nation 105:295 S 13 ‘17 600w
“Mr Flint has given us a text in good idiomatic English. ... One of the most interesting features in the ‘Memoirs’ is the light they throw on the relations of Frederick and Voltaire.”
+ N Y Times 22:145 Ap 15 ‘17 1100w
+ Outlook 115:758 Ap 25 ‘17 200w
R of Rs 55:666 Je ‘17 70w
“This is a capital book, and an agreeable surprise. ... Catt is the soul of sincerity and straightforwardness; but Catt soon perceives that a little of the truth goes a long way, and it is amusing to see him reflecting how far he can venture to go in the criticism of bad verses and other of Frederick’s indiscretions.”
+ Sat R 123:16 Ja 5 ‘17 1500w
“As Lord Rosebery says in his introduction, this is a very human book. Frederick the Great, Prussia’s only really able king, has been eulogized and criticized in hundreds of volumes, but we have never read anything giving so simple and homely a picture of him as that drawn by his admiring Swiss reader.”
+ Spec 118:237 F 24 ‘17 2250w
“The ‘Memoirs,’ which are now for the first time translated from the original French, present a very remarkable picture of one side of the great king. They extend over two years only, but those two years include the crisis of the Seven years war. ... The translation, which is admirably done, is introduced by Lord Rosebery in a preface which brings out the full difficulty of the enigma which the character of Frederick presents.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p1 Ja 4 ‘17 180w
“Catt’s memoirs approach Boswell’s ‘Johnson’ and Busch’s ‘Bismarck’ in their intimate revelations, and, for those who read only English, furnish an excellent supplement to Carlyle’s fervid and memorable epic.” A. L. Cross
+ Yale R n s 7:221 O ‘17 1450w
CAULDWELL, SAMUEL MILBANK. Chocolate cake and black sand, and two other plays. il *$1.50 Putnam 812 17-16753
The three plays in this book were written by the author for the entertainment of his own children and the amusement of his friends. The author’s preface says “These plays are distinctly a domestic product intended for home consumption. The family hearthstone finds its place in the foreground of the stage setting. The living-room is transformed into the orchestra and the hall staircase answers all the purposes of the gallery. Little if any stage scenery is required, except such as can be found in the cellar or garret of any well-regulated family.” Mrs Cauldwell, who has edited the plays for publication after her husband’s death, says that they are offered to all who are interested in amateur performances in the home. The title play and the one following, “The undoing of Giant Hotstoff,” are dream plays. The third, “The invention of the rat trap,” is a “romantic historical drama.”
“Very whimsical and gay.”
+ Ind 91:135 Jl 28 ‘17 50w
“They are stronger dramatically than most plays for young actors.”
+ Springf’d Republican p6 D 20 ‘17 70w
CHAMBERS, ROBERT WILLIAM. Barbarians. il $1.40 Appleton 17-28656
“The story is a group of episodes, each narrating the fate of one of eight men who sail for Europe together on a mule-laden steamer ‘in quest of something they could not find in America—something that lay somewhere amid flaming obscurity in that hell of murder beyond the Somme—their soul’s salvation, perhaps.’ They are ‘fed up’ with America’s holding aloof from participation in the struggle. Several of the men take service in the French army and Mr Chambers follows each to his dramatic end. ... Mr Chambers displays bitterness and abhorrence of Germany’s military conduct and employs strong terms in characterizing it.”—Springf’d Republican
“Tales that, if not inspired, are honestly felt and written, and not merely manufactured for an audience or an effect.”
+ Nation 105:695 D 20 ‘17 270w
“Mr Chambers expresses much contempt and disapproval of the government of the United States because it did not enter the war at the beginning. Whatever may have been one’s personal opinion upon this matter in former months, such piled-up objurgations in the pages of fiction at this time are in offensively bad taste, to say the least.”
– + N Y Times 22:434 O 28 ‘17 600w
Outlook 117:432 N 14 ‘17 40w
“Too bad that the author could not resist the temptation to play up the usual suggestive moments! As a matter of fact, however, they do not particularly detract from a work of great vividness.” E. P. Wyckoff
+ — Pub W 92:2030 D 8 ‘17 370w
“The episodes are adroitly conceived and related with grim vividness and feeling.”
+ — Springf’d Republican p17 N 4 ‘17 200w
CHAMBERS, ROBERT WILLIAM. Dark star. il *$1.50 (1c) Appleton 17-13501
A Russian princess, a German prima-donna and the young daughter of an American missionary are characters in this war-time romance. As a child in Turkey, Rue Carew had played with the wonder box that had been the property of Herr Conrad Wilner. It held, along with the figure of a Chinese god and other treasures, a series of maps and plans. Years after when she is studying art in Paris, under the protection of her friend, the Russian princess, 94Rue learns how important these old sketches are. A cable despatch to her childhood friend, Jim Neeland, in America, sends him up to her old home in the Catskills to find the box, which he is instructed to bring at once to Paris. But someone is there before him; the German singer also knows of these plans of the fortifications of the Dardanelles. This is only the beginning of the series of adventures in which he becomes involved and from which, being an American with a touch of Irish blood, he comes out victorious.
“Sensational, but almost without any cloying sentimentality. Appeared in the Cosmopolitan.”
A L A Bkl 13:448 Jl ‘17
“Not since Robert Chambers’s early novels has he given us so absorbing a story of adventure as that which he has woven about ‘The dark star.’ In it he gains back the power which made him a magician in the realm of adventure stories, but which has so often been lost sight of in his later novels.” D. L. M.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Je 6 ‘17 1000w
“A lava-spouting, rambunctious, movie-play kind of an entertainment. ... But Mr Chambers never forgets the marshmallows, and the dainty makes its appearance, as luscious as ever, at the proper time.”
+ N Y Times 22:194 My 20 ‘17 670w
“This is not only a very stirring tale, but is the best-written novel Mr Chambers has produced since the outbreak of the war.”
Springf’d Republican p19 My 27 ‘17 270w
CHAMPION, JESSIE. Jimmy’s wife. *$1.25 (2c) Lane 17-2485
When they separated, Jimmy’s wife had exacted from him a promise. He was never to recognize her should they meet in public. This much of his story Jimmy tells to Rev. and Mrs Horace Venn when he comes to live in their parish, and Mrs Venn, who tells the story, begins immediately to take an interest in Jimmy’s wife. She has reason to believe that one of two women is the lady in question. But which? Circumstances point sometimes to one, sometimes to the other. At the end the war breaks in on the events of the story, as it does in so many English novels of the day. It helps to solve the problem of Jimmy and his wife without in any way curbing the sprightliness of the narrative.
“There are clever touches, evidently from close observation of real life. The author is smart, but not truthful, in the scenes wherein she presents the daily conversation in the rector’s family life. ... The principal blemish of the book is the writer’s evident satisfaction in her own mental dash and alertness.”
Boston Transcript p6 F 24 ‘17 280w
Dial 62:148 F 22 ‘17 110w
“The dominant situation resembles that of Mr Hay’s very clever tale of ‘The man who forgot.’ The conversations are the strong point of the novel.”
N Y Times 22:155 Ap 15 ‘17 300w
CHAMPNEY, ELIZABETH (WILLIAMS) (MRS JAMES WELLS CHAMPNEY), and CHAMPNEY, FRÈRE. Romance of old Japan. il *$3.50 Putnam 398.2 17-30304
Colorful, atmospheric, this volume which is uniform with “Romance of old Belgium” traces the legends of the flowery isles—“traces the floating bubbles of romance which reveal the deeper tide of history.” There are the legends of the age of mythology, of mediæval days and of later times, legends in prose and verse with illustrations that bear out the spirit of the tales. The most tangible chapter of the book is the closing one, “Notable examples of Japanese architecture,” contributed by Frère Champney who is an acknowledged authority on the subject.
+ Lit D 55:38 D 8 ‘17 90w
“It is not a scholarly work in any sense. The authors are careless of or indifferent to sources, and they handle their material with a romantic disregard for anything save its lurking charm. To this uncritical attitude is attached the further fault of a too unselective catholicity.”
– + N Y Times 23:10 Ja 13 ‘18 180w
“Both in text and illustration this volume well carries out its authors’ aim.”
+ Outlook 117:576 D 5 ‘17 30w
“Lastly come the more modern romances suggestive of ‘Madame Butterfly.’ These tales lose something of the romantic reality and flavor of their precursors ... partly because the materialistic present seems to render ridiculous the sweetly appropriate actions of a halo-ed past when life was poetry, before a sense of humor had been born.” Ruth Stanley-Brown
+ — Pub W 92:2029 D 8 ‘17 620w
+ Spec 119:683 D 8 ‘17 40w
“The volume is a pleasant doorway into the literature of old Japan.”
+ Springf’d Republican p17 D 9 ‘17 230w
“It is a pleasantly got up book, well illustrated, and by no means as lengthy as the number of its pages might imply.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p587 N 29 ‘17 70w
CHAN, SHIU WONG. Chinese cook book. il *$1.50 Stokes 641.5 17-25804
More than one hundred tested recipes of palatable Chinese dishes, explicit enough for every housewife and practicable for the restauranteur. Aside from the novelty of the dishes, the recipes are to be recommended for the success they achieve in furnishing a desirable mixed diet. One feature that recommends itself to housewives who are practicing Hoover restraint and economy is the substitution of peanut oil for butter.
“The directions are so explicit that a woman with little experience can follow them.”
+ Ind 92:343 N 17 ‘17 300w
CHANNING, EDWARD. History of the United States. 8v v 4 *$2.75 Macmillan 973 (5-11649)
v 4 “This history deals with the period from 1789-1815, when Federalists and Republicans were the dominant political parties. Earlier volumes deal with the planting of a nation in the new world (1000-1660), a century of colonial history (1660-1760), and the American revolution (1761-1789). Eventually there will be eight volumes. ... The work represents an effort to search out the truth of statements of earlier writers, to analyze anew original material and to turn fresh light upon a period that is little understood by the average American and even among specialists is a subject of dispute and much disagreement. The notes and bibliography are especially valuable.”—Springf’d Republican
“The discriminating reader will note the success with which Professor Channing solves his problem of writing a new book which is not merely a re-statement of what he wrote in the twelfth volume of the ‘American nation.’ It does not seem extravagant to say that for the period with which this volume deals Professor Channing must be regarded as having set a new light in the historical heavens in the United States which none of his successors will ignore. The most important general feature of the volume is that the author irons out the New England crimps that have long been noted in the history of this period. ... By a fresh examination of documents, with his mind divested of the ideas that he got from the older books, he composes his own narrative in which appears no sectional bias of either conscious or unconscious origin.” J: S. Bassett
* + Am Hist R 23:189 O ‘17 1600w
95“Special mention should be made of those chapters which deal with the organization of the new federal government, the rise of political parties, and the downfall of federalism.”
+ Am Pol Sci R 11:793 N ‘17 60w
+ Ath p530 O ‘17 60w
“Professor Channing’s work is a little difficult to appraise justly. It is substantial, informing, and useful; one could not well afford to leave it off one’s shelves. Yet there is little, if anything, new in it. Perhaps this is as it should be in such a work. Nor are there new interpretations or evidences of very keen insight. ... Still if this work fails to show, as one might wish, the evolution of society in America, the meaning of events, and the influences of ideas, it is a useful reference work, an ever-ready friend in time of need, which all who are interested in American history should hasten to buy.” W: E. Dodd
* + Dial 63:60 Jl 19 ‘17 2100w
“Valuable as Professor Channing’s work is, and indispensable as it is bound to become to the student of the history of the United States, we still think that the historian who performs his function rightly must deal not only with facts, but also with ideas, institutions, and the operation of historical and social forces, and must include the interpretation of evidence among his necessary attributes.”
* + – Nation 105:692 D 20 ‘17 1850w
“The reader will be mistaken if he comes to the conclusion that he might as well turn back to his Hildreth and Schouler. Not so. Professor Channing does not write with the scissors and paste pot. He turns every topic over and views it in the light of the last results of historical research. ... There are many such judgments in Mr Channing’s pages, judgments that betray penetration and that long thoughtfulness which mark the true scholar off from the cheap critic and cheaper chauvinist. They betray also a mind of great natural powers, which, had it been devoted to a different type of historical construction, could have contributed still more to our understanding of the early phases of American politics.” C: A. Beard
+ New Repub 11:282 Jl 7 ‘17 1250w
+ R of Rs 56:215 Ag ‘17 110w
“Of all the American historians with whom we are acquainted, he is the most supremely dispassionate and impartial.”
+ Spec 120:16 Ja 5 ‘18 1800w
“The work is not easy reading, but it is not designed for popularity. Rather does it meet the needs of the student who would go into the complex currents of that day in search of a better understanding of the beginnings of this government.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 Je 29 ‘17 450w
CHAPIN, ANNA ALICE. Greenwich village. il *$2.50 (3½c) Dodd 974.71 17-30045
In spite of “our great streets, hemmed by stone and marble and glittering plate glass, crowded with kaleidoscopic cosmopolitan traffic, ceaselessly resonant with twentieth century activity,” Father Knickerbocker still “has a sanctuary, a haven after his own heart, where he can still draw a breath of relief, among buildings small but full of age and dignity and with the look of homes about them; on restful, crooked little streets where there remain trees and grassplots; in the old-time purlieus of Washington square and Greenwich village!” Browsing among Manhattan’s oldest records the writer has gleaned history, tradition and romance from the records that hold immortal the quaintest section of New York. She has also caught in her pages the magic of the village that holds Bohemia under its spell today. It is a very personal and careful handling of the personal soul of the village that has engaged the author of “Wonder tales from Wagner.”
A L A Bkl 14:126 Ja ‘18
“Miss Chapin has diligently assembled all the points of interest in this holiday volume, to which Allan Gilbert Cram contributes sixteen full-page illustrations. They have produced a charming memorial of one of the most interesting spots in America.”
+ Lit D 55:38 D 8 ‘17 120w
Nation 105:612 N 29 ‘17 90w
“An interesting and attractive book. The author has studied her subject with care and in detail, and the artist has made charming drawings of the Washington arch and Milligan place, of Jefferson market and old St John’s. The book is pleasing, too, in its binding and general makeup.”
+ N Y Times 22:493 N 25 ‘17 780w
CHAPIN, CHARLES VALUE. How to avoid infection. (Harvard health talks) *50c Harvard univ. press 614.4 17-7060
“The present essay is one of a series of lectures sent out from the Harvard medical school on subjects of general medical interest. In this booklet [of 88 pages] Dr Charles V. Chapin tells us ‘How to avoid infection’ in terms that all can understand and in ways that all can follow. A discussion of bacteria and bacterial diseases is followed by a clear and concise statement of the more simple means at our disposal of safeguarding our health from the more prevalent troubles, especially those connected with the public drinking cup and public towel.”—Springf’d Republican
A L A Bkl 13:381 Je ‘17
Pratt p20 O ‘17 10w
+ Springf’d Republican p15 Ag 19 ‘17 100w
“Not often is the needed authoritative information made available in a form so compact and so interesting as that of Dr Chapin’s little pocket volume. It illustrates the changed emphasis from cure to prevention.” G. S.
+ Survey 39:171 N 17 ‘17 150w
“Admirably practical and concise statement of the modes of infection and how a person or community may avoid them. By the author of ‘Sources and modes of infection.’”
+ Wis Lib Bul 13:216 Jl ‘17 30w
CHAPIN, FRANCIS STUART. Historical introduction to social economy. il *$2 (3c) Century 330.9 17-25499
A study, in the light of present progress, of contrasting types of industrial organizations at different historical periods, and of public and private efforts made to relieve the poverty of each period. Elementary in treatment, the volume meets the need of a textbook for an introductory study in the history of social economy. Problems of early Greek and Roman civilization are reviewed; likewise, the industrial development at the end of the middle ages and the great social revolutions of modern times. The transition from remedial to constructive charity and preventive philanthropy is the theme for the closing chapters.
Reviewed by S. A. Queen
+ — Am J Soc 23:549 Ja ‘18 220w
“As far as it goes Professor Chapin’s ‘Social economy,’ is a stimulating and valuable book.”
+ — Boston Transcript p6 D 29 ‘17 420w
“The work is important in its analysis of the recurrent agrarian problems, particularly land distribution, of the productive systems of slavery and free labor, and of the historical changes in industrial organization.”
+ Springf’d Republican p6 Ja 24 ‘18 500w
“It is rather a wide subject for 300 pages, and it is necessarily a little sketchy. As a general introduction to a great subject the book is sound and valuable.” I. C. Hannah
+ — Survey 39:150 N 10 ‘17 140w
CHAPIN, HENRY DWIGHT. Health first; the fine art of living. *$1.50 (3½c) Century 614 17-23809
An essentially common-sense book by a New York physician of long experience and high standing. He says: “In order to understand and properly manage any period, we must know the conditions that precede and are liable to follow it, so that we may make the necessary changes in our conduct of life. ... It is believed 96that in this way life can be prolonged and made more efficient.” (Preface) Dr Chapin therefore discusses, in a series of chapters, rational procedure from infancy to old age and also considers health from the outlook of nutrition, the avoidance of infection, climatic, local and moral influences. A practical book for the use of the individual reader in home or work. The publishers call it a “first aid to the well.”
Cleveland p124 N ‘17 20w
“The book is written in an agreeable, terse, and altogether readable style. It is a volume to be welcomed, to be read and returned to with lasting profit. The author is a recognized authority, of course, on his subject, and he presents it in important detail and interesting form.”
+ N Y Times 22:344 S 16 ‘17 980w
“The few pages devoted to infancy contain more useful information than many a volume written on the subject. The description of adolescence is necessarily incomplete. On the other hand, the chapters on nutrition and infection contain the gist of the subject. ... There probably is no other book that covers the subject so well in so few pages.” Medicus
+ N Y Call p15 S 30 ‘17 200w
+ Sat R 123:412 My 5 ‘17 180w
“A reading of the book should stimulate healthful thinking and should lead to the exercise of healthful precautions in daily life. For the application of individual details, however, it were wiser to consult a well-trained physician.” L. A. Jones
+ — Survey 39:472 Ja 26 ‘18 250w
CHAPLIN, ALETHEA. Treasury of fairy tales. il *50c (1½c) Crowell
Six old fairy tales retold with sympathy and charm, with the necessary expurgation and change to warrant their having a safe bed-time effect. The stories are: Babes in the wood; Puss in boots; Hop o’ my Thumb; Jack and the bean stalk; Red Riding Hood; Cinderella.
CHAPMAN, ARTHUR. Out where the West begins, and other western verses. *$1.25 Houghton 811 17-7485
The title poem appeared first in a Denver newspaper and it has been copied and re-copied many times. The other poems of the book have a western flavor, too, as some of the titles will show: Cow-puncher philosophy; The sheriff’s report; The diamond hitch; The white man’s road; The herder’s reverie; Little papoose; The old-timer; Out among the big things; The pony express; The homesteader; The mother lode.
A L A Bkl 14:120 Ja ‘18
“Mr Chapman phrases the old facile philosophy of ‘God’s out-of-doors’ in a manner not very novel or very attractive in itself. The title poem is merely an inept and sentimental phrasing of the braggadocio of the far West.” Odell Shepard
— Dial 63:20 Je 28 ‘17 110w
“Mr Arthur Chapman is one of the most popular of American poets, and he counts among his readers many who are not to be classified as poetry-lovers. Yet what he writes is poetry, imaginative and beautiful, but so filled with human sympathy that it appeals even to those who ordinarily are deaf to rime and rhythm.”
+ Lit D 54:1072 Ap 14 ‘17 370w
N Y Br Lib News 4:61 Ap ‘17
“Some are in cowboy language and nearly all are serious in tone.”
Wis Lib Bul 13:155 My ‘17 40w
CHAPMAN, CHARLES FREDERIC. Practical motor boat handling, seamanship and piloting, il *$1 Motor boating, 119 W. 40th st., N.Y. 797 17-12272
“Twenty-one timely and concise chapters by the editor of Motor Boating upon the subjects of navigation, regulations, lights, buoys, equipment, compasses and charts, piloting, helpful publications, instruments, flags, signals, yachting etiquette, steering, and meals.” (N Y P L New Tech Bks) “Especially prepared for the man who takes pride in handling his own boat and getting the greatest enjoyment out of cruising; adapted for the yachtsman interested in fitting himself to be of service to his government in time of war.” (Sub-title)
A L A Bkl 13:432 Jl ‘17
Cleveland p110 S ‘17
N Y P L New Tech Bks p10 Ap ‘17 30w
Pittsburgh 22:662 O ‘17 40w
Pratt p23 O ‘17 30w
+ Quar List New Tech Bks O ‘17 30w
CHAPMAN, JAMES CROSBY, and RUSH, GRACE PREYER. Scientific measurement of classroom products. il $1.25 Silver 371.3 17-9714
A book which “describes quite clearly—in fact, often as to a child or a moron—the several scales that have been devised for the measurement of ability in arithmetic, handwriting, reading, spelling, English composition, completion of sentences, and drawing. The authors regard the application of scientific measurement to school products as ‘the greatest contribution which has been made to education in the last ten years’; but they do not minimize the difficulties to be met with in the application of the various methods devised, and counsel caution to the over-enthusiastic convert.” (Nation) There is a three-page bibliography.
+ Cleveland p123 N ‘17 80w
“The writer of a text on educational measurement takes upon himself the responsibility of (1) selecting the best representative scales and standard tests to put before teachers, (2) evaluating these carefully, (3) presenting them in non-technical language, (4) showing how they can be and are being used to set standards of attainment and to improve teaching in a very definite way, and (5) supplying the teacher with a completely organized and well-annotated bibliography of tests and scales that are now available. ‘The scientific measurement of classroom products’ is deficient on nearly every one of these counts. ... Because of all these deficiencies, we do not commend this publication as a representative discussion in the field of educational measurement.”
* – – El School J 17:765 Je ‘17 1150w
Nation 105:259 S 6 ‘17 360w
CHAPMAN, VICTOR EMMANUEL. Victor Chapman’s letters from France. il *$1.25 Macmillan 940.91 17-14800
Victor Chapman was a young American who was killed at Verdun in June, 1916. He was in Paris studying architecture in the summer of 1914, and he enlisted at once in the Foreign legion, and became a member of the Franco-American flying corps. This book consists largely, as its title states, of his letters written from France, but there is also a memoir, written by his father John Jay Chapman, together with other tributes.
“Remarkable letters, spontaneous and without self-consciousness.”
+ A L A Bkl 14:18 O ‘17
“His letters, more than all the short sketch which precedes them, show us the young legionnaire and aviator in his true colors—as one to whom danger was life itself, to whom pretension and heroics were as foreign as fear, who took life, so be it a life of action, as a glorious adventure, and death as the most natural and perhaps the most glorious adventure of all.” R. M.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Je 27 ‘17 470w
“The memoir by his father is an emotionally reserved but curiously vivid sketch of the young Victor.”
+ Cleveland p101 S ‘17 130w
“Victor’s letters should endear him to readers principally for the whole-hearted enthusiasm shown for the cause for which he fought and for his boyish naïveté and buoyant youthfulness. The letters are interesting as revelations of character. They shed a strong and illuminating 97light on trench conditions and the every-day experiences of soldiers in France. It is a book of touching and pathetic as well as inspiring revelations.”
+ Lit D 55:34 S 29 ‘17 200w
+ Nation 105:462 O 25 ‘17 200w
“His letters express his passion for landscape, for the French countryside he could look down on, for the clouds near which he was so much at home. He and his mother come to life again, and will live with a tragic intensity forever, in this ‘Memoir,’ where Mr Chapman speaks of them with a passion of candor that is lonelier than any reticence.” P. L.
+ New Repub 12:22 Ag 4 ‘17 1450w
“They are graphic letters that show imaginative feeling and unusual faculty for literary expression, and they are filled with details of his daily life and duties and reflect the keen satisfaction he was taking in his experiences.”
N Y Times 22:200 My 20 ‘17 650w
Pittsburgh 22:680 O ‘17 100w
Pratt p39 O ‘17 20w
+ R of Rs 56:325 S ‘17 120w
CHASE, MARY ELLEN. Virginia of Elk Creek valley. il *$1.35 (3c) Page 17-10859
This book is a sequel to “The girl from the Big Horn country,” published in 1916, which told how Virginia Hunter left her father’s cattle ranch in Wyoming and went east to school. In the new volume, practically all the action takes place on or near the ranch which is Virginia’s home, and to which she invites her eastern friends in the summer vacation. The only love affair in the story is that of Virginia’s Aunt Nan, and that is touched on but lightly.
CHEKHOV, ANTON PAVLOVICH. House with the mezzanine, and other stories; tr. from the Russian by S. S. Koteliansky and Gilbert Cannan. *$1.35 (2c) Scribner 17-22089
“My life,” the longest of the seven stories, takes up about half the book. The other stories are: The house with the mezzanine; Typhus; Gooseberries; In exile; The lady with the toy dog; Goussiev. “The lady with the toy dog” appears in the third volume of Chekhov’s tales translated by Mrs Garnett and published by Macmillan as “The lady with the dog.”
Reviewed by L: S. Friedland
* + Dial 64:27 Ja 3 ‘18 2350w
Reviewed by Alvin Johnson
+ New Repub 13:sup12 N 17 ‘17 320w
“Chekhov, with the subtle skill of the etcher, transforms the ordinary into the artistic. This is his miracle of creation.” L: S. Friedland
+ N Y Call p14 Ja 12 ‘18 300w
“He is, above all things, a lover of beauty. If he were not, he could not hate ugliness so much. ... In the present volume his sensitiveness becomes almost morbid. ... Tchekoff is an artist, not a propagandist, and he holds out no panacea for the conditions he portrays. But he places a suggestion in the mouth of Misrail, the ineffectual, wasted idealist, that is very significant—i.e., that in order that man should not enslave his fellows, nor build up a prison house of greed and egotism about himself, ‘it was necessary that all without exception—the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor—should share equally in the struggle for existence, every man for himself, and in that respect there was no better means of leveling than physical labor and compulsory service for all.’ ... The world is coming to see that universal service of one sort or another is a national duty. ... William James has offered it as a substitute for war. Tchekoff offers it as a necessity of peace.”
N Y Times 22:329 S 9 ‘17 1800w
“The popularity of Anton Chekhov, or at any rate, the attempt to popularize him, is evidenced from the fact that two publishers are concurrently bringing out what must eventually be his complete works. ... There is much overlapping, and as even the most enthusiastic Russophile would not want both sets, the question comes to one of translation. Cursory comparisons fail to settle the question. Mrs Garnett has probably rendered more Russian into English than has Mr Cannan, but Mr Cannan is not unskilled, and imparts a finish to the work, which does not mean lack of fidelity to the original, that makes it read as smoothly as does Mrs Garnett’s version, which is no mean praise.”
+ Springf’d Republican p6 S 6 ‘17 330w
CHEKHOV, ANTON PAVLOVICH. Lady with the dog, and other stories; tr. from the Russian by Constance Garnett. *$1.50 (2c) Macmillan 17-15285
“This is the third volume out of the six in which Mrs Garnett’s translations of Tchehov’s tales are to be issued.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) “One or two of the stories have already appeared in different translations.” (Boston Transcript) The longest of the nine tales, “An anonymous story,” takes up about a third of the book. The other stories are: The lady with the dog; A doctor’s visit; An upheaval; Ionitch; The head of the family; The black monk (a story of madness); Volodya; The husband.
“Any one with a turn for sampling stories by looking at the last page might well be put off by the uniform ending of these tales in suicide, disillusionment, or gross abandonment to the sensual sty, and suspect a formula of pessimism and tragedy on the author’s part. But they are various enough in theme, if monotonously grim in colouring; and they belong to various periods in Chekhov’s life, the most poetical of them, ‘The black monk,’ having appeared in English as long ago as 1903.”
Ath p416 Ag ‘17 280w
“It is said that among the more modern masters of Russian fiction, Chekhov is accorded the first place by his own people. No doubt it takes a Russian fully to appreciate the significance of this, for the writings of Chekhov lack the extraordinary beauty of Sologub’s, the simple charm of Kuprin’s, the deep tragedy of Andreiev’s and the tensity of Maxim Gorky’s. But as the characteristics of all these writers are to be found in Chekhov’s pages, together with a distinct individuality, perhaps he really does give a saner and more truly typical picture of his people, thus explaining the veneration in which his memory and writings are said to be held in Russia. ... ‘A doctor’s visit’ is the unforgettable story of the book. It seems to us to be one of the finest stories of capital and labor ever written.” J. F. S.
Boston Transcript p6 Jl 18 ‘17 650w
+ Cleveland p103 S ‘17 40w
Reviewed by L: S. Friedland
* + Dial 64:27 Ja 3 ‘18 2350w
“Mr Edward Garnett has said that Chekhov is ‘an unflinching realist, with a poet’s sensitiveness to beauty.’ ‘A true realist’ might better express it all, if we were to permit the phrase its higher meaning. ... Hapless mortals, striving vainly for self-fulfilment, for happiness; frustrate in the end, but not ignoble: such are the figures with which this little world of Chekhov’s is mainly peopled.”
Nation 105:70 Jl 19 ‘17 400w
Reviewed by Alvin Johnson
+ New Repub 13:sup12 N 17 ‘17 320w
N Y Br Lib News 4:131 S ‘17 20w
N Y Times 22:274 Jl 22 ‘17 830w
“In one way or another, that opposition between the claims of the ego and the inevitability of ‘what is going on about us’ is almost as persistent in Tchehov as it is in the novels of Mr Hardy. ... Life interested him, hurt him, puzzled him; and the more it puzzled him, it might be thought, the more urgently he felt the need of expressing its effect upon him, touching with the nicest restraint upon the significant though homely details which emphasized the puzzling interest by bringing it to the very doors of his Russian readers. An English reader who does not know Tchehov’s Russia can never, perhaps, appreciate the full force of those details; but many, perhaps most of them, stand good for any civilized country of the modern world.”
The Times [London] Lit Sup p306 Je 28 ‘17 1200w
98“Chekhov can forgive any sin of the body or the mind except the sin against the Holy Ghost—the failure to understand the joys and sorrows of the imagination.” W: L. Phelps
+ Yale R n s 7:189 O ‘17 500w
CHEKHOV, ANTON PAVLOVICH. Party, and other stories. *$1.50 (2c) Macmillan 17-23646
This is the fourth volume in the new series of Chekhov’s tales translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. Contents: The party; Terror; A woman’s kingdom; A problem; The kiss; “Anna on the neck”; The teacher of literature; Not wanted; Typhus; A misfortune; A trifle from life. Another translation of “Typhus” appears in Chekhov’s “House with the mezzanine, and other stories,” published by Scribner.
“This volume includes eleven tales of a high level of merit. While there is considerable diversity in the subjects and methods of treatment, the general sombre atmosphere and feeling of uneasiness and dissatisfaction make it desirable that the tales should be taken singly in order to be fully appreciated.”
+ Ath p597 N ‘17 140w
“There are eleven tales in this volume, and in none of them is life found anything better than unintelligible. The sweetness and spirituality have been carefully extracted from life, and there is left a sort of carnival of sordidness and inconsequence which is like a nightmare of the soul. It is nothing to say that these tales are not Christian. They are not even in the nobler tradition of paganism.”
— Cath World 106:689 F ‘18 360w
Reviewed by L: S. Friedland
* + Dial 64:27 Ja 3 ‘18 2350w
“Chekhov, in ‘The party and other stories,’ shows himself again a master of the art of character drawing. With all its power, however, the book, like so much of Chekhov’s work, is depressing and gloomy. Its keynote is human feebleness, human futility. There is not one instance in it of a man or woman fighting against and overcoming adverse circumstances by force of will.”
+ — Ind 93:150 Ja 26 ‘18 150w
“If we really wish to understand Russia, we have much to learn from Chekov. Read ‘The party’ and you will know at least something of the life of the intelligent upper classes of the provinces. ... Chekov is concerned mainly with middle class and aristocratic life, fundamentally in a false position among the benighted and exploited millions. Inevitably there is much that is pathological in life thus artificially limited, much that is corrupt and more that is futile. The effect is sometimes depressing, but no intelligent reader would wish it relieved. Chekov gives us nothing that we do not need to know, if we wish to understand Russia.” Alvin Johnson
+ New Repub 13:sup12 N 17 ‘17 320w
“‘The party’ is a terrifying piece of realism, indicting the ordinary artificialities of life with a power which would seem as excessive as that used to break the proverbial butterfly on the wheel, if we were not at the same time made to feel that an existence made up of these artificialities is spiritually and even physically ruinous—a lingering death-in-life. Chekhov is the modern Preacher. An evil hath he seen under the sun.”
+ N Y Times 22:570 D 23 ‘17 670w
+ Outlook 117:134 O 3 ‘17 20w
“‘The party’ is a powerful, grimly realistic tale.”
+ R of Rs 56:557 N ‘17 70w
CHENEY, SHELDON. Art theatre. il *$1.50 (3c) Knopf 792 17-30697
A study of the art theatre, its ideals, its organization and its promise as a corrective for present playhouse evils. The writer believes that the art theatre must become the corrective first for the shortcomings of the little theatre. His point of view differs from that of some of the writers about little theatres, in that he considers the little theatre only a step towards something better. “In all the excitement about little theatres we are in danger of losing sight of the higher ideal—the art theatre.” Next the art theatre must correct the evils of the commercialized theatre with its destructive practice of creating and exploiting “stars.” The real art of the theatre, he thinks, must be established thru the development of fixed local playhouses with resident companies dedicated to repertory production of the best that dramatic art has to offer.
“As a man of experience and vision, he does not fall into the error of trying to ‘uplift’ the commercial theater. It can’t be done, and he knows it.” L: Gardy
+ N Y Call p15 Ja 12 ‘18 730w
“Deals to a certain extent with the same subject as Mr Dickinson’s book, but views it from so different an angle and discusses it with so different an individuality that the two books admirably supplement each other and should both be read by any one who desires all the illumination of the question it is possible to have. A chapter of bibliography, with running comment upon the books mentioned, will add greatly to the book’s value to the student.”
+ N Y Times 22:578 D 30 ‘17 300w
“What these theaters mean in the process of the democratization in our national life, and in the development of a fresh and vital art impulse, Mr Sheldon Cheney tells us in a stirring and captivating book.”
+ R of Rs 57:107 Ja ‘18 350w
CHÉRADAME, ANDRÉ. Pangerman plot unmasked; Berlin’s formidable peace-trap of “the drawn war”; with an introd. by Lord Cromer. il *$1.25 (2c) Scribner 327.4 17-1796
“By pan-Germanism Mr Chéradame means ‘the doctrine, of purely Prussian origin, which aims at annexing all the various regions, irrespective of race or language, of which the possession is deemed useful to the power of the Hohenzollerns.’ This doctrine, the author claims, is one of steady growth and accretion, and a realization of it has already been on the verge of achievement. He holds even that acceptance of the German offer of a drawn game would make it real within a decade at the furthest.”—Lit D
+ A L A Bkl 13:305 Ap ‘17
“To review the book adequately would be to quote it in its entirety, for every page is of significance. It is by all means the most pregnant volume on the deeper issues of the war that has come under our eyes.”
+ Boston Transcript p9 Ja 31 ‘17 700w
Cleveland p45 Mr ‘17 60w
“Useful for its vigorous handling of the geographical issues involved.” H. J. Laski
+ Dial 62:96 F 8 ‘17 30w
Ind 89:558 Mr 26 ‘17 110w
“Mr Chéradame has concentrated on this subject for over twenty years, in studies in the very lands now occupied or directed by the Germans.”
+ Lit D 54:413 F 17 ‘17 350w
“The neutral nations are vitally concerned in this. ... His book is arresting, pertinent, unforgettably challenging to serious thought.”
+ N Y Times 22:18 Ja 21 ‘17 750w
“It is not surprising that M. Chéradame, an eager student of international politics from his youth up, and a pupil of Albert Sorel, should have derived from these sources a point of view quite different from that of the ordinary French or English official diplomatist. ... Entirely apart from any conclusions that may be thought speculative, there are in this book of M. Chéradame’s certain truths of fundamental importance which ought to be widely appreciated, especially in the United States.”
+ No Am 206:477 S ‘17 1000w
Pittsburgh 22:685 O ‘17 70w
St Louis 15:73 Mr ‘17
99“We cannot commend to our readers a better collection of facts from which to derive a wise caution at this critical turn of events than is contained in this important work. ... Pan-Germanism, which was the source of the war, aims at creating a great military empire stretching from the North sea to the Persian gulf. ... Even as the situation is, Germany has executed nine-tenths of the pan-German plan of 1911. ... The substance of the whole book is a most impressive political argument, very cogent and extraordinarily opportune.”
+ Spec 117:805 D 23 ‘16 2050w
“No British writer has so firm a grip as M. Chéradame upon the countless ramifications of the pan-German movement.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p618 D 21 ‘16 850w
CHESTERTON, CECIL EDWARD. Perils of peace; with an introd. by Hilaire Belloc. *2s T. W. Laurie, London 940.91 (Eng ed 16-20285)
“Mr Chesterton’s book is a warning against any compromise or patched-up peace with the enemy, of which he considers there is danger. Three factors in the politics of this country he regards as mainly concerned in the problem: pacificism, with which he associates the names of Mr Macdonald, Mr Snowden, and others; financiers with cosmopolitan concerns; and our system of government by professional politicians. Mr Chesterton is severe upon the ministers in power. Alluding to their decision to fight Germany, he remarks that ‘they achieved the most popular act of their largely misspent lives.’ He considers that if the war proceeds to exhaustion, the Central powers will be exhausted first, and will therefore be obliged to accept the Allies’ terms. A compromise would, for the Allies and especially Great Britain, be disastrous.”—Ath
“We notice some misprints; everywhere Mr Snowden’s name is spelt ‘Snowdon.’”
Ath p438 S ‘16 240w
“I do not in the least disagree with Mr Cecil Chesterton in the immediate object of his book, which is, to avert a sudden laying down of our arms. But I see no danger of that: we are far more likely to go on fighting long after there is nothing more to be gained by it. For the rest the book is full of the most frightful nonsense.” G. B. S.
New Repub 9:270 Ja 6 ‘17 9000w
CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH. Short history of England. *$1.50 (2½c) Lane 942 17-29757
At the start Mr Chesterton challenges the claim of so called popular histories to the word popular. “They are all, nearly without exception, written against the people; and in them the populace is either ignored or elaborately proved to have been wrong.” It is his aim to produce, therefore, a history from the standpoint of the public, one that does not trample upon popular traditions. His book is a small one on a big subject; but as he strides down the centuries of England’s progress he pauses at the epoch-making forces long enough to estimate their power and influence in shaping the nation’s course. He dismisses the detail of transitional happenings with a sentence. He places the crisis in English history at the fall of Richard II where the king and the populace for a moment came together, instead of placing it about the period of the Stuarts. Turning to the present world struggle he sees in defeat nothing before England but the servile state; in success, freedom from a yoke of slavery which is another word for militarism.
A L A Bkl 14:122 Ja ‘18
“You open his pages—perhaps you distrust him and doubt him—but whether you agree with him or disagree, whether you are pleased or annoyed, you inevitably go on reading.”
+ — Ath p659 D ‘17 300w
“It is a trifle that a book should be sometimes too exuberant. The main thing is that it should be alive. And Mr Chesterton’s history is not only alive, but kicking. It has so much of the truth of imagination that it may be forgiven for having some of its falsehood as well.”
+ — Ath p661 D ‘17 1650w
“On the whole, it is one of his best books, the tendency to verbal display and superficial antithesis being balanced by the demands of a sustained argument.”
+ — Ath p683 D ‘17 200w
“This book, a pioneer in historical introspection, must kindle severe criticism for its superficial conclusions, inferentially at least, against the assertion of spirited leadership in transition eras, when the persistence of ‘one good custom should corrupt the world.’ ... However, Mr Chesterton is to be welcomed in this new rôle of political philosopher for the fresh interest he brings.” L. E. Robinson
+ — Bookm 46:270 N ‘17 700w
“But it is true of Chesterton’s ‘History of England,’ as it is true of any work of art, that the sanctities which it violates are not so important as the vision which inspires it.” R. K. Hack
* + Dial 64:65 Ja 17 ‘18 1450w
“Finally, Chesterton is unable to make his book wholly impartial; it is a partizan history, as bitter against the aristocracy as Macaulay was against the Stuarts and as pro-Catholic as Froude was anti-Catholic. Chesterton is at his best as a historian when he sums up for us the general ‘atmosphere’ of an age or an institution.”
+ — Ind 93:128 Ja 19 ‘18 1100w
“Mr Chesterton’s thesis is that the middle ages were the time of true democracy, and that parliamentary government is government by an anti-popular oligarchy. Upon this general theme he has written a strange and fascinating history of England.”
+ N Y Times 22:501 N 25 ‘17 700w
+ R of Rs 57:103 Ja ‘18 170w
“We love Mr Chesterton—we could ‘hug him’, as Johnson said of a man in whom he discovered his own preference for rhyme—for his real understanding of and sympathy with the rhetoric and the aristocracy of the eighteenth century. Mr Chesterton’s ‘Short history’ is the wittiest, most eloquent, and discerning essay on the history of England which we have ever happened to read.”
+ Sat R 124:395 N 17 ‘17 1100w
“Unsuited, therefore, as Mr Chesterton’s style is to history, it is still less suited to propagandism. ... A paradoxical partisan runs very little chance of winning converts. When we want clear thinking he gives us a jingling antithesis; in the words of Bagehot’s invaluable distinction, he can make a loud argument but not a fine one. ... And yet, when we have counted all the faults of the book, we return to its great outstanding merits: its freshness, its vitality, its interest.”
+ – — Spec 119:493 N 3 ‘17 1500w
“Nevertheless the book is a brilliant history of Mr Chesterton’s reactions from English history.”
+ — Springf’d Republican p6 D 18 ‘17 900w
The Times [London] Lit Sup p507 O 18 ‘17 140w
“It would be vain to review this book as a history of England, for it is interesting only as an expression of Mr Chesterton’s mentality. The historian is well aware that he can only see the past through a glass of many colours, but he knows that the business of his science is to dispel, so far as possible, the distortions of the various media through which historical knowledge is transmitted. But to Mr Chesterton the distortion is the reality.”
— The Times [London] Lit Sup p564 N 22 ‘17 1550w
CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH. Utopia of usurers, and other essays. *$1.25 (4c) Boni & Liveright 304 17-26888
The “Utopia of usurers” is an attack on modern society, with special reference to Great Britain. Mr Chesterton “is up in arms against the terror of a world which shall be ruled—in 100politics and literature and art and all things else—by its ‘captains of industry.’” (N Y Times) He is particularly concerned about “the way in which the capitalists of today use art and the press for their own purposes. His spleen, it seems, is largely directed against the liberal press.” (Springf’d Republican) Some chapters such as: The amnesty for aggression, The servile state again, and The tower of Bebel, deal with the European war. Other chapters are: The mask of socialism; A workman’s history of England; The French revolution and the Irish; The art of missing the point, etc. Two poems are included: A song of swords and The escape.
A L A Bkl 14:85 D ‘17
“The general scope of his latest book, ‘Utopia of usurers,’ is sociological, but it rambles so wildly and discursively through those regions that we doubt if anyone who is diligent enough to read it to the bitter end will have a well-formed idea of his theory of the structure and organization of modern society. ... He gives us the impression of the orator who has a plethora of words and a dearth of ideas and who begins to talk and keeps on talking simply because a multitude of English phrases are at his command and he cannot resist the temptation to use them. ... His wit is not so agile as it once was.” E. F. E.
– + Boston Transcript p8 O 31 ‘17 1650w
“The work is an impassioned plea, unmarred by any of the demagogue’s shallow eloquence, for the natural rights of men and the restoration of their earlier liberties. If there is somewhat less than usual of Mr Chesterton’s wit, it is by no means wholly absent; and there is no lack of wisdom, based upon enduring truths and expressed with the clearness of a tocsin.”
+ Cath World 106:539 Ja ‘18 400w
Reviewed by E: Sapir
* Dial 64:25 Ja 3 ‘18 1650w
“The average literary critic always says that Chesterton is an amusing, entertaining, attractive concocter of paradoxes but that he is not sincere and must not be taken seriously. Chesterton’s latest volume is neither amusing nor attractive, it is certainly the least enjoyable book which he has ever written, but it has a savage earnestness that puts the charge of insincerity out of court completely.”
+ Ind 92:256 N 3 ‘17 350w
“The ‘Utopia of usurers’ is distinctly among the ‘negative’ creations of Chesterton, and it takes high rank among those creations. Like all his iconoclastic works, the ‘Utopia’ is a negation only in an objective sense: it is destruction which is positive in its purpose. Chesterton’s natural weapon is the hammer of Thor—in the service of Christ. And in his latest book he utilizes this ancient weapon against something very modern and vital, indeed—capitalism.” E. J. Mayer
+ N Y Call p15 N 25 ‘17 1000w
“He sums up the advocacy of eugenics as ‘one of the most strange, simple, and horrible ideas that have ever risen from the deep pit of original sin.’ He is against the ‘social reforms’ of modern government with all the strength of his being. Of the view of English history which is ‘current at public schools and colleges, part of the culture of all the classes that count for much in government,’ he says flatly: ‘There is not one word of truth in it from beginning to end.’ He is the reactionary radical here as elsewhere. Some of his essays are exceedingly dogmatic. With some of his passionate convictions the reader will not agree. But every page of the book is interesting.”
+ N Y Times 22:448 N 4 ‘17 1150w
“He who possesses the rhetorical power of Mr Chesterton and uses that power to falsify current history, misinterpret motives, and stir up class hatred is guilty of a crime against humanity.”
— Outlook 117:518 N 28 ‘17 240w
“‘Utopia of usurers’ is Chesterton a little grouchy, but Chesterton at his best or very near his best. The object of the satirist’s attack is modern plutocratic society, and, if he is not always at pains to distinguish what is bad from what is good in that society he is always amusing, without being too paradoxical to be pointless.”
+ — Springf’d Republican p17 O 28 ‘17 1400w
CHEVRILLON, ANDRÉ. England and the war (1914-1915). *$1.60 (2c) Doubleday 940.91 17-15314
M. Chevrillon, a nephew of Taine, has lived in England, has many English friends, and has visited outlying parts of the empire. Rudyard Kipling says in his preface to the volume that Chevrillon writes “with the knowledge of the psychologist and the profound sympathy of one long acquainted with our lives, our history, and the expression, formal or idiomatic, of our thoughts.” The book is “a psychological study of the English mind in the first eighteen months of war.” (Dial) It tells how “England awoke from a mood of self-complacency to the consciousness of being engaged in a life and death struggle; how a dead weight of cherished traditions, habits, and prejudices, all connected with much that is best in her life, was cast aside; and how her scattered and incoherent energies were welded into one collective and disciplined will.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) All this is discussed under the captions: Public opinion; The illusion of security; The appeal to conscience; The men; The need of adaptation; Adaptation; To-day and to-morrow. The papers were first published in the Revue de Paris from November, 1915, to January, 1916.
“His book is not history in the technical sense. But it is the raw material of history and of the greatest value. The French quickness of understanding and ability to put oneself in another’s place come here to the advantage of the future historian.” G. B. A.
+ Am Hist R 23:432 Ja ‘18 550w
A L A Bkl 14:18 O ‘17
“The best treatment of that aspect of events [national psychology] that has yet appeared, and much of it is applicable, for one reason or another to life on this side of the Atlantic.” C. H. P. Thurston
+ Bookm 46:286 N ‘17 240w
+ Cath World 106:397 D ‘17 310w
Cleveland p118 N ‘17 70w
“When allowance for the human fact of conviction is made this is the best interim study of the English attitude the war has so far produced.” H. J. Laski
+ — Dial 63:53 Jl 19 ‘17 1900w
“Tho M. Chevrillon’s study does not surpass or, indeed, nearly equal that revelation of the English mind presented by Mr H. G. Wells, yet skilfully made is his clean cut distinction between the British sporting conception of war and the German vision of its glory.”
+ — Ind 91:474 S 22 ‘17 200w
“This may be regarded as the thesis of the book, the power of religion and an inborn sense of duty to take the place of intelligent governmental control before a great and sudden emergency. As coming from a clear-eyed Frenchman, this study of a national temperament very different from his own is peculiarly valuable.”
+ Nation 105:128 Ag 2 ‘17 200w
“It ought to be read by Americans as much for the light it throws on our own processes as for the sake of making us understand better our English cousins.”
+ N Y Times 22:261 Jl 15 ‘17 800w
“M. Chevrillon is, of course, no such theorist as was Taine; but he has a very similar sensitiveness to national character and a like gift of selecting and developing the essential elements. In this there is something more than simple thesis-building or than unambitious description. It is a combination, so to speak, of trenchant analysis with artistic handling, of intellectual and moral honesty with the desire to please. Like Taine, too, M. Chevrillon is perhaps a little prone to exaggerate. But to exaggerate only in the interests of clearness! If M. Chevrillon’s book really expresses in any degree the attitude of France toward England, 101it is reasonable to expect that there will be not merely a continued alliance between these two peoples, but a true and enduring friendship.”
+ No Am 206:637 O ‘17 1000w
+ Pittsburgh 22:761 N ‘17 110w
“Some of this comment has been made obsolete by later developments. But, as a study of the English mind in contrast with the German, the book is interesting and it may also prove useful as a piece of friendly criticism.”
+ — R of Rs 56:213 Ag ‘17 100w
“A piece of contemporary history which has, we think, a permanent value.”
+ Spec 119:sup630 D 1 ‘17 180w
“If there is any one deficiency in a narrative and in comments vivid, pointed, and studiously fair, it is a somewhat insufficient appreciation of the work of the navy in our days of limited military inactivity.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p279 Je 14 ‘17 1350w
CHILDS, LESLIE. Legal points for automobile owners. 50c (7c) Ogilvie 629.2 17-14172
“The compiler has endeavored to set out, in a few words, the general rules governing the operation of automobiles, and the liabilities for violations thereof. This is in no sense a text book, is not intended for the use of lawyers, or others learned in the law, but for the man in the street, the farmer, the business or professional man, in fact any owner of a car.” (Preface) Among the points covered are: The employer’s liability for acts of his chauffeur; On turning corners; Frightening horses; When required to stop; Unregistered automobile; Unlicensed chauffeur; Lending your automobile.
+ Ind 91:77 Jl 14 ‘17 40w
Pittsburgh 22:664 O ‘17 10w
St Louis 15:330 S ‘17
CHILDS, W. J. Across Asia Minor on foot. il *$4 (2½c) Dodd 915.6 (Eng ed 17-26394)
The author started from Samsûn on the Black sea and traveled, by a somewhat devious route, to Alexandretta on the Mediterranean. His experiences were pleasant ones and he writes of them entertainingly. He says, “Only in the quality of adventure did realisation fall short of what might have been expected. Brigandage and robbery, fighting between troops and deserters, murder and forcible abductions—affairs of this kind took place before and behind me, but I missed them ever, sometimes by days, sometimes only by hours, and moved always, it seemed, in the peaceful intervals between storms. For this reason no blood-shedding, no hair-breadth escapes will be found in the narrative.” His journey was taken in the days before the war and he met with universal kindness, from American, German, Turk, Armenian and Greek. In his last chapter he touches on the international significance of the undeveloped resources of Asia Minor.
“Incidentally sheds light on the Armenian situation before the war and the German plan for a railway to Bagdad.”
+ A L A Bkl 13:397 Je ‘17
“Not only lovers of travel but those readers desiring to understand as much as possible local conditions in the various fighting areas of the war will find Mr Childs’ book a revelation. ... For on the same battle-scarred terrain where Alexander and Cæsar fought for that world hegemony only the control of the travel route to India and the Far East could give the armies of the Allies are fighting today.” F. B.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ap 11 ‘17 800w
“A tale of adventure of never slackening interest from beginning to end.”
+ N Y Times 22:196 My 20 ‘17 200w
Pittsburgh 22:677 O ‘17 60w
“The illustrations are attractive, but we are rather surprised that an obviously competent writer has forgotten the detail of an index.”
+ Sat R 123:233 Mr 10 ‘17 830w
“Exceptionally attractive and brilliant book of travel. ... Mr Childs does not devote much space to politics. He has too many other subjects to deal with, and, like Borrow, prefers the wind on the heath or a night in a crowded tavern among alien folk to debating high matters of state. But his shrewd estimates of the native peoples are fresh and valuable.”
+ Spec 118:273 Mr 3 ‘17 1950w
“To some not the least interesting part of the book is the indication constantly given as the traveller gets farther south of the large far-seeing policy which the Germans have for the last twenty years been slowly, quietly, and consistently carrying out in the East. ... We are grateful for a book which enables us to share the romance of one great road before the railway opens up its hidden places and destroys its guarded secrets.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p221 My 10 ‘17 1350w
CHITWOOD, OLIVER PERRY. Immediate causes of the great war. *$1.35 (3c) Crowell 940.91 17-13588
“The object of this volume is to narrate briefly the direct causes of the European war as they are given in the published documents of the belligerents. These sources are abundantly adequate for determining the immediate responsibility of each nation and apportioning the guilt for this great crime.” (Preface) The author is professor of European history in West Virginia university, and he says that his experience as a teacher has shown him the need for such a work. Contents: Some indirect causes of the war; The assassination of Francis Ferdinand; The Austro-Hungarian note to Serbia; Serbia’s reply to Austria-Hungary; Efforts to prevent war; Efforts to isolate the war; The war area broadens; Great Britain declares war on the Teutonic powers; The violation of the neutrality of Belgium; Japan and Turkey drawn into the conflict; Italy enters the war; The lesser belligerents.
+ A L A Bkl 14:88 D ‘17
+ Ind 90:556 Je 23 ‘17 50w
N Y Br Lib News 4:101 Jl ‘17
“Persons who do not have access to the various official statements of the governments at war, or do not have time to read the evidence therein presented, will find this summary convenient and useful.”
+ R of Rs 56:214 Ag ‘17 100w
CHOLMONDELEY, ALICE. Christine. *$1.35 (2c) Macmillan 17-21644
Reviewers differ from each other as to whether these letters are fact or fiction. The publishers wrote the editor of the Digest on September 13, that “We don’t know and we have no means of finding out.” The letters purport to be written to a mother by a young Englishwoman with a talent for music, who goes to Germany to study the violin, and is in Berlin from May to August, 1914. Christine believes all Germans to be “simple and kindly.” Her disillusionment begins in Frau Berg’s middle-class boarding-house where “she becomes a target for the Anglophobe remarks of the other boarders,” and is continued in the home of a family of the “junker-military-official military set,” where she goes to live later because she has become engaged to a young officer in the Prussian army with a leaning towards music. The point of view of the well-to-do country folk is given when she goes for a short rest to the home of a forester and his wife at Schuppenfelde. The artistic set is represented by her violin teacher, Kloster, who seems to stand “for fearlessness, for freedom, for beauty, for all the great things,” but is silenced when the government “chokes him with the Order of the Red Eagle, First class.” When war comes, Christine’s situation becomes impossible and she starts to join her mother in Switzerland, but contracts pneumonia on the way and dies in a hospital at Stuttgart.
+ A L A Bkl 14:94 D ‘17
102“In style and feeling ‘Christine’ reminds one strongly of ‘Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther’ and other works of the Baroness von Arnim.”
+ Ath p526 O ‘17 160w
“It is not often that a collection of letters intended for no eyes but those of a beloved mother turns out to be an amazingly accurate revelation of the real, hidden nature of a great people. ... To the earnest men and women of the time the book is a state document, to the eager story readers an idyll, to the lover of music a perfect interlude, to any reader an hour’s delight.”
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ag 29 ‘17 2400w
“Whether fact or fiction, they have the ring of truth and spontaneity.”
+ Cath World 106:251 N ‘17 300w
“They tell a touching story, and give a vivid, but for artistic purposes, somewhat over-emphasized picture of a whole nation hypnotized by one man.”
+ — Cleveland p132 D ‘17 80w
“The doubt as to the legitimacy of the letters comes when one reads the initial one, which, like all first letters in epistolary novels, retails to the ostensible recipient all the facts the reader needs to know. And as one reads on, the natural development of events, the study of the actions and reactions of different classes of Germans to war and then to the war, no less than the fluency of the style, seem to indicate that ‘Christine’ is a clever, interesting, but fabricated, narrative.”
+ Dial 63:220 S 13 ‘17 550w
+ Ind 91:353 S 1 ‘17 80w
“If the volume is indeed what it purports to be—it is a document as significant as any which the war has yet furnished. For, on this assumption, it goes far to wipe out the distinction gladly made by many between the attitude of the German people and that of the German government towards the possibility of a world war. Provided the letters are genuine, they leave little doubt that the great middle class in Germany ardently desired, even before the Sarajevo tragedy, a testing of German arms, and especially with England. If this is not a true history (and we prefer to believe that it is), then we can only deplore the wretched taste of an author who just at this time would dare to confirm our worst suspicions of Germany by an elaborate fiction parading as a document before the fact.”
Nation 105:202 Ag 23 ‘17 1000w
“Were ‘Christine’ genuine, it would be impressive. Were ‘Christine’ a ‘human document,’ it would confirm many sickening doubts and fears, it would fortify the indictment of a whole people. But whether those doubts and fears are to be sustained or not, ‘Christine’ will not confirm them or even support them because it is a book obviously composed by a skilful writer of fiction, feeding the appetite for hatred, supplying in detail and with subtle art the ‘confirmation’ which it is natural at this date for groveling natures to relish.” F. H.
— New Repub 12:277 O 6 ‘17 1500w
“A book which is true in essentials though it wears the garb of fiction—so real is it that one is tempted to doubt whether it is fiction at all. ... It would be difficult to find a book in which the state of mind of the German people just before and at the very beginning of the war was pictured so clearly, with so much understanding and convincing detail, as it is in this one. The letters are admirably written, revealing an absolutely charming personality.”
+ N Y Times 22:285 Ag 5 ‘17 1200w
“Doubtless it is based on ‘genuine’ letters. But we can’t help believing that in editing these letters ‘Alice Cholmondeley’s’ knowledge of the needs of fiction was drawn on repeatedly. And we can’t see that the book—even as a ‘document’—has suffered in consequence. The fact part has not been injured by the fiction.”
+ N Y Times 22:358 S 23 ‘17 930w
+ Pittsburgh 22:748 N ‘17 40w
+ Pratt p50 O ‘17 20w
“It is also odd to find a girl in real life so extraordinarily like one in Mrs Ward’s novels.”
– + Sat R 124:509 D 22 ‘17 560w
+ Spec 119:389 O 13 ‘17 250w
“The chief value of the letters—assuming the correctness of the author’s observations—is the vivid presentation of the German viewpoint and the analysis of the bumptious, modern-minded, all sufficient, yet fear-haunted Germany that plunged the world into a needless war.”
+ Springf’d Republican p15 Ag 26 ‘17 700w
“In one sense, however, it does not matter whether the setting is real or only made up. The matter, in either case, is full of truth. The letters, whether written by an English girl in Berlin before the war, or by a clever story-teller in England during the war, were written by someone who knew Germany and the Germans.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p450 S 20 ‘17 750w
CHRISTIAN, W. E. Rhymes of the rookies. *$1 Dodd 811 17-25969
The “sunny side of soldier service” is dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt. The rhymes have been called the barrack-room ballads of the American soldier, touching, as they do, upon the little monotonies of life in camp. Aside from the short poems there is a glossary of American and English army slang, words to the army trumpet calls and a few hints for first aid.
A L A Bkl 14:85 D ‘17
CHURCH, ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Manufacturing costs and accounts. diags *$5 McGraw 657 17-3317
“It is the purpose of this book to present the subject of costing in such a way as to bring together the points of view of cost men and of general accountants. ... The book is divided into three parts, the first of which gives a general outline of manufacturing accounts. ... Part 2 opens with a general diagram that, with proper study, makes clear the relationship of the cost records to the main books of account and explains means for unifying the general accounts and the cost system into a consistent whole. The separate features of manufacturing accounts, as outlined in part 1, are then taken up in greater detail. ... Cost system reports and returns for the foreman, superintendent and general executive are suggested and described in part 3. The four chapters making up this part are revised from a series of articles published in the American Machinist in September, 1915.”—Engin News-Rec
“Some question may be raised as to the wisdom of attempting to teach or explain the theory of double entry bookkeeping in the small amount of space allotted to this subject by the author in part one. The book is a notable addition to a library on cost accounting, and to the student who is well grounded in the basic principles of accounting it will prove of considerable value in treating of cost accounts.” A. T. Cameron
+ — Ann Am Acad 74:294 N ‘17 390w
Cleveland p96 Jl ‘17 20w
“It is sufficiently elementary in treatment to be recommended as a general textbook on accounting and cost keeping for the use of engineers needing instruction in those subjects.” R. R. Potter
+ Engin News-Rec 78:150 Ap 19 ‘17 450w
N Y Br Lib News 4:58 Ap ‘17
“Mature minds ... will find in it suggestion, explanation, and direction obtainable so far as the reviewer knows, nowhere else.” C: B. Going
+ Pittsburgh 22:447 My ‘17 80w (Reprinted from Journal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers p369 Ap ‘17)
Pratt p24 Jl ‘17 30w
St Louis 15:113 Ap ‘17
103CHURCHILL, MRS MATILDA (FAULKNER). Letters from my home in India; ed. and arranged by Grace M. Rogers. il *$1.35 (2½c) Doran 16-22790
The author has spent a lifetime in India. She went to that country as a missionary in 1873 immediately after her marriage. The letters cover the period from that time to the present. In the last letter, written from Nova Scotia, the author’s native home, she expresses her deep joy at the prospect of returning to her labors in the mission field.
“The appeal of sincerity is universal. Hence, however divergent, anent foreign missions, may be the views of the readers of Mrs Churchill’s letters, they will be unanimous in respect to the writer’s unselfish and heroic service.”
+ Boston Transcript p9 N 18 ‘16 250w
+ Dial 61:542 D 14 ‘16 120w
N Y Br Lib News 4:14 Ja ‘17
CHURCHILL, WINSTON. Dwelling-place of light. il *$1.60 (1c) Macmillan 17-25746
Mr Churchill’s latest novel deals with, but makes no attempt to solve, the industrial problem. “The Massachusetts mill city of Hampton ... appears to be Holyoke to a hair, until an industrial crisis involving the I.W.W. and a dynamite plot on the part of the manufacturers convinces us that we are in Lawrence, with its neighboring Andover.” (Nation) The central figure in the story is Janet Bumpus, whose father, “a racial failure who worships the Bumpus genealogy,” is gate-keeper in the Chippering mill. Janet becomes stenographer and confidential secretary to Claude Ditmar, the manager of the mill, but later joins his enemies, the I.W.W. workers who are handling the strike. Janet’s personal relations with Ditmar, with Rolfe, the I.W.W. leader, and with Brooks Insall, the humanitarian author, are recounted with much detail. Lise, Janet’s sister, who has the temperament of a courtesan, and is “all for easy street,” forms a strong contrast to Janet.
“Though we did not close the book satisfied that we had learnt how and where the mind might be sure of being environed by wisdom, we felt that some of the ways and means of approach had been indicated.”
+ — Ath p679 D ‘17 90w
“Somewhat oddly, perhaps, our author is a good deal more chary of laying down the law about industrialism than he was about religion. It almost seems indeed that, three-quarters through his narrative, he gradually withdraws from the problem he has so thoroughly stated, and takes refuge in the personal human story of the girl Janet.” H. W. Boynton
+ — Bookm 46:339 N ‘17 360w
“With ‘The dwelling-place of light’ Mr Churchill begins what appears to be his third epoch as a novelist. It contains something of each of his earlier manners, but it also involves an archaic tale of unrequited love such as hitherto he has never attempted to tell. He combines this with an ultra-modern portrayal of the sordid conditions of life among the poor, and a tedious account of a strike whose details are very obviously drawn from the activities of a notorious labor organization in a New England manufacturing city a few years ago. ... Doubtless the novelist has written it in a mood of conviction and sincerity, but it does not convey that impression.” E. F. E.
– + Boston Transcript p6 O 10 ‘17 1450w
“Frankly, we believe that this novel merits severe condemnation. Any man who, at this stage of our national life, with a war on our hands and many internal dangers and problems to cope with, will publish such a defence of the propaganda of syndicalism and mob-rule, deserves a reprimand.”
— Cath World 106:694 F ‘18 330w
“He is apparently trying to show Theodore Dreiser the high honor of imitation. He has not Dreiser’s savage equipment, and lacks the ponderous sledge-hammer stroke that makes its effect by heavy iteration of details. He lacks, too, the evident sincerity of Dreiser, who, however unpleasant he may be, is always unmistakably in earnest. Mr Churchill is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and the costume suits him not at all.”
— Ind 92:385 N 24 ‘17 280w
“To the reader of Mr Churchill’s new novel, bewildered and curious at such long-continued philosophizing and analyzing of apparently ordinary characters, will suddenly come a conviction that, under an apparent sameness, there is something entirely new, something intensely vital.”
+ Lit D 55:48 D 29 ‘17 480w
“Mr Churchill has rendered with extraordinary breadth and sympathy the New England manufacturing city, with its enterprise and its squalor, its huge industrial ‘plants’ driving always remorselessly for increased dividends, its polyglot hordes kept within bounds, for the most part, by the slender but steely filaments of necessity. Claude Ditmar, manager of the Chippering mill, is a striking portrait of the successful American. ... One closes the record with the impression that, as Mr Churchill has solved Janet’s knot by cutting it, he is fain to dispose of the industrial problem by retiring from it, as Janet has done, to some kindlier, mellower atmosphere.”
Nation 105:403 O 11 ‘17 650w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
+ — Nation 105:600 N 29 ‘17 200w
“Mr Churchill will never escape from gentility. He has achieved his position as its favorite interpreter. But the vitality shown in the ‘Dwelling-place of light’ proves how persistent is his faith in its tenets. He can make a place for the I.W.W. in his tradition rather than give up an American mill or an American girl.” F. H.
+ — New Repub 12:306 O 13 ‘17 1750w
“The picturing part of the book is an excellent performance, but the preachment of the after effects of freedom in love, and against socialistic and syndicalistic ideas, smacks of that mid-McKinleyan conservatism and prudery out of whose somber shadows America has stepped, for once and for all.” Clement Wood
+ — N Y Call p18 D 15 ‘17 800w
“He has never hitherto depicted a woman character with quite so much insight, skill, and surety as he portrays Janet Bumpus. ... It is a pleasure to bear witness to the finer, truer taste with which Mr Churchill now writes. Scarcely anywhere in the book does one find any of those occasional lapses which offended so much in his earlier work. But this does not hold true of the ending of the story. Not since the deathbed of Little Eva has there been anything more banal than the last pages of this novel.”
+ — N Y Times 22:393 O 14 ‘17 1250w
“Mr Churchill is not afraid to present life as it is, and that with unsparing frankness, but also with a spirit of idealism and desire for future national and social advance.”
+ Outlook 117:386 N 7 ‘17 170w
“One feels that the straight and logical working out of the plot has been distorted in order to furnish the author with vehicle for some of his own social theories. This, however, does not rob the final tragedy of its poignancy, nor detract from the merit of the masterly analysis of a certain type of feminine temperament embodied in Janet.” F: T. Cooper
+ — Pub W 92:1371 O 20 ‘17 1050w
“Mr Winston Churchill has been moved to picture the rapidly changing conditions of American social and industrial life in a story of great earnestness and power.”
+ R of Rs 56:556 N ‘17 400w
“It is with thanksgiving that the serious English reader hails the work of those American authors—a select few—whose mental standpoint differs little from his own. Of these writers, sprung from the old American stock, our near relations, Mr Winston Churchill is perhaps the nearest to us. His point of view is indistinguishable from that of a well-educated and large-minded Englishman, and his language is, with a few comprehensible variants, our own. 104In the course of the story we get a wonderfully clear impression of the heterogeneous mob of workers in an American manufacturing town; and of the dismay with which the old American regards these hordes of foreigners.”
+ Sat R 124:374 N 10 ‘17 580w
“In his plot Mr Churchill is less successful than usual. He has evidently taken great pains with Janet’s complex personality; but though every woman, and every man too, may be a bundle of inconsistencies, a heroine, to be credible and sympathetic, must have a more definite character than she seems to possess.”
+ — Spec 119:497 N 3 ‘17 560w
“Recently we had the melancholy spectacle of the gifted Mr Galsworthy floundering in the miasma of sex, and now comes Winston Churchill with a story which treads dangerously near the distressing phases of the same theme. There is doubt whether Mr Churchill is marking time, or entering a new epoch in his literary life. For his own well-being, it is to be hoped that the former is the case, for, notwithstanding abundant evidences of his graceful narrative style and ability at vivid portraiture of character, the story adds little, if anything to his achievements.”
– + Springf’d Republican p17 O 21 ‘17 900w
“It is a long book and closely thought out; but it is always interesting to read, because Mr Winston Churchill writes with a discernment which is based on knowledge.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p540 N 8 ‘17 570w
CLADEL, JUDITH, comp. Rodin: the man and his art; with leaves from his notebook; tr. by S. K. Star; with introd. by J. Huneker. il *$5 Century 17-29347
“Mr Huneker opens the book with an introduction in which he says practically all that need be said of Rodin. He tells us in a few paragraphs what is significant in his career; that he mastered the technique of his art by the sweat of his brow, working for other sculptors as an anonym, that he worked for the Sevres porcelain works, [etc]. ... In the biographical chapters the events of Rodin’s life are elaborated and a reasonable perspective is kept, bringing into relief the important moments [of his career]. ... The pages devoted to Rodin’s own notes cover a wide field of comment. Throughout he raises a hymn to work. ... Besides these comments, written from the intense interest of the artist in the reasons and sources of what he observes, there are other notes that are casual or lyric as the spirit prompts.” (N Y Times) “The text is illustrated by about forty beautiful photographs of Rodin’s work.” (A L A Bkl)
+ A L A Bkl 14:83 D ‘17
Reviewed by Kenyon Cox
* Nation 105:574 N 22 ‘17 2200w
“Much of the text is touched by the generous but blighting spirit of special pleading and resentment against criticism of Rodin, but biographical information is given of the kind that alone is important in the case of an artist; and the quotations from the note-books have the great value of original and direct expressions upon a subject thoroughly known and deeply felt.”
+ — N Y Times 22:557 D 16 ‘17 1600w
CLAPHAM, CHARLES BLANCHARD. Arithmetic for engineers. (Directly-useful technical ser.) il *$3 Dutton 620.8 17-14150
“This is a comprehensive, practical treatment of the most elementary arts of mathematics, including simple algebra, mensuration, logarithms, graphs and the slide rule. It is written for students of most limited training; in fact, in the endeavor to make all points perfectly clear to this class of readers the explanations and practical examples are given with most comprehensive care.”—Engin Rec
Engin N 77:436 Mr 15 ‘17 100w
“The most important feature of the text is the use of at least one practical example to illustrate every principle or procedure described. This results in a fully illustrated volume, filled with stimulating exercises using engineering subjects, presented in a satisfactory form typographically. It should be emphasized, however, that the text is written for elementary students and is in no sense a handbook for reference.”
+ Engin Rec 75:475 Mr 24 ‘17 130w
“The clear detail of the work should commend it wherever a text or home study is desired.”
+ Pittsburgh 22:447 My ‘17 60w (Reprinted from Scientific American p364 Ap 7 ‘17)
“Author is lecturer in engineering and elementary mathematics, University of London.”
+ Quar List New Tech Bks Ap ‘17 50w
CLARK, ALEXANDER GRAHAM. Text book on motor car engineering. 2v v 2 il *$3 Van Nostrand 629.2
v 2 Design.
Volume 1 dealing with Construction was published in 1912. The subject matter of the present volume is based on the author’s lectures to students in the Polytechnic, London, and it is intended “for the use of engineers, designers, draughtsmen, students and others whose work entails a knowledge of design.” The illustrations number over sixty and there are also numerous tables.
“We cannot praise too highly the clearness of diction and simplicity of expression which prevail throughout the work. Were it not for the illustrations, we should have been at some trouble to find any cause for criticism of the work at all. ... A little more discrimination in regard to the scale of the drawings as reproduced, and the preparation of an entirely new set of half-tones from original photographs, would have enhanced the value of the book to a degree which would be out of all proportion to the additional expenditure involved.”
+ — Nature 100:102 O 11 ‘17 1200w
CLARK, BARRETT HARPER. How to produce amateur plays. *$1.50 Little 792 17-15178
“A practical handbook whose aim is to demonstrate how dramatic pieces can be produced in an inexpensive, artistic and effective manner. Discussions of the choice of play and cast are followed by three chapters on rehearsing, with detailed consideration of the stage, lighting, scenery and costumes. Selective lists of amateur plays are added. The appendices include a statement on the workings of copyright and royalty and a note on make-up embodied in an article by Miss Grace Griswold. Mr Clark is qualified to discuss his subject and does so in a lucid manner that makes his instructions clear and comprehensible.”—Springf’d Republican
“Covers much the same ground as Taylor but is more direct in method, has a chapter on lighting, and is illustrated both with diagrams and photographs.”
+ A L A Bkl 14:12 O ‘17
“Such a handbook as Mr Clark’s has often been called for. Its teaching is practical and its doctrine admirable.” Algernon Tassin
+ Bookm 46:347 N ‘17 80w
+ Cleveland p105 S ‘17 50w
+ Ind 91:77 Jl 14 ‘17 40w
+ R of Rs 56:444 O ‘17 100w
+ Springf’d Republican p15 S 2 ‘17 120w
+ Wis Lib Bul 13:218 Jl ‘17 30w
CLARK, BARRETT HARPER, ed. Masterpieces of modern Spanish drama; tr. from the Spanish and Catalan. *$2 Duffield 862 17-8763
The three plays presented in this book are “The great Galeoto,” by José Echegaray; “The duchess of San Quentin,” by Benito Pérez-Galdós; and “Daniela,” by Angel Guimerá. The first and third have appeared in English in earlier translations, the third under the title “La pecadora.” A biographical sketch of the author precedes each play. In his preface Mr Clark says, “As may be seen after a cursory 105reading of the three plays contained in this collection, the Spanish drama of to-day cannot easily be summed up in a few words; the attempt here made is largely with a view to showing something of the genius of a nation whose dramatic products have as yet scarcely begun to receive the attention they so well deserve.”
“Good translations.”
+ A L A Bkl 14:120 Ja ‘18
“Echegaray’s ‘The great Galeoto’ is already known through previous translations and public readings; ‘The duchess of San Quentin,’ by Galdós, seems a little facile, theatrical, and old-fashioned. ... Guimerá’s ‘Daniela’ alone, translated from the Catalan by John Garrett Underhill, comes to us with all the force of a new sensation, and this by virtue of the profound and tragic poetry of its theme. ... It is of the great order.”
+ — Dial 62:530 Je 14 ‘17 250w
+ Ind 91:135 Jl 28 ‘17 50w
N Y Br Lib News 4:74 My ‘17 30w
“The splendid technique shown in the structure and dialogue of these Spanish dramas is an answer to the slovenly and ill-fitting constructors of plays in other countries. One learns that correctness and certainty of emphasis are not altogether lost arts in the theatre, and one wishes good fortune to the influence of these Spanish playwrights.”
+ N Y Times 22:300 Ag 12 ‘17 250w
Pittsburgh 22:747 N ‘17 50w
“Should have a hearty welcome from the public. ... By some slight oversight, Mr Barrett Clark, who has edited the plays and written a most agreeable introduction, states that only ‘The great Galeoto’ has been previously given an English translation. An excellent version of ‘Daniela,’ rather freely translated by Wallace Gillpatrick, was included among the publications of the Hispanic society (Putnam) in 1916.”
+ R of Rs 55:662 Je ‘17 140w
Springf’d Republican p10 Ap 5 ‘17 110w
CLARK, CHARLES EDGAR. My fifty years in the navy. il *$2.50 (3½c) Little 17-28674
Rear-Admiral Clark was born in Vermont in 1843, graduated from the United States naval academy at Annapolis in 1863, and was retired from the navy in 1905. In this book, he tells the story of his public life up to the time of his retirement. During the Civil war, he served on board the “Ossipee” in the West Gulf blockading squadron for nearly two years, taking an active part in the battle of Mobile bay. In the Spanish-American war, he commanded the “Oregon” on her memorable trip around the Horn to play her part in the battle of Santiago, July 3, 1898. Some thirty pages of chapter twelve are devoted to a log of the “Oregon” as written by an unlettered sailor, who was one of her crew. The addenda include diagrams showing the positions of the American and Spanish ships at the battle of Santiago. There are three portraits of Rear-Admiral Clark and a number of other illustrations.
+ A L A Bkl 14:93 D ‘17
“The author is a prince of raconteurs. The style is simple and direct. The book is well made up; the illustrations few, but good; its index fairly complete. It should be read by all who seek to comprehend the spirit of our navy during the transition from sail to steam.”
+ Nation 105:693 D 20 ‘17 800w
“A straightforward narrative of interest to all who love the American navy.”
+ Outlook 117:350 O 31 ‘17 30w
Reviewed by F: T. Cooper
+ Pub W 92:2027 D 8 ‘17 330w
CLARK, FRANCIS EDWARD.[2] In the footsteps of St Paul. il *2 (2c) Putnam 915.69
An account of the life and labors of St Paul in the light of a personal journey to the cities visited by him. The author has gone over and identified the Apostle’s routes of travel thru Tarsus, Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, Iconium, Ephesus, Salonica, Athens, Corinth, and a score of other cities. In reconstructing, as far as possible, the physical background and the scenery of St Paul’s labors, the writer makes his activities more real and vivid. The book seeks its audience among Bible students, Sunday school teachers—all who study the Bible for public or private use.
+ Boston Transcript p10 D 19 ‘17 710w
“This book is a boon to many unlikely to have heard of such a masterpiece as Sir William Ramsay’s ‘Paul the traveller and Roman citizen.’”
+ Outlook 118:67 Ja 9 ‘18 110w
CLARK, JOHN SCOTT. Study of English and American writers, v 3 $2 Row, Peterson & co. 820 16-16560
v 3 The books that have preceded this are “A study of English prose writers” and “A study of English and American poets.” In these three volumes the author has developed a “laboratory method” for use in teaching English literature. The preface to this volume says, “The method consists in determining the particular and distinctive features of the writer’s style (using the term style in its widest sense), in sustaining this analysis by a consensus of critical opinion, in illustrating the particular characteristics of each writer by carefully selected extracts from his works, and in then requiring the pupil to find, in the works of the writer, parallel illustrations.” About sixty-five authors are included. Professor Clark died before the book was ready for publication and his work has been completed by John Price Odell, professor of English in Occidental college, Los Angeles, California.
“Teachers who have not become familiar with the methods of these volumes have missed valuable training.” G: Sherburn
+ School R 25:63 Ja ‘17 580w
CLARK, JOHN SPENCER. Life and letters of John Fiske. 2v il *$7.50 Houghton 17-27754
“This is the long-awaited official life of the most eminent and the most interesting of later American historians, the work of one of John Fiske’s lifelong friends, who was associated with him in his philosophical studies, and as a member of the publishing house of James R. Osgood & Co. Mr Fiske’s career was a crowded one, and Mr Clark was in touch with it at every point. He tells the story of the famous historian’s New England boyhood, his early literary struggles, his close association with the famous Darwin-Huxley-Spencer group, his life as a lecturer on American history, his friendships, and his contributions to philosophy and literature.”—Lit D
“Mr Clark’s two-volume life shows just why such rich quality of thought and variety of knowledge filled to overflowing all that John Fiske wrote and why he was able to present his great stores to his readers with never failing clarity, simplicity, and impressiveness.” F. F. Kelly