Book Review Digest Devoted to the Valuation of Current Literature Reviews of 1920 Books (continued 30)
Reading edition
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Boston Transcript p6 Je 16 ’20 730w
Reviewed by M. W. Ovington
Freeman 1:500 Ag 4 ’20 800w
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Nation 111:736 D 22 ’20 50w
“We wish that this volume might find its way into every public library in the United States and into every school and church library in the South.”
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Outlook 125:467 Jl 7 ’20 280w
“His book deserves to be read on his own account, and also for the side lights that it throws upon negro conditions and problems.”
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R of Rs 62:111 Jl ’20 100w
“It is easy to read and is highly informing and inspiring regarding the career of one of America’s outstanding figures in contemporary affairs. It is bound to be read, especially by those who enjoy an unusual autobiography.” F. P. Chisholm
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Springf’d Republican p11a S 26 ’20 500w
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p712 N 4 ’20 520w
MOTTELAY, PAUL FLEURY, comp. Life and work of Sir Hiram Maxim; knight, chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, etc. il *$2 (4c) Lane
20–13086
Biographical facts are set forth in a foreword by the author. This is followed by an introduction by Lord Moulton. The body of the book is then devoted to the inventions of Sir Hiram Maxim, with chapters on: Electric lighting; Maxim automatic gun; Powders; Explosives; Erosion of guns; Fuzes; Gun for attacking Zeppelins; Lewis gun—Madsen gun; Flight of a projectile; Aerial navigation; etc. There are seven illustrations, appendixes and index.
Ath p604 My 7 ’20 700w
Outlook 125:715 Ag 25 ’20 60w
Spec 124:394 Mr 20 ’20 180w
The Times [London] Lit Sup p189 Mr 18 ’20 80w
MOULTON, JOHN FLETCHER MOULTON, 1st baron. Science and war. pa *80c (7½c) Putnam 509
(Eng ed 19–15830)
This small volume contains the Rede lecture for 1919, at Cambridge university. In beginning his enumeration of the debts the war owes to science Lord Moulton, without apparent ironical intent, points out that science made the war possible. He shows that the war represented “the results of the totality of scientific progress” from the beginning and then devotes himself to the more recent developments of science and invention that determined the character and extent of the war. In conclusion he warns that the next war may mean not only the end of civilization but the self-destruction of mankind.
Ath p786 Ag 22 ’19 340w
Reviewed by B: C. Gruenberg
Nation 111:104 Jl 24 ’20 160w
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Spec 123:284 Ag 30 ’19 90w
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p402 Jl 24 ’19 180w
MOULTON, RICHARD GREEN, ed. Modern reader’s Bible for schools; the New Testament. *$2.25 Macmillan 225
20–5983
“‘The modern reader’s Bible’ is not a new translation. It is the ordinary Bible (revised version), without alteration as to matter or wording, but printed in such a way as to bring out to the eye the full literary form and structure. This literary form and structure refers to such things as the difference between story, song, drama, discourse, essay: the distinction between verse and prose, together with the delicate variations of verse which make such a large part of the effect of poetry.” (Introd.) In addition to the general introduction each of the three parts, Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Revelation, has its special introduction. Some forty pages of notes are arranged at the end and there is an index “designed to give assistance in the more systematic reading of the New Testament.” There is also a frontispiece map.
Booklist 16:355 Jl ’20
“On the whole the book seems admirably adapted to the purpose intended—to provide a text of the New Testament with explanations adequate and truthful yet thoroughly adapted virginibus puerisque.”
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Nation 111:305 S 11 ’20 200w
“Professor Moulton’s ‘Reader’s Bible,’ good as it is, does not please everyone because he varies the order of the canon, and because he adopts the revised version. However, we are glad to see his simplified edition of the New Testament. It is far easier to read than any ordinary Testament.”
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Spec 125:540 O 23 ’20 170w
The Times [London] Lit Sup p637 S 30 ’20 120w
MOWAT, ROBERT BALMAIN. Henry V. il *$3.50 Houghton 942.04
“Henry V in his day was held to be the pattern of a chivalrous knight: round his name has centred the romance of medieval England; in his person Shakespeare found already expressed the glory of the Elizabethan age, the symbol of our national aspirations. The character of Henry V has many of the faults but all the virtues of his time; ... his kindness and good fellowship; his bravery and sense of justice; his unremitting industry; his piety.” (Chapter I) Among the contents are: The legendary and the real Henry; The French war; The conquest of Normandy; The treaty of Troyes; The work and character of Henry V. The book is illustrated and has an appendix, a bibliography and an index. An earlier edition of this work appeared in 1915.
Ath p668 My 21 ’20 1250w
“It is natural in such a biography rather to emphasize the heroic, and within the limits of his space Mr Mowat has given us a very readable and on the whole accurate history. But space would not permit the writer to add much that is new.” C. L. Kingsford
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Eng Hist R 35:453 Jl ’20 1100w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
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Review 3:419 N 3 ’20 500w
“Mr Mowat has written a good book, which should be widely read. He has very rightly relied in the main upon the chief French and English chronicles and biographies, and has avoided the tendency, rather too common just now, to pick out erudite and often irrelevant detail from half-read sources.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p182 Mr 15 ’20 1100w
MUIR, EDWIN. We moderns; enigmas and guesses. *$1.75 Knopf 192
20–26566
The volume is the fourth in the series of Free lance books, edited with introductions by H. L. Mencken. It is a book of aphorisms after the manner of Nietzsche and inspired by the philosophy of Nietzsche. They are animadversions on life and all the modern aspects of life as revealed in our art, literature, science, and religion; and are grouped under the headings: The old age; Original sin; What is modern? Art and literature; Creative love; The tragic view.
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Booklist 17:7 O ’20
“There are lapses, superficialities, but on the whole this is criticism, of life and of literature, which must effect a change in one’s habits of thought.”
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Dial 69:102 Jl ’20 90w
“These aphorisms are utterly without the meretricious glitter of the common epigram; they are luminous with the sober light of truth. Like Pascal’s ‘Pensees’ the logic that underlies the book is, in its smaller scale, an unconstructed cathedral of thought: it demands a certain architectural intuition of the reader. One thing is certain: no utterances more tonic, more bracing have rent the sultry firmament of contemporary literature.”
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Freeman 1:213 My 12 ’20 2150w
“He is, on the evidence of this little volume, a thinker not lightly to be passed by.”
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N Y Times p8 O 31 ’20 850w
MUMFORD, ALFRED ALEXANDER. Manchester grammar school, 1515–1915; a regional study of the advancement of learning in Manchester since the reformation. il *$8.50 (*21s) Longmans 373
20–8869
“This volume has seventeen chapters with twenty-one appendixes of documents, tracing the history of the Manchester school for three hundred years. The author is more interested in the personal history of its benefactors, directors, masters, and graduates, than he is in detailed information regarding the school’s management, support, system of education, etc., at various periods. This is somewhat disappointing to the American student. On the other hand the volume is much more than a history of one school or even of the educational forces and agencies in Manchester. There is much of value on the educational and intellectual development of England in general, and comment on the larger factors of an economic, social, and religious character, which influenced the course of this development. The main thread of the story has to do with the struggle to democratize the school and to supplant the old classical curriculum with one which would more directly meet the new economic and social conditions ushered in by the industrial revolution. There are numerous illustrations of Manchester, the school and notables connected with it, and a good index.”—Am Hist R
“The book is a creditable piece of work, even if it does not measure up to the high standard of scholarship which other writers have set in their histories of similar schools.” M. W. Jernegan
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Am Hist R 26:127 O ’20 460w
“The last chapter of Dr Mumford’s book contains much valuable material. As he was for a long time medical examiner at the school, his testimony against military training in secondary schools is important. Other valuable expert testimony is that given in regard to the irregular development of the adolescent.” W. S. Hinchman
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Review 2:523 My 15 ’20 1200w
MUNDY, TALBOT. Eye of Zeitoon. il *$2 Bobbs
20–4959
“Those who followed the fortunes of the four friends who traveled ‘The ivory trail’ will rejoice at the opportunity here afforded of meeting them once again and sharing the thrilling adventures which befell them because of ‘The eye of Zeitoon.’ This same ‘Eye of Zeitoon’ was not a precious stone of any kind, but a man named Kagig, an Armenian and a patriot, doing his best to save his countrymen from the Turks. Two women play important parts in the story—Gloria Vanderman, an American girl, resolute, strong-willed and fearless, able to handle a pistol or even a rifle in a moment of danger, and that effectively, and the mysterious Maga Jhaere, the wild, pagan, primitive half-gypsy, a veritable fiend at times, yet almost a child in her naïveté. She is interesting, but not so interesting as Kagig himself.”—N Y Times
“‘The eye of Zeitoon’ shows a great advance on ‘The ivory trail,’ which we reviewed not long ago. It has more coherence, fewer horrors, and a descriptive quality which at times touches the point of brilliance.”
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Ath p838 D 17 ’20 100w
Booklist 16:282 My ’20
“‘The eye of Zeitoon’ has most of the Kipling tricks and some of the Kipling virtues. As a yarn, it drags at times, its briskness of style being in odd contrast with the sluggish action.” H. W. Boynton
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Bookm 51:582 Jl ’20 210w
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Cleveland p72 Ag ’20 50w
“Talbot Mundy would like to be a second Rudyard Kipling and he never will, but if you don’t insist on making invidious comparisons and if you like hot fighting you can find a lot of interest and excitement in this tale.”
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Ind 104:382 D 11 ’20 80w
“A dramatic, well-written and absorbing romance of high adventure.”
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N Y Times 25:205 Ap 25 ’20 700w
Reviewed by Katharine Oliver
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Pub W 97:993 Mr 20 ’20 320w
“A highly interesting element is the author’s portraiture of eastern characters.”
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Springf’d Republican p11a Je 13 ’20 150w
“Mr Mundy strives valiantly after thrills and excitements, but scarcely succeeds in rising above the level of musical comedy.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p721 N 4 ’20 50w
MUNDY, TALBOT.[2] Told in the East. *$2 Bobbs
20–21184
“Two of the three stories in Talbot Mundy’s ‘Told in the East’ are of the proportions of novelets. They are based on dramatic incidents in the Indian mutiny. The third has a humorous trend but is withal a typical Mundy tale. The first of the trio, ‘Hookum, Hai’ has for its central figure Bill Brown, a stoical British sergeant, who, while assigned to an isolated outpost in command of a dozen men, is caught in the maelstrom of the initial uprising. A typical Mundy character—a loyal, aristocratic Rajput officer—is the hero of ‘For the salt he had eaten,’ the second story. ‘Machassan Ah,’ the final tale, relates the humorous experiences of two British bluejackets who go ashore at an Arabian port in pursuit of a native who proclaims himself an Englishman.”—Springf’d Republican
“None of the three tales published in the present volume is lacking in excitement; in fact, there is a little too much of it.”
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N Y Evening Post p10 D 31 ’20 100w
“Through the magic of these printed pages, we are transported to the India of the last century.”
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N Y Times p24 D 26 ’20 670w
“The three stories will afford pleasure and entertainment.”
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Springf’d Republican p7a D 12 ’20 230w
MUNK, JOSEPH AMASA.[2] Southwest sketches. il *$3.50 Putnam 917.8
The book describes the mesa and desert country and the coast line of the Southwest geographically, geologically, climatologically and ethnographically. The healthfulness, beauty and rare fascination of the country are dwelt upon and the 133 illustrations give some idea of the scenery and the remains of pioneer and aboriginal life. The contents are: The mesa country; Land of the cliff dwellers; In Hopiland; The Flagstaff region; The petrified forests of Arizona; El Rito de los Frijoles; On the Arizona frontier; Passing of the Apache; Ranch reminiscences; Big irrigation projects; Southwest climate; Southern California.
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N Y Times p14 Ja 2 ’21 910w
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R of Rs 53:223 F ’21 70w
“A pleasantly informal travel book. Mr Munk evidently writes with thorough knowledge and shows an appreciative eye for the beauties and oddities of that country and its native people. Particularly fascinating is the description of the petrified forests of Arizona.”
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Springf’d Republican p10 Ja 18 ’21 420w
MUNROE, JAMES PHINNEY. Human factor in education. *$1.60 Macmillan 370.1
20–2741
“A volume defending vocational education and written by a vice-chairman of the Federal board for vocational education. The author tries to show that the old regime of twenty years and more ago was a flat failure in the scheme of education in the United States. There is strong intimation that much of the old system is still in force. He shows how the great world war has helped bring us to our senses in the matter of educating boys and girls in a many-sided way rather than in a narrow way as previously. (School R) “The book does not advocate, however, the separation of vocational from academic schools.” (Booklist)
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Booklist 16:331 Jl ’20
“The plea for reorganization of elementary and secondary education could hardly be put more forcibly than is here given. To the casual reader, however, there seems to be some overemphasis in places; but this only makes one think more carefully.”
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School R 28:390 My ’20 600w
MURCHISON, CLAUDIUS TEMPLE. Resale price maintenance. pa *$1.50 Longmans 338.5
19–17749
“Dr Murchison lays the foundation for discussion of price maintenance in the two chapters upon marketing: The organization of the market, and Irregularities of the present retailing system. The discussion of price maintenance is given in chapters five to eight.” (Am Econ R) “[Other subjects discussed are] the function of the retailer, and attempts to prevent price-cutting. Issued as Columbia university studies in history, economics, and public law.” (Brooklyn)
“A serious study such as this is to be commended even though it does not say the last word upon price maintenance.” H. R. Tosdal
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Am Econ R 10:120 Mr ’20 850w
Brooklyn 12:62 Ja ’20 30w
“The various forms of price maintenance and of price cutting are described in detail, and the arguments for and against both, as well as for the author’s own compromise position, are stated with lucidity. If the reader remains unconvinced, the reason lies in the fact that in actual life the problem of price determination is bound up with a variety of other problems of equal importance to the consumer.” B. L.
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Survey 43:202 N 29 ’19 320w
MURDOCK, VICTOR. China, the mysterious and marvellous. il *$2.50 Revell 915.1
20–20219
“Mr Murdock’s book is simply a narrative of a trip into China that took him rather far into the interior and away from the usual route of the tourist.” (Freeman) “He says, ‘Here is the history of the present volume. My brother in Wichita took the letters I had written and as they had been published in our paper, the Eagle, put them in the form they bear. Our idea was to let me give copies of it to particular friends.” (N Y Times)
“It is unfortunate, we think that Mr Murdock elected to write this story of his travels, not in English, but in journalese. Some three hundred pages of etymological ‘jazz’ places an undue strain on the reader’s literary nerves. And this is more the pity because the author can command good, plain English when he wants to.” Harold Kellock
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Freeman 2:188 N 3 ’20 620w
“The text is so frisky, the words so plain and slangy, comparisons so lacking, and the subject dealt with so personally, that I wondered at a publisher printing such a book with paper and labor so dear.” F: O’Brien
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N Y Times p7 S 5 ’20 3650w
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Outlook 126:768 D 29 ’20 50w
MURRAY, ELSIE RIAEH, and SMITH, HENRIETTA BROWN. Child under eight. (Modern educator’s lib.) *$1.90 (*6s) Longmans 372.2
(Eng ed E20–581)
“The book which comes from England with this title, ‘The child under eight,’ is a discussion of the kindergarten after the fashion that might have been found in an American book fifteen or twenty years ago. The titles of the various chapters indicate the temper of the writers. There are chapters entitled The world’s mine oyster, All the world’s a stage, Joy in making, In grassy places, etc. The book is not without some practical suggestions for work in the kindergarten, but in the main it is a defense of the kindergarten with some reference to modern movements in the treatment of little children.”—El School J
El School J 20:716 My ’20 170w
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Spec 124:553 Ap 24 ’20 900w
MURRAY, GILBERT. Our great war and the great war of the ancient Greeks. (Creighton lecture, 1918) *$1.25 (13c) Seltzer 938
20–13139
A comparison between the Peloponnesian war and the great war in Europe. The war between Sparta and Athens was the greatest war the world had ever known. “Arising suddenly among civilized nations, accustomed to comparatively decent and halfhearted wars, it startled the world by its uncompromising ferocity.” And it ended in a peace that was no peace and was followed by other wars, the outcome of which was death to both combatants. Drawing on the historians and dramatists of the time the author sets forth a picture that shows many striking similarities to our modern experience. In conclusion he expresses a hope that in spite of the terrible evils growing out of the recent war, we may make use of the opportunity to build a better international life out of the ruin. The work is dated November 7, 1918.
Nation 111:252 Ag 28 ’20 350w
“Gilbert Murray’s translations are, as always, enjoyable, even though such words as ‘Niagara’ in the mouth of the Athenians make us a bit suspicious that other lively expressions also may be more Murray than Aristophanes.” J. W. Hughan
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Socialist R 9:208 N ’20 220w
MURRAY, JOHN.[2] John Murray III, 1808–1892. il *$1.50 Knopf
(Eng ed 20–8871)
“John Murray III was the grandson of the John Murray (1745–93, originally MacMurray!) who founded the famous publishing house in November, 1768, and the son of John Murray, jr. (1778–1843), who is perhaps best remembered now as friend and publisher of Byron and as publisher of the Quarterly Review. Of John Murray III (1808–92) there was no account adequate at all, except mere facts in the Dictionary of national biography, until his son’s interesting article appeared in the Quarterly Review for January, 1919. The present little book consists of that article, revised and enlarged, followed by the father’s paper on the ‘Origin and history of Murray’s handbooks for travellers,’ and by some new letters to his family (1830–91), mainly describing vividly various travels abroad and at home.”—N Y Evening Post
“The letters are excellent reading, and we venture to ask for more, if more are to be had.”
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Ath p76 Ja 16 ’20 300w
“Interesting because of his participation in literary events of real significance, such as Scott’s announcement of his authorship of ‘Waverly’ and the publication of the ‘Origin of species.’”
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Booklist 17:153 Ja ’21
“One misses such anecdotes and illustrations of literary life as might have been expected from a publisher in close contact with great writers.”
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Nation 112:90 Ja 19 ’21 180w
“This is a very interesting and welcome little book.” L. L. MacKall
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N Y Evening Post p14 D 4 ’20 1250w
“The memoir has the unusual fault of being too brief, but it does justice to its subject and adds a new and interesting chapter to the history of English publishing.”
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Spec 122:81 Ja 17 ’20 1650w
MUSCIO, BERNARD. Lectures on industrial psychology. 2d ed, rev il *$3 Dutton 658.7
20–13083
“A book principally composed of a series of lectures given to general audiences at Sydney university.” (Survey) “These lectures discuss such topics as fatigue, muscle coördination, individual differences, scientific management, motion study, and other applications of psychology to the life of workers.” (R of Rs)
Ath p180 F 6 ’20 1250w
“Taken as a whole, Mr Muscio’s volume may be recommended particularly on account of its lucidity and common sense as providing what is probably the best short account yet published in this field. In certain places, however, these lectures are distinctly weak. The author sometimes betrays only a distant acquaintance with the statistical material of his subject. Another weakness of these lectures is their too great reliance on the anecdotal method.” P. S. Florence
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Freeman 2:117 O 13 ’20 600w
R of Rs 62:447 O ’20 30w
“There is no other book for the general reader that states the case for a scientific handling of the human factor in industry more clearly or more convincingly.” B. L.
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Survey 44:638 Ag 16 ’20 280w
MUZZEY, DAVID SAVILLE. American history. il *$1.92 Ginn 973
20–10077
A prefatory note to this revised edition says, “Besides bringing the narrative down to the spring months of the year 1920, the author has entirely recast that part of the book following the Spanish war, and has made considerable changes in the preceding chapters. The changes are chiefly in the direction of added emphasis on social and economic factors in our history. New illustrative material has been added, the maps have been improved, and the bibliographical references brought down to date.” The work was first published in 1911.
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School R 28:548 S ’20 340w
MYERS, ANNA BALMER. Patchwork; a story of the “plain people.” il *$1.75 (2c) Jacobs
20–5190
The “plain people” is what the religious sects, Mennonites, Amish, etc., in the Pennsylvania Dutch country are called. Phœbe Metz was a child of the “plain people” and this is her story from the time she was a quaint, unusually interesting and original little “Dutchie” of ten until she told David Eby that she would be his wife. She was fond of the world and its vanity, her golden curls and pretty clothes. She was frank about it; she could not be anything else but honest. And she had the courage, likewise, to go her own way, sorely as she grieved and shocked Aunt Maria. She went to Philadelphia to study music; tasted and loved the world’s glitter; saw some of its wickedness too; but when it came nigh to brushing the bloom off her youth, she escaped unscathed to her beloved country. There among the people and things that were a part of her very life she found herself, and when David returned from the war with but one leg, they both knew how much they had cared since they were children. There is much charm in the book’s local coloring.
“Entertaining but with less convincing dialect and background than Mrs Martin’s ‘Tillie.’”
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Booklist 16:349 Jl ’20
“There is a good deal of information about the ‘plain sects,’ their ways and speech and ideas, in this perfectly innocuous little story.”
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N Y Times 25:321 Je 20 ’20 320w
MYERS, FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY. Human personality and its survival of bodily death. *$4 Longmans 133.9
“This well-known work first appeared about sixteen years ago in two volumes, each of about seven hundred pages in length. The text is here materially condensed, and most of the appendices, which occupied about half each volume and contained examples of phenomena analysed in the text, are omitted. A short biographical sketch of Myers is included.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“As Myers’ theory develops to include more and more unusual phenomena it preserves its persuasiveness and elasticity: Myers’ patient skill is indeed the most attractive feature of the book.” J. W. N. S.
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Ath p78 Ja 16 ’20 1300w
Reviewed by Joseph Jastrow
Dial 69:201 Ag ’20 1150w
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Outlook 125:281 Je 9 ’20 140w
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Springf’d Republican p11a Je 20 ’20 650w
The Times [London] Lit Sup p719 D 4 ’19 60w
MYERSON, ABRAHAM.[2] Nervous housewife. *$2.25 (4½c) Little 616.8
20–21011
“Every practicing physician, every hospital clinic, finds her a problem, evoking pity, concern, exasperation, and despair.” (Introd. note) By examining the various causes and forms of nervousness in housewives, from merely deënergizing neurasthenia to highly pathological cases, from all points of view, the book seeks to stimulate the trend toward greater individualization in women, and to promote a more constructive and intelligent rebellion against old-established conditions and discontents. The book is indexed and the chapter headings are: The nature of “nervousness”; Types of housewife predisposed to nervousness; The housework and the home as factors in the neurosis; Reaction to the disagreeable; Poverty and its psychical results; The housewife and her husband; The housewife and her household conflicts; The symptoms as weapons against the husband; Histories of some severe cases; Other typical cases; Treatment of the individual cases; The future of woman, the home, and marriage.
“Written sympathetically and sensibly for the housewife herself to read.”
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Booklist 17:144 Ja ’21
Boston Transcript p6 D 4 ’20 360w
“There is a note of pessimism about the book, despite its wholesomeness, that strikes a discordant chord here and there. But on the whole the book is sane, frank without being indelicate, wise, and fairly well-written.”
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N Y Evening Post p12 D 31 ’20 270w
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NALKOWSKA, SOFJA RYGIER. Kobiety (women). il *$2 (3c) Putnam
21–492
This novel of Polish life has been translated from the Polish by Michael Henry Dziewicki. It takes the form of self-revelations of a beautiful, intellectual and self-centered girl—the transitional woman. Nothing matters to her but her own sensations, her own experiences. From the height of a coldly reasoning, logical intellect she surveys passion, coquettes with it, longs for it and, when it comes rejects it—from an inherited instinct of chastity. In the words of a rejected lover, she was: “A bundle of theories, of sentimental scepticism, of self-assurance.... A poor frightened bird always popping its head under its wing!” But then this particular lover was only a splendid specimen of physical perfection. At the end, discouraged and bewildered, Janka returns to her old professor, who had been sorely grieved when she had disappointed his hopes for her and had turned her back upon science. The confessions are in three parts: Ice-plains; “The garden of red flowers”; A canticle of love.
“Specifically a story of Polish life, this very unusual book reveals the secret springs of all human life. To read it after a long course of the mediocre, superficial writing through which a reviewer, in the course of his duty, must wade is like emerging from the subway and drawing pure air into the lungs. The translator has done excellent work and the Benda drawing is distinctive.”
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N Y Times p25 O 24 ’20 380w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
Review 3:451 N 10 ’20 720w
“Considered in detail, it is a curious, sometimes brilliant, and often ludicrous work. We do not know whether the writer, for all her subtlety and power of detachment, is the least aware of what an absurd figure she has produced in Janka, this portentous type of modern youth. The book is indeed surprisingly uneven, subtle and extravagant, balanced and preposterous in turn.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p797 D 2 ’20 620w
NAPIER, MARGARET. Songs of the dead. *$1.50 Lane 821
20–17909
In his introduction to these poems Edward Garnett says of them that they are unlike anything else; that they are not a “normal” product; that they are a rough diamond from a matrix suggesting comparison with the author of “The marriage of heaven and hell”; that in the simplicity and intensity with which they banish from our sight everything extraneous, alien to their passion, they are a lesson in poetry; and that, with the conception that when we die we live on in the grave, in our memories, in our anguish, in our desires, they are a lesson in passionate feeling.
“They are poems of frustration, imperfect verbal equivalents of great spiritual experiences, greater in intention and conception than in realized execution. Miss Napier writes in free verse, in a curiously tortured style full of inversions (one has the feeling that she is trying to express, by the unnatural quality of the style, the more than normal intensity of her emotion).”
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Ath p527 Ap 16 ’20 160w
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Boston Transcript p6 N 3 ’20 480w
N Y Evening Post p29 O 23 ’20 80w
NATHAN, GEORGE JEAN, and MENCKEN, HENRY LOUIS. American credo. *$1.75 Knopf 814
20–3354
One hundred and three of the one hundred and ninety-one pages of this “contribution toward the interpretation of the national mind” (Sub-title) are preface, excused by the authors on the ground “having read it, one need not read the book.” The authors’ contention is that “deep down in every man there is a body of congenital attitudes, a corpus of ineradicable doctrines and ways of thinking, that determines his reactions to his ideational environment.” While the preface consists of ratiocinations on these attitudes, doctrines and ways of thinking the book itself is a collection of maxims and traditional tenets that are supposed to make up the mental equipment of the ordinary man. The first one reads: “That the philoprogenitive instinct in rabbits is so intense that the alliance of two normally assiduous rabbits is productive of 265 offspring in one year.” Other examples are: “That Henry James never wrote a short sentence”; and “That German peasants are possessed of a profound knowledge of music.”
Ath p429 Mr 26 ’20 140w
Ath p574 Ap 30 ’20 1200w
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Booklist 16:338 Jl ’20
“None but a captious critic could find fault with the fact that the authors’ preface occupies fully two-thirds of the book, for in that space the truth about America and its inhabitants is told as it has not been for some time.” G. M. H.
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Boston Transcript p9 Mr 10 ’20 480w
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Cleveland p76 Ag ’20 60w
Dial 68:666 My ’20 80w
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R of Rs 62:447 O ’20 10w
Springf’d Republican p6 Je 17 ’20 260w
“The stringing together of widely held fallacies does not constitute an ‘American credo’ any more than a collection of ‘want’ ads makes a job. It does not describe, explain or interpret anything. The authors themselves do not know American character, even in its major aspects, but only its ludicrous or despicable blemishes.”
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Survey 44:385 Je 12 ’20 140w
“On the whole we do not gather from this repertory of popular fallacies any very definite picture of American mentality. But one can get from the latter half, at any rate, which does great credit to the authors’ ingenuity, a good deal of entertainment.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p190 Mr 18 ’20 280w
NATHAN, ROBERT. Peter Kindred. *$2 (2c) Duffield
20–1889
The story of a boy’s school and college life, and his first contacts with the outer world. Peter’s father sends him to Phillips Exeter with the vague intention of giving him a gentleman’s education. The two years in this school are followed by four at Harvard and the story traces the quiet unsensational development of his mind and character. He makes friends, is converted to Carverism—the economic creed of a popular professor, and in his junior year meets Joan, a Radcliffe student. Peter and Joan are married the year after his graduation. They set up housekeeping in a New York tenement and work and play together and test out their theories of life. The story ends with the birth and death of their child.
“Unluckily there is not quite enough ‘to him’ to command and hold our interest and concern at the exacted pitch.” H. W. Boynton
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Bookm 51:343 My ’20 120w
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Dial 68:537 Ap ’20 50w
“The reader possessed of sufficient pertinacity to work his way through the first two hundred pages of ‘Peter Kindred’ will find in the last part of the book a realistic sketch of youthful theories and ideals at war with the economic facts of life.”
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N Y Times 25:50 Ja 25 ’20 300w
“The story is well thought out and well written. Mr Nathan has put a great deal into his work and has taken it seriously. That in itself is more than can be said for many writers of current fiction.”
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Outlook 124:479 Mr 17 ’20 240w
“The boy is a tolerably nice boy, and he does and thinks and says the things a tolerably nice boy would. We do not deny that he is true to fact. But what of it? Who cares? Since the author has failed to make us care about him as a person?” H. W. Boynton
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Review 2:392 Ap 17 ’20 900w
NEALE, REGINALD EDGAR. Electricity. il $1 Pitman 621.3
20–16269
“In this book the author attempts no more than a review of the general nature of electricity, the methods of producing it and the services to which it is applied.” (Preface) The book is illustrated with forty-five figures in the text. It is issued as one of Pitman’s common commodities and industries series.
“It is remarkable how complete and accurate is the information given. The reader is, however, hurried on unpleasantly fast, and is never allowed to pause where his interest is aroused.”
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Nature 105:804 Ag 26 ’20 230w
NEIHARDT, JOHN GNEISENAU.[2] Splendid wayfaring. il *$2.25 Macmillan 978
20–27591
“As a poet, picturing the savage adventure of the early days of the Yankee invasion of the plains and mountains, Mr Neihardt has already won his reputation: his theme is huge and his powers are not unworthy of it. In his new volume, a prose volume, he appears again in his chosen domain, now as an historian. The period taken is 1822 to 1831, the event is the career of Jedediah Smith, who in the eight years of his adventurous maturity was the first American leader to discover the central overland route to California—later the great immigrant and trade route—and to measure the length of the Pacific coast from Los Angeles to the Columbia.”—Bookm
“Mr Neihardt gives unity and verve to his volume by making Smith the central spirit: but it is in a truly epic mode that the story is conceived, and hence there could not be less than a picturesque emphasis upon the companions of the hero, among them Ashley and Henry, builders of the fur industry, and the trapper Hugh Glass who is the subject of one of Mr Neihardt’s best-known poems.” Hartley Alexander
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Bookm 52:360 Ja ’21 580w
“All this is fascinating reading, suggesting the lurid tales, much sought and pored over, in boyhood, but while it is fascinating, it is history, history of the growth of the United States; as important as the occupation of the older states and the taking of the central portion of the present union.” J. S. B.
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Boston Transcript p2 N 24 ’20 570w
“This task has evidently been a labour of love, for Mr Neihardt has not felt impelled to follow the pattern of angular, unimaginative recital into which so many books of this kind fall.” L. B.
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Freeman 2:478 Ja 26 ’21 180w
“A parallel work by, say McMaster, and called, say ‘Western exploration from 1822–1831,’ would have been a valuable contribution to the history of the West; but ‘The splendid wayfaring,’ as the title plainly shows, is more than that; it is an American prose epic, an absorbing tale of courage and endurance.” Walter Franzen
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N Y Evening Post p14 D 4 ’20 520w
“Mr Neihardt has for the subject of this prose story one of the truly dramatic themes of American history.”
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R of Rs 63:223 F ’21 110w
“Mr Neihardt has allowed himself a rather lofty flight in his opening paragraphs, where he links his tale up with that of the western progress of the Aryan races. In a number of other places a tendency to ornate language may be observed. But in other respects ‘The splendid wayfaring’ has compelling force.”
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Springf’d Republican p10 D 17 ’20 300w
“Mr Neihardt has succeeded in giving some epical quality to his heroes and painting, as he intended to do, the mood of their adventures.” M. C. C.
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Survey 45:578 Ja 15 ’21 240w
NEKLIUDOV, ANATOLII VASIL’EVICH.[2] Diplomatic reminiscences before and during the world war, 1911–1917; tr. from the French, by Alexandra Paget. *$8 Dutton
(Eng ed 20–10794)
“A Russian diplomat’s frank statement of what he learned as Minister to Bulgaria during the Balkan wars of 1912 and of 1913, supplemented by his observations during the world war, when he was serving as Minister to Sweden, and Ambassador to Spain. Writing in the firm conviction that all who took part in the tremendous events of those years now belong to ‘an irrevocable past,’ M. Nekliudov speaks as freely concerning his contemporaries as if they were actually dead.”—R of Rs
“M. Nekliudov, with his tears and his discontents, is not a very interesting person. The best part of his long book is the record of his ambassadorship in Sweden during the war, and in his comments on certain Russian statesmen such as Stürmer and Protopopoff he has something to say that is not without interest.”
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Ath p205 Ag 13 ’20 270w
R of Rs 63:109 Ja ’21 90w
“The style is more than clear and studiously temperate: it is at times eloquent and pathetic, and throughout tinged with the philosophy natural to a cultured gentleman. The English of Alexandra Paget is so good that it must, we think, be ranked as a first-rate translation.”
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Sat R 130:94 Jl 31 ’20 1000w
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Spec 124:87 Jl 17 ’20 210w
“Having lost his emperor, his country and his sons, this former representative of a departed system sees no necessity to guard certain of those secrets which go to make up the mystery of diplomacy. In consequence of this break with the past which fate has forced upon him M. Nekliudov is interesting and informative.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p343 Je 3 ’20 1300w
NEW Decameron; second day. *$1.90 McBride
20–8740
The first volume was published last year. Like it this second volume is a collection of short stories by different authors, each story in keeping with the character of its narrator. Contents: Jim of Moloch’s bar, by Francis Carco: Bread upon the waters, by Michael Sadleir; The history of Andrew Niggs, by Basil Blackwell; The tool, by W. F. Harvey; The master-thief, by Dorothy L. Sayers; The affair of the Mulhaven baby, by M. Nightingale; The vase, by Camilla Doyle; “Once upon a time” by Bill Nobbs; A prayer perforce, by M. Storm Jameson; Salvator Street, by Sherard Vines.
“In spite of serious inequalities in the work, the total result is undoubtedly entertaining. In all the stories there is evidence of careful workmanship, a preoccupation with literary means which is highly satisfactory save when it aims at effect with too unchastened self-consciousness.” F. W. S.
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Ath p172 Ag 6 ’20 520w
“Some of them are excellent, some rather poor and a few unequivocally dull. Heralded simply as ‘Salvator street’ comes the surprise of the book. In it Sherard Vines has succeeded in creating a character besides writing the best story of the volume.”
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Boston Transcript p4 D 11 ’20 350w
“The idea of vocational guidance in the telling of tales is not altogether conducive to the best flights of the imagination. The obligation to relate the sort of story that a master-printer, a poet, or a psychic researcher would be apt to relate seems to have put a restraint upon most of the contributors.” L. B.
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Freeman 2:501 F 2 ’21 130w
“‘The new Decameron,’ to carry on its excellent plan, must be, like the ‘Canterbury tales’ which its general method recalls, more variously human in substance and in modulation. Their inventiveness in plot and ingenuity in structure are remarkable. But these are not high qualities in fiction. ‘The new Decameron’ needs not, indeed, cheerfulness, but sunlight; less smell of the charnel house and more of the earth.”
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Nation 111:596 N 24 ’20 260w
“The structure of the book is cleverly contrived, and in reading it the fact that this is the work of several hands does not obtrude itself too violently. At its best the book is artistic, and it is always elegant. The remoteness, the wickedness, and the nervous dread of crudity dissociate the authors from the literary giants of past times. All the contributors give an impression of literary taste, and not one of them has generated a ‘human document.’”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p363 Je 10 ’20 550w
NEWBOLT, SIR HENRY JOHN.[2] Book of good hunting. il *$3.50 (*10s 6d) Longmans 799
20–18594
“Sir Henry Newbolt has put together many interesting stories about sport. Elephants, lions, and tigers come first: then there are chapters on deer-hunting and fox-hunting, with many extracts from Mr Masefield’s fine poem, ‘Reynard the fox,’ and a closing chapter on fishing. In his introductory chapter, ‘On the nature of sport,’ he states the arguments for and against sport, and insists very strongly on the value of true sportsmanship to the national character.”—Spec
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Ath p649 N 12 ’20 500w
“Sir Henry Newbolt writes so pleasantly that he will attract readers of all ages.”
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Spec 125:710 N 27 ’20 90w
“From a literary or sporting standpoint, the book is equally attractive.”
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Springf’d Republican p10 Ja 18 ’21 320w
“The instances of hunting experiences chosen by Sir Henry are admirably described, and compel the reader to share the excitement of the hunter. He brings out all the concomitants which differentiate sport from killing.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p825 D 9 ’20 950w
NEWLAND, H. OSMAN. Romance of modern commerce. il *$2 Lippincott 380
20–3902
“The book is, as described in its sub-title, a popular account of the production of a number of common commodities. It collects a mass of miscellaneous information about wheat and other cereals, tea, coffee and cocoa, rubber, tobacco, cotton, silk, wool, timber, paper, fruit and wine, cattle and leather, vegetable and mineral oils, furs and feathers, precious stones and metals.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“Informative and of varying interest. Could be used by upper grades and high schools.”
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Booklist 17:55 N ’20
Brooklyn 12:126 My ’20 20w
R of Rs 62:448 O ’20 30w
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p748 D 11 ’19 150w
NEWMAN, ERNEST. Musical motley. *$1.50 Lane 780.4
20–1630
A series of papers by an English musical critic. Among the titles are: “L’enfant prodigue”; On instruments and their players; On musical surgery; Criticism by code; Futurist music; The best hundred scores.
“Mr Newman is a musician of the nineteenth century. This must not be taken to mean that he is an old-fashioned pedant who is out of touch with new developments. On the contrary, he is intensely interested in modern music and has no sentimental illusions about that of the past. Music is for him always a thing of the living present.” E: J. Dent
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Ath p1010 O 10 ’19 900w
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Booklist 16:232 Ap ’20
“Mr Newman is never dull, even when he is grave.” H: T. Finck
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Bookm 51:169 Ap ’20 440w
“The chief attraction of Mr Newman’s book, besides its dry humor, is its lack of dogmatism and its corresponding illumination of speculative points.” M. H.
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New Repub 22:168 Mr 31 ’20 520w
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R of Rs 61:224 F ’20 80w
“He differs from a good many fashionable critics in his familiarity with the works of the ancients, and in testing the moderns by standards which these critics are either ignorant of, or refuse to accept. Perhaps the wisest and sanest passages in the book are those in which he differentiates the originality that counts from that which does not.”
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Spec 123:542 O 25 ’19 1450w
“The book is always interesting, often gay, reading. The essays on the classics are apt, but do not go far enough; that on the grotesque is tentative, that on obituaries might have been omitted. We should have liked some more like ‘Originality in music’ and ‘Quotation,’ and that on Bishop Blougram in partibus, which are full of sound judgments delivered with a light touch.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p545 O 9 ’19 1300w
NEWSHOLME, SIR ARTHUR. Public health and insurance: American addresses. $2.50 Johns Hopkins 614
20–12817
“Sir Arthur Newsholme has for thirty-five years been an active figure in the public health profession of Great Britain and for eleven of those years has served as principal medical officer of the Local government board. In the fall of 1919 he came to the School of hygiene and public health of Johns Hopkins as lecturer on public health administration. The book just published is made up of addresses delivered to public audiences in the course of visits paid to various university and medical centers in America.” (Survey) “It is largely devoted to the present state of public health in England and to the progress in public health policy that has been realized within the last fifty years.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup)
“The sections which describe the wonderful progress made in dealing with tuberculosis and child welfare in England during the past few years will prove of absorbing interest to the specialist. There is hardly a chapter in the book, however, which should not be read by every social worker for its value as a contribution to the philosophy of social reform.” C.-E. A. Winslow
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Survey 45:259 N 13 ’20 460w
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p621 S 23 ’20 170w
NEWTON, ALMA (MRS ALMA NEWTON ANDERSON). Jewel in the sand. *$1.35 (6c) Duffield
20–1890
A beautiful girl, Cynthia, tells her story in detached episodes: how she left her barren, loveless New England home to come to New York and study music; how after her first success love came to her. The perfect soul union is marred by the man’s duality. She goes away, has more half mystic experience, becomes more and more spiritualized as she struggles with poverty and is at last rescued by the man who had always loved her unselfishly, had renounced her and had waited. He marries her and takes her home to the East.
“By dealing with life more realistically than she has yet done Alma Newton has deepened the effect of those unique spiritual qualities that have from the first distinguished her work.”
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N Y Times 25:39 Ja 25 ’20 600w
NEWTON, W. DOUGLAS. Westward with the Prince of Wales. il *$2.50 (2½c) Appleton 917.1
20–17402
The author, as special correspondent, accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour through Canada and the United States and gives his impressions of the Prince, the cities and country through which they passed, and the receptions they received, in an entertaining chatty way.
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Ath p528 Ap 16 ’20 60w
“He has a distinctive and pleasing style. His volume is as good-humored an account of travels as has appeared for some time.”
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Boston Transcript p6 S 1 ’20 280w
“He draws an intimate and charming portrait of the Prince, and furnishes at the same time, an entertaining view of Canada and some cities of the United States as they appear to an intelligent Englishman.”
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N Y Times p14 D 5 ’20 1100w
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Outlook 126:378 O 27 ’20 40w
Review 3:194 S 1 ’20 200w
“Gaily, vividly, even wittily, Mr Newton sets forth what he saw; unimportant and unpretentious as this record of a transcontinental journey across Canada is, it will inspire readers to go and do likewise. Mr Newton writes in a vein of amused appreciation.”
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Springf’d Republican p11a Ag 22 ’20 1600w
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p244 Ap 15 ’20 160w
NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION. Newton chapel. $1.50 (2c) Am. Bapt. 252
20–8357
A selection from the chapel talks delivered during the year 1918–19 by members of the faculty of the Newton theological institution. The first is on The meaning of the New year, by President George E. Horr. Among those that follow are: How Jesus looked at men, by Winfred N. Donovan; The compelling power of Jesus’ personality, by Henry K. Rowe; Freedom and service, by James P. Berkeley; The inner life, by Samuel S. Curry; The joy of forgiveness, by Frederick L. Anderson; The spirit of expectation, by Richard M. Vaughan; James Russell Lowell and the preacher, by Woodman Bradbury. The chapel talks are supplemented by seven addresses at the conference of the Baptist leaders of New England.
“On the whole the talks are unified, interesting, and excellent examples of little sermons.”
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Bib World 54:433 Jl ’20 200w
“The clergy expect the scientist, the historian, the statesman to stick to known facts, and then wonder why the church does not succeed better while the preacher is permitted to soar off into the realms of the imagination and preach as sacred truth that which finds its origin in theory and its expression in cant. Of course there are good things in the book, much sound advice, many godly admonitions, but it is proper to call attention to a dangerous method of preaching which succeeds in little else than furnishing ground for scepticism.”
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Springf’d Republican p8 Ag 6 ’20 300w
NEXÖ, MARTIN ANDERSEN. Ditte: girl alive! *$2 (2c) Holt
20–26759
This story, translated from the Danish, describes the life of poor fisherfolk and of the poorest of small farmers. It is the story of a little illegitimate girl left in the care of her grandparents, whose one joy in life she becomes. When her mother, a cold, selfish, cruel creature, now married to a rag-and-bone man and huckster, wants her as nurse for her other children, she does not hesitate to take her away from the blind, widowed grandmother. Ditte’s life is wretched, her only true friend her step-father, the jovial rag-and-bone man. She repays him by standing by him, through all his sorrows and afflictions, with indomitable good nature and courage, until she is forced to leave him to go into service.
“The loveliness in human nature and the evil also stand out in sharp relief against the simple, often sordid background. Will interest readers of ‘Pelle the conqueror.’”
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Booklist 17:73 N ’20
“The Danish author has not been fortunate in the translation, however, which is uneven and lacking in idiomatic grace.” E. P.
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Dial 70:106 Ja ’21 60w
“With all the straitened cruelty of its events the story has a quality which is almost glamorous. The simple telling and lack of stress somehow give it breadth; it is full of the effect of open spaces. There are passages of great tenderness, and others of fresh gaiety and resilience. Then, too a primary perception of human forces lifts the story out of any narrow bondage.” C. M. Rourke
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Freeman 2:213 N 10 ’20 420w
“The story scrupulously avoids an artificial symmetry of structure and follows, so far as possible, the rhythm of life. The firmness and simplicity of the style shine even through an inferior translation.”
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Nation 111:303 S 11 ’20 600w
“The English version is a livid corpse, and the only function left for a reviewer who knows the original is that of coroner. In common honesty, Henry Holt & Co. should put on the title page of ‘Ditte: girl alive,’ ‘Mutilated from the Danish,’ and omit the name of the innocent author.” Signe Toksvig
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New Repub 25:113 D 22 ’20 1300w
“The characters in the book are flesh-and-blood people and their drab, dreary lives are made very real.”
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N Y Times p24 S 5 ’20 620w
Outlook 126:238 O 6 ’20 50w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
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Review 3:450 N 10 ’20 520w
Spec 125:744 D 4 ’20 30w
“The book deserves to be read. It is well-written, effective, and above all, bears the earmarks of truth.”
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Springf’d Republican p9a N 14 ’20 370w
“It is to be supposed that, as with ‘Pelle,’ this volume is but one of several dealing with the same characters, and that later Ditte will develop into womanhood. If that be so, Mr Nexö has made an interesting first movement, though it may be hoped that later ones may have the contrast of greater lightness; if this be all, then it can only be regarded as an unfinished fantasia.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p701 O 28 ’20 480w
NICHOLS, ROBERT MALISE BOWYER. Aurelia, and other poems. *$2 Dutton 821
20–15351
“The sequence of ‘Sonnets to Aurelia’ gives the story of a disappointed lover with his mistress whose falseness, though ugly, intensifies the helpless passion of the man. The form of the sonnet in which the poet tells his story is Shakspearean.”—Boston Transcript
“Mr Nichols, like many of the minor Elizabethan lyrists, uses the fourteen lines of the sonnet simply for the sake of their sound, their rich baroque handsomeness of appearance. That is the principal and, to our mind, damning defect of his sonnets. They have no substance. The fountains are dry, the parched stone faces open their mouths to no purpose; we are at a loss to see why the monument was built.”
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Ath p765 Je 11 ’20 1200w
“Among Mr Nichols’s most potent qualities the quality of vision is the steadiest and strongest. Among the most recent English poets he is the richest in this endowment.” W. S. B.
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Boston Transcript p6 S 8 ’20 1200w
“The result is, to my taste, like a dish flavoured with nutmeg and cinnamon to which has been added a dash of tabasco sauce.” J: G. Fletcher
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Freeman 2:331 D 15 ’20 600w
“With some of the faults of youth, Mr Nichols has all of its virtues. He is adaptable, he is resourceful, he is restlessly eager to try new methods, to pour his soul into an unaccustomed vessel. He has force, eloquence, fire, and passion.”
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Spec 124:22 Jl 3 ’20 850w
“The conspicuous fault of ‘Aurelia’ is the insecurity of its style. Here is a series of quasi-Shakespearian sonnets, in which we have conceits without gracefulness, artifices aimed at intensifying rather than at easing the situations they describe—in brief a conscious author, magnifying an experience the content of which was meagre at the best in imitation of a spontaneous one the experience of which is too full to be contained.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p418 Jl 1 ’20 1000w
NICHOLSON, MEREDITH. Blacksheep! blacksheep! il *$1.75 Scribner
20–7287
“At a dinner in Washington the hero, one Archibald Bennett, whose income encourages his neurasthenia, sits next to a girl who tells him that no man whose life motto is ‘Safety first!’ is likely to have a very good time or escape a bored anaemia. Several days later the same Archie goes to Maine to look at a house for his sister, and the next thing he knows he has shot a man and is a fugitive from justice in the stolen car driven by the ‘governor’! After that you, together with the police forces of most of the states in the Union, are completely in the ‘governor’s’ power.”—N Y Times
Booklist 16:314 Je ’20
Cleveland p72 Ag ’20 60w
“It is as breathlessly contrived and as diverting to follow as a crooked street in a mediaeval town, along which anything might happen.”
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N Y Times 25:220 My 2 ’20 550w
“The tale furnishes pleasant diversion.”
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Springf’d Republican p11a Je 6 ’20 480w
NICHOLSON, WATSON. Anthony Aston, stroller and adventurer. *$1.25 The author, South Haven, Mich.
20–19783
This brief monograph forms a footnote to stage history. Little has been known of Tony Aston, the author says, “save that he was a strolling player for many years, the author of an unsuccessful play and the much more important Brief supplement to Colley Cibber’s apology.” An autobiographical sketch which he happened upon in the British museum in 1914 has been made the basis of Mr Nicholson’s account. This sketch is appended, as is the “Brief supplement.”
“The reprint is welcome and every student interested in ancient Bohemias will be delighted to hear Aston tell, with complete disregard for syntax and in the authentic pot-house style of Ned Ward and the other blackguard wits, of his amazingly varied career.”
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Nation 112:sup246 F 9 ’21 450w
“The student of the stage and society will find his career interesting for the light it throws upon the provincial and illegitimate stage of the time, concerning which practically nothing is known.” J. W. Krutch
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N Y Evening Post p8 N 27 ’20 380w
NICHOLSON, WATSON. Historical sources of DeFoe’s Journal of the plague year. $2 Stratford co. 942.06
DeFoe’s “Journal of the plague year” which has hitherto been classified as fiction and has been accounted as a “masterpiece of the imagination” is here proven, by the aid of extracts from original documents in the Burney collection and manuscript room of the British museum, to be “a faithful record of historical facts, that it was so intended by the author and is as nearly correct as it was humanly possible to make it from the sources and time at his command.” The contents are: Originals and parallels of the stories in DeFoe’s Journal; The historical sources of the Journal; Errors in the Journal; Summary. The appendices consist of excerpts from the original sources of the Journal and from hitherto unpublished documents illustrative of the plague. There is a bibliography.
Outlook 125:281 Je 9 ’20 90w
Spec 124:834 Je 19 ’20 400w
Springf’d Republican p8 Jl 23 ’20 240w
“Dr Watson Nicholson’s book suffers a little from the researcher’s usual impatience with those who preceded him; a little more from his sometimes odd and slack English; more still from careless proof-reading. But those who are interested in DeFoe should read the book, because the author does more than work his case out closely.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p418 Jl 1 ’20 800w
NICOLAY, HELEN. Boys’ life of Lafayette. il *$1.60 (2½c) Harper
20–16920
The author writes of Lafayette as “a very gallant, inspiring figure uniting the old world with the new.” She tells her young readers in the preface: “This is no work of fiction. It is sober history; yet if the bare facts it tells were set forth without the connecting links, its preface might be made to look like the plot of a dime novel.” The book is illustrated and has an index.
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Booklist 17:123 D ’20
“Even tho this is pure history, as the author declares, there is a deal of romance in the life of Lafayette to fascinate the young reader.”
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Lit D p96 D 4 ’20 40w
NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH WILHELM. Antichrist. (Free lance books) *$1.75 (5c) Knopf 230
20–4092
Mr Mencken has made a new translation of “The antichrist,” Nietzsche’s last work with the exception of his “Ecce homo.” The introduction states: “The present translation of ‘The antichrist’ is published by agreement with Dr Oscar Levy, editor of the English edition of Nietzsche. There are two earlier translations, one by Thomas Common and the other by Anthony M. Ludovici.... I began this new Englishing of the book, not in any hope of supplanting them, and surely not with any notion of meeting a great public need, but simply as a private amusement in troubled days. But as I got on with it I began to see ways of putting some flavour of Nietzsche’s peculiar style into the English, and so amusement turned into a more or less serious labour.” Mr Mencken’s introduction offers a critical interpretation of Nietzsche.
“Mr Mencken’s translation of Nietzsche’s last considerable work is lively and energetic, and his introduction is a happy example of his critical writing.”
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Ath p557 Ap 23 ’20 130w
Booklist 17:85 N ’20
Reviewed by Preserved Smith
Nation 110:sup483 Ap 10 ’20 250w
The Times [London] Lit Sup p243 Ap 15 ’20 60w
NIVEN, FREDERICK JOHN. Tale that is told. *$1.90 (1½c) Doran
20–17825
The simple uneventful chronicle of a Scotch clergyman’s family, told in a leisurely manner. The father is a genial egotist who had preached to Queen Victoria at Balmoral and who never lets this fact be lost sight of. The story follows the course of the six children’s lives after his death, telling of their worldly success, business affairs, love affairs and marriages. For a time three of the brothers conduct a book store and circulating library, of which an amusing account is given.
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Ath p439 O 1 ’20 820w
“He takes such a ‘slice of life’ as might delight Mr Hugh Walpole, and he treats it quite in the manner of Mr Walpole, only—and it is an important difference—he lacks something of his vitality. The substance is more level, a level quality not due to restraint but to quality of vision.” D. L. M.
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Boston Transcript p4 O 20 ’20 700w
“The scenes in the library are especially good.”
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Cleveland p105 D ’20 40w
“The novel as a whole reflects the commonplace lives of the vast majority of us, ‘such poor little figures struggling along in the jungle’ with considerable accuracy.”
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N Y Times p18 N 14 ’20 850w
“I wish I could feel the glow that so many writing people seem to be feeling about Frederick Niven’s ‘A tale that is told.’ It is pleasant enough, human enough in its somewhat lacklustre fashion; but in the end not much more than ‘a long preparation for something that never happens.’”
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Review 4:57 Ja 19 ’21 640w
“The characters are unusually alive; it is a pity that they all lack charm. The book is well constructed; the author has distinct ability.”
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Spec 126:56 Ja 8 ’21 40w
“It is refreshing to come upon a man who can write both lightly and profoundly and who can mingle tenderness and humor without losing the force of either.”
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Springf’d Republican p9a N 14 ’20 380w
“It is not a story with a pattern, but there is a frame to it that gives it bounds and a focus that gives it coherence; there is sunlight in it—the pale northern sunlight of Scotland. The characterization is clear and the more pungent for its tolerance.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p633 S 30 ’20 470w
NOGUCHI, YONÉ (MISS MORNING GLORY, pseud.). Japanese hokkus. *$2 Four seas co. 895
20–20445
The hokku is the seventeen syllable poem of Japan which the author describes at some length in the preface. This preface is in itself a prose poem in its quaint English and with the vista it opens into the Japanese mind. The real value of the hokku, we are told, is not in what it expresses but how it expresses itself spiritually: not in its physical directness but in its psychological indirectness. It is “like a spider-thread laden with the white summer dews, swaying among the branches of a tree; ... that sway indeed, not the thread itself, is the beauty of our seventeen syllable poem.” Of the translating of the hokku the author says, it is like the attempt to bring down the spider-net and hang it up in another place. The epilogue is a reflection on the introduction of western civilization into Japan.
“‘Japanese hokkus’ is remarkable for at least two reasons; one, because its poems are of that sensitive and illusive loveliness that is rare in the realism of contemporary publications, and another because the book links the literature of the Orient and the Occident rather more than any other poet whom we recall.” K. B.
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Boston Transcript p7 O 2 ’20 1100w
“Whether it is because he is writing in a foreign language, or because English cannot have packed into it the associations of thousands of years and the treasure of half-forgotten philosophies, the Japanese poet fails to produce the effect achieved by Waley in his translations.” Babette Deutsch
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Dial 70:206 F ’21 230w
“To enjoy this present volume and to be deaf to Mr Walter de la Mare—or to Shakespeare’s songs, for that matter—is to enjoy the art page of the newspaper more than a visit to the originals in the art gallery.” Llewellyn Jones
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Freeman 2:260 N 24 ’20 600w
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N Y Evening Post p18 O 23 ’20 110w
NOLEN, JOHN. New ideals in the planning of cities, towns and villages. il $1 (3c) Am. city bureau, Tribune bldg., N.Y. 710
20–211
“The cities of the United States have not yet made many of those public improvements that are so essential to modern life, especially for the new era.... They have not yet applied in a businesslike and economical manner the methods characteristic of the modern city planning movement. Therefore the American city still suffers in many ways from haphazard, piecemeal and shortsighted procedure.” (Part 1) To show how these shortcomings are to be remedied, how the new civic spirit is growing, what has already been done and what is the promise of the future is the object of the book. Among the topics discussed in the first part are: Two main divisions of city planning; Specific needs of the smaller city; How to replan a city; How to get a city plan into action. Part 2 contains in part: The city planning movement; Local data as basis of city plan; Types of city plans; Elements of city plans; Professional training and experience; New towns and new standards; Public opinion and city planning progress.
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Booklist 17:20 O ’20
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Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 11 ’20 220w
“We have never seen within such small compass a clearer description of the processes of town planning or of the principles that underlie good planning. A special merit of the book is that it reckons with the limitations and difficulties of the small town where at the present time such leadership as this is most needed and where examples taken from the costly improvement schemes of large cities are not helpful.” B. L.
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Survey 43:592 F 14 ’20 320w
NORRIS, KATHLEEN (THOMPSON) (MRS CHARLES GILMAN NORRIS). Harriet and the piper. il *$1.90 (2c) Doubleday
20–13977
Harriet Fields had an emotional adventure when she was seventeen, and her romantic fancy was captured by Royal Blondin’s talk on Yogi philosophy, oriental religion and poetry. She even went through a bogus marriage ceremony with him when her youthful timorousness saved her from further disaster. Ten years later, when she is filling a position of trust, as companion to the wife of the rich Richard Carter and governess to his daughter Nina, Blondin crosses her path again holding their former relationship over her as a sword, to enlist her aid in the furtherance of his new schemes, i. e., marrying young Nina Carter and possessing himself of her fortune. It involves Harriet in many temptations. Twixt the overcoming of and yielding to them her character is clarified. After Mrs Carter’s elopement and sudden death, Harriet enters a marriage of convenience with Richard Carter, whom she secretly loves and admires and the wooing by the husband of his new wife forms part of the interest of the book.
“A lively and interesting story.”
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Ath p813 D 10 ’20 60w
Booklist 17:35 O ’20
“Well worn, even threadbare as her material is, Kathleen Norris has contrived to concoct from it a very pleasant little story, and one which holds the reader’s attention until the last half dozen chapters, when it begins to drag badly. It is smoothly written, and agreeable to read.”
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N Y Times p24 Ag 1 ’20 950w
“Readers who can put aside the insubstantial theme and the artificial dilemmas attributed to the principals, will find some entertainment in the flow of life and color through their vaguely troubled days.”
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Springf’d Republican p11a S 12 ’20 200w
The Times [London] Lit Sup p801 D 2 ’20 100w
NORWOOD, GILBERT.[2] Greek tragedy. $5 Luce, J: W. 882
(Eng ed 20–16119)
“The summaries and criticisms of the extant plays constitute the main body of the book, forty-eight pages being given to Æschylus, fifty-four to Sophocles, a hundred and forty-one to Euripides. The book, as the author says, ‘aims to cover the whole field of the Greek drama, both for the student and the general reader.’”—N Y Evening Post
“We think that, for Euripides, his present work is sound as well as interesting. When we turn to his treatment of Æschylus and Sophocles, we feel that in attempting to cover the whole ground, Mr Norwood has undertaken more than he is at present ready to perform.” J. T. Sheppard
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Ath p10 Jl 2 ’20 1250w
“It is certainly a convenience to have in one volume the literary criticism of the extant plays and the general history of Greek tragedy and the antiquities of the theatre, instead of looking for them in the two volumes of Haigh. In these subsidiary matters Professor Norwood’s scholarship though not independent is sufficient for his purpose. He still retains the British awe of any and all German scholarship and the British habit of ignoring American work.” Paul Shorly
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N Y Evening Post p6 D 31 ’20 1800w
“He writes throughout as an enthusiast, and illustrates his points by modern parallels which are always ingenious, and often happy. Reference might have been made to the modern performances of various plays, for the best way to understand any drama is to see it acted. The chapter on ‘Metre and rhythm’ at the end is an excellent idea well carried out.”
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Sat R 130:39 Jl 10 ’20 200w
NOYES, ALFRED. Beyond the desert; a tale of Death valley. *$1 (7½c) Stokes
20–18658
The story is symbolic of a soul losing itself in a desert of ideas before it emerges into the light of clear understanding. James Baxter, an I.W.W., is a prisoner in transport and escapes from a stalled train into Death valley in the Arizona desert. His hardships bring on delirium and in a trance he finds himself among a halted pioneer party of 1849. In exchanging notes on their respective civilizations with them he comes to see the error of his ways and when he is finally rescued he goes among his I.W.W. comrades to convince them also. He is successful with the crowd but the infuriated leaders kill him.
“Though Mr Noyes’s work is earnest and readable, we wish that so experienced a hand had not permitted polemics, poetics, and melodrama to crowd the same pages.”
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N Y Evening Post p10 O 30 ’20 230w
“The very qualities that one admires in such a poem as ‘The highwayman,’ depreciate when used in the prose form. It is possible that in verse the story would not seem so lacking in vitality. The descriptions of the desert are good; the style is fairly clear; and yet there is a quality of unreality, of dreaminess, of sentimentality.”
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Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 2 ’21 260w
NOYES, ALFRED. Collected poems. v 3 *$2.50 Stokes 821
A volume containing all of Mr Noyes’ poems written between October, 1913, and the present. With the two volumes published in 1913 it forms a complete edition of the poet’s verse to date. It comprises The Lord of Misrule and other poems; The wine-press; A Belgian Christmas eve; The new morning; The elfin artist and other poems.
Booklist 17:146 Ja ’21
“Mr Noyes possesses a delightful singing gift in his carefree moments—and can bore us almost to tears when the sense of his ‘message’ to the world descends upon him. When he turns to glamourous romantic ballads and to brief, sincere, intensely spiritual lyrics, such as ‘Paraclete,’ he is at his best.”
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N Y Evening Post p22 D 4 ’20 170w
“Whenever he writes sermons and dissertations and criticisms in verse he fails. Whenever he writes ballads he succeeds. However, there are a few other poems in this volume for which we should thank Mr Noyes, notably ‘Old gray squirrel,’ the pathetic ‘Court martial’ and ‘A victory dance.’”
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N Y Times p25 Ja 30 ’21 620w
NOYES, ALFRED. Elfin artist, and other poems. *$1.50 Stokes 821
20–17329
The elfin artist is the initial poem of this collection of verse written by the author since the spring of 1919. Some of the other poems are: Earth and her birds; Sea-distances; The inn of Apollo; The Sussex sailor; In southern California; The riddles of Merlin; The isle of memories; A ballad of the easier way; A Devonshire Christmas; Beautiful on the bough; The bride-ale; A sky song; A return from the air; A victory dance; The garden of peace; Four songs, after Verlaine.
“No Elizabethan could conceivably have written one of his poems. The conscious romanticism, the sentimentality, the imperialism expressed with a catch in the voice, the blurred, soft, unprecise language, the barrel-organ tunefulness—all these things, so characteristic of Mr Noyes, would have been impossible to an Elizabethan.”
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Ath p142 Jl 30 ’19 420w
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Booklist 17:106 D ’20
“So sharply do these poems recall the poet of ‘The barrel-organ’ that we wonder whether the recent neglect of Noyes was reasonable; surely, with such books as these, he will yet sing his way back into the hearts of English readers.” S: Roth
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Bookm 52:361 D ’20 110w
“Not in any of what may be termed the petulant and irritable, spirited poems of this collection, striking as some may be for their frank and vehement qualities, is Mr Noyes’s reputation either sustained or enhanced. One may truly say that the poems that spring out of the Sussex scene, with their half-bucolic and traditional mood, alone retain the admiration of Mr Noyes’s readers.” W. S. B.
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Boston Transcript p9 S 18 ’20 1300w
“Their redeeming features are Mr Noyes’ ability to handle metre and the very evident pleasure he takes in writing. That pleasure is a quality quite lacking in many modern poets who write far better than Mr Noyes.”
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Ind 104:246 N 13 ’20 180w
“Mr Noyes continues to write his pleasant anachronisms and it must be admitted that he does them with the usual dexterity and mellifluousness that is so much a part of his charm. He does possess charm and no one will actually die of ennui while reading his lines. But readers could far better occupy themselves with other poets, for Mr Noyes brings nothing new to his readers, not even his thought.” H. S. Gorman
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N Y Times p22 D 26 ’20 680w
“‘The elfin artist’ is the product of the author’s mature lyric gift, rich in variety or form and theme, and offering an equal appeal to the emotions and to the mind.” Philip Tillinghast
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Pub W 98:664 S 18 ’20 500w
“Mr Noyes continues to annoy the devotees of all the varieties of free verse by his ability to use rhyme, and to observe the rules of prosody.” E. L. Pearson
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Review 3:249 S 22 ’20 140w
“His gift to literature is twofold. He can write well himself and he can prevent others from writing badly.”
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Spec 124:729 My 29 ’20 700w
“With one or two exceptions, each of Mr Noyes’s poems is no better and no worse than any of the others. To study the volume is to get the impression of sameness, of easy fluidity, of lack both of thought and of labour. His simplicity is not the simplicity of compression and refinement. His responsiveness sweeps away his thought.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p381 Je 17 ’20 600w
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Wis Lib Bul 16:235 D ’20 50w
NOYES, FRANCES NEWBOLD. My A. E. F.; a hail and farewell. *$1 (12c) Stokes 940.373
20–11506
A book in the form of a familiar talk to A. E. F. boys by a girl who was a Y. M. C. A. worker in France. It is an appeal to them to remember the ideals they fought for, and to apply them in the new war “against selfishness and materialism and intolerance and hatred.” It is reprinted from McClure’s Magazine.
“A very fine and moving bit of writing is Miss Noyes’s little book, simple, comradely, full of memories, and wise with the wisdom of Eve. The book ought to be read by every man who served on the other side and also by every person at home who has ever said a slighting word about any of the phases of the welfare work for the army.”
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N Y Times 25:11 Jl 11 ’20 1100w
NUTT, HUBERT WILBUR. Supervision of instruction. (Riverside textbooks in education) *$1.80 Houghton 371
20–10064
“The shifting, unprofessional character of the teaching body makes the provision for competent supervision of instruction not only desirable, but necessary.... The undertaking of training supervisors involves the setting-forth of the job or activities of supervision, and the organizing of the means by which supervisors can best be trained to perform their duties.” (Introd.) The book is, accordingly, an analytical discussion of the principles underlying class-room supervision, and the devices and technique which should and which should not be employed. It falls into two parts. Part 1, The job of supervision, is a general survey of supervising activities. Part II[or 2?—see above], Principles underlying the supervision of instruction, is divided into the following sections: Supervisory method; Devices of supervision; Technique of supervision. There is an index.
“The book is to be welcomed as one of the first serious and successful attempts to create a specific literature for supervisors.”
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El School J 21:69 S ’20 450w
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School R 28:551 S ’20 180w
NYBURG, SIDNEY LAUER. Gate of ivory. *$2.25 (1½c) Knopf
20–19577
This is the story of Allan Conway who loved a beautiful siren of a woman and loved her so well that he allowed himself to be saddled with her and her husband’s crime, in order to shield her and to become an outcast for her sake. The remarkable part of the story is that, as an outcast, he loved her still, that he did not become a cynic—although he did take to drink periodically—and that he was even happy in the dream life that he now lived with his Eleanor. This life he elaborated in every detail from the house he built for and the conversations he had with her even to their dream child. A Peter Ibbetson with a difference is this Allan Conway.
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O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD. Prize stories, 1919. *$1.90 (1½c) Doubleday
20–8630
A volume published as a memorial to O. Henry and composed of the fifteen short stories which a committee of the Society of arts and sciences of New York city have decided on as the best short stories of 1919. Blanche Colton Williams writes the introduction. Contents: England to America, by Margaret Prescott Montague; “For they know not what they do,” by Wilbur Daniel Steele; They grind exceeding small, by Ben Ames Williams; On strike, by Albert Payson Terhune; The elephant remembers, by Edison Marshall; Turkey red, by Frances Gilchrist Wood; Five thousand dollars reward, by Melville Davisson Post; The blood of the dragon, by Thomas Grant Springer; “Humoresque,” by Fannie Hurst; The lubbeny kiss, by Louise Rice; The trial in Tom Belcher’s store, by Samuel A. Derieux; Porcelain cups, by James Branch Cabell; The high cost of conscience, by Beatrice Ravenel; The kitchen gods, by G. F. Alsop; April 25th, as usual, by Edna Ferber.
Booklist 17:119 D ’20
“One can only wish that more of such volumes might be issued, for many of our American writers are at their best in the short story. The ‘O. Henry memorial award’ volume of 1919 is a book well worth reading.”
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N Y Times 25:319 Je 20 ’20 850w
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Review 3:132 Ag 11 ’20 140w
OAKESMITH, JOHN. Race and nationality; an inquiry into the origin and growth of patriotism. *$4 Stokes 320.1
19–16466
“As the result of an attempt to arrive at a lucid conception and precise definition of ‘a nationality,’ the author thinks that he has discovered the explanation of nationality ‘in what may be formally called the principle of “organic continuity of common interest”‘; and the constructive part of the book is devoted to the elucidation of this principle. The author considers that universal and lasting peace will be secured, not by ‘the sudden imposition of hastily manufactured machinery,’ but by the gradual extension of the above principle from national to international life.”—Ath
Ath p961 S 26 ’19 120w
Reviewed by F. J. Whiting
Review 1:705 D 27 ’19 1200w
R of Rs 61:336 Mr ’20 40w
Reviewed by I. C. Hannah
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Survey 43:504 Ja 31 ’20 360w
“This is a treatise of ability, displaying considerable knowledge of the literature of the subject.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p486 S 11 ’19 120w
“It would not be difficult to show that there are inconsistencies in the discussion and conclusions arrived at by Mr Oakesmith; inconsistencies traceable largely to his desire to do justice to the representatives of all shades of opinion. It may be more profitable than dwelling on such points to note one or two omissions from the volume, in particular the demands of what may be called pseudo-nationality; that form of it which is not the slow result of continuously operating influences, but is artificially created.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p600 O 30 ’19 1200w
O’BRIEN, EDWARD JOSEPH HARRINGTON (ARTHUR MIDDLETON, pseud.). Best short stories of 1919. *$2 (1½c) Small
The authors represented in this year’s volume are: G. F. Alsop; Sherwood Anderson; Edwina Stanton Babcock; Djuna Barnes; Frederick Orin Bartlett; Agnes Mary Brownell; Maxwell Struthers Burt; James Branch Cabell; Horace Fish; Susan Glaspell; Henry Goodman; Richard Matthew Hallet; Joseph Hergesheimer; Will E. Ingersoll; Calvin Johnston; Howard Mumford Jones; Ellen N. La Motte; Elias Lieberman; Mary Heaton Vorse, and Anzia Yezierski. The book contains also an introduction by Mr O’Brien, discussing points raised by Waldo Frank’s “Our America,” and the usual features of the Year book of the short story.
Booklist 16:314 Je ’20
“Of the twenty stories an indifferent half-dozen barely pass the average.... Sherwood Anderson’s ‘An awakening,’ and Joseph Hergesheimer’s ‘The Meeker ritual,’ have the distinction of subtlety and style, irrespective of theme. You feel about the other authors that each might with a little effort have written the other’s story, but these two of Anderson’s and Hergesheimer’s could only have been written by themselves.” W. S. B.
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Boston Transcript p10 Mr 27 ’20 650w
Reviewed by Doris Webb
Pub W 97:603 F 21 ’20 380w
“Mr O’Brien’s standards define themselves with precision, and a summary of his tests will serve as test for Mr O’Brien. He has no eye for style. The second point in literature to which Mr O’Brien is insensitive is tone. The third and final want is the sense of workmanship. Mr O’Brien, however, has qualities which are as incontestable as his limitations. He has a keen, if not infallible, sense, of the powerful in motive, the original and trenchant in conception. Mr O’Brien’s collection will be of service to those readers who are wise enough to grasp its limitations.”
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Review 2:463 My 1 ’20 520w
O’BRIEN, GEORGE A. T. Essay on mediaeval economic teaching. *$4.75 (*12s 6d) Longmans 330.9
20–20196
“Mr O’Brien passes in review the principal economic theories of the medieval schoolmen, not continuing the study farther than the beginning of the sixteenth century. In a concluding chapter he gives reasons for a favourable estimate of the medieval economic doctrine from the points of view of production, consumption and distribution.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“It is a truism (which unfortunately is rarely true) to say of a new book that it supplies a long felt want: but in the case of Dr O’Brien’s essay to say so would be strictly true. Mediæval economic theory has never before been discussed with the fullness it merited.”
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Cath World 112:109 O ’20 480w
Reviewed by C: A. Beard
Nation 111:480 O 27 ’20 800w
“It is a work of learning and ability, concerned rather with the clear and concise presentation of doctrine than with the criticism of it.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p369 Je 10 ’20 110w
“The historian who peruses this book will put it down with mixed feelings of amusement over the wordy contest and of despair at the unfamiliarity the combatants display with the alphabet of historical science.”
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The Times [London] Lit Sup p466 Jl 22 ’20 1000W
ODELL, GEORGE CLINTON DENSMORE. Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving. 2v il *$12 Scribner 822.3
20–19676
“Professor Odell has undertaken to do for all Shakespeare’s plays, tragedies and comedies, histories and dramatic romances, what has hitherto been attempted for two of the tragedies only, in Miss Wood’s ‘Stage history of Richard III,’ and in Brereton’s rather sketchy account of the various performances of ‘Hamlet.’ He has organized his two volumes in eight chronological divisions: the age of Betterton (1660–1710); the age of Cibber (1710–1742); the age of Garrick (1742–1776); the age of Kemble (1776–1817); the leaderless age (1817–1837); The age of Macready (1837–1843); the age of Phelps and Charles Kean (1843–1879), and the age of Irving (1879–1902). Not only does he give us what is to a certain extent a history of the theatres of London, he also supplies us with what is almost (if not quite) a history of the superb evolution of the art of scene painting.”—N Y Times
Booklist 17:106 D ’20
“Students should be grateful to Professor Odell for the painstaking manner in which he has traced the fate of Shakespeare on the English stage. Mr Odell has attacked the subject with freshness and zest. His enthusiasm never seems to flag.... Admire his work as I do, I am convinced that had Mr Odell been more thoroughly in sympathy with the new ‘unrest’ in the theater, he would have seen more clearly certain points relating the past with the present.” M. J. Moses
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Nation 111:sup660 D 8 ’20 1400w
“No better medium than the work of Professor George C. D. Odell has thus far been provided to apprehend the gradual evolution of stage decoration, costume, and attention to historic accuracy.” H. H. Furness, jr
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N Y Evening Post p6 D 4 ’20 1650w
“It is no dry-as-dust chronicle that he has here given us. It is a readable book that he proffers, a book abounding in apt anecdote, in illuminating quotation and in genial comment. Although the author has had to correct many blunders and many misstatements of many predecessors, he spares us the acrimony of controversy.” Brander Matthews
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N Y Times p2 O 24 ’20 300w
O’DONNELL, ELLIOT. Menace of spiritualism. *$1.50 (3½c) Stokes 134
20–6366
The author of the book, himself an investigator in the field of psychic research and a believer in spontaneous manifestations of the spirits of the dead, condemns the practice of spiritualism, with its mediumistic invocations of spirits as a vice. Its dangers are many. From the point of view of orthodox Christianity it menaces faith and morality alike; from that of the medical profession it is injurious to health; from that of the greater number of most eminent scientists it is a sham; and from the point of view of common sense it is a hotch-potch of imbecility, gullibility, and roguery. Contents: Foreword by Father Bernard Vaughan; “Spiritualism”—what is it? How spiritualism tries to distort the Old Testament; Spiritualism and the New Testament; Spiritualism and the churches; The phenomenal side of spiritualism and its effect on the health; The danger of fraud of all kinds at séances.
“He delivers some shrewd blows, and in a popular manner sets forth a strong case against spiritualists and their operations.”
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Ath p352 Mr 12 ’20 80w
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Cath World 112:252 N ’20 40w
N Y Times 25:19 Jl 4 ’20 160w
“Such protests are welcome, however much they fall short of the sanction of a high consistency; it is hardly to be expected that a critic of Mr O’Donnell’s electric temper will find favor with those who see in psychical research a far wider menace and a subtler attack upon the fundamentals of sound thinking. Yet to part of the composite clientèle from which latter-day recruits for the occult are gathered, this earnest word of warning may prove helpful.” Joseph Jastrow
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Review 3:41 Jl 14 ’20 250w
Springf’d Republican p6 Je 1 ’20 400w
The Times [London] Lit Sup p143 F 26 ’20 80w
O’DUFFY, EIMAR. Wasted island. *$2 (1c) Dodd
20–16927
A story of Ireland and the Irish movement culminating in the Easter rebellion. Bernard Lascelles, son of a successful Dublin doctor, is brought up in ignorance of his country’s history. In fact it is part of his father’s purpose to keep him in ignorance, fearing that the boy may take after his uncle Christopher Reilly, who died fighting England on the side of the Boers. Bernard is sent to an English school, but in spite of his father’s efforts is drawn into the Nationalist and later into the Sinn Fein movements, a letter left by his uncle Christopher to be read on his twenty-first birthday proving the turning point in his life. A very different bringing up is that of Stephen Ward, whose father, a discouraged Fenian, hopes that his son may never wreck his life in the hopeless cause but does not deny him knowledge. Both young men oppose the Easter uprising but both are involved in it. Bernard is wrecked by it but Stephen escapes. “‘And now,’ said Michael Ward to his son, ‘now that everything has turned out as I told you it would, what do you mean to do?’ ‘I suppose,’ replied Stephen, ‘we must begin all over again.’”
Booklist 17:159 Ja ’21
“The story is long and the plot complicated but it is well told and the interest is sustained to the close.”
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Boston Transcript p8 D 11 ’20 350w
“Although, as an artistic piece of work, the book leaves much to be desired, its vigour and sincerity save it from the category of the mediocre.” L. M. R.
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Freeman 2:406 Ja 5 ’21 160w
“It is one-sided and its heroes are not very attractive characters, but it is interesting and informing.”
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Ind 104:244 N 13 ’20 90w
“Mr O’Duffy is refreshingly free from didacticism. He allows the facts to explain for themselves, and does not make any indictment in the bitter, devastating manner of Brinsley McNamara’s ‘The clanking of chains.’ Regarded as a human document this book should be of great interest and assistance to readers in America who want to understand the Ireland which confronts them in alarming headlines.” E. A. Boyd
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N Y Evening Post p3 O 30 ’20 1300w
“The animus of the book as a whole is unmistakable. Hate for England rather than love for Ireland is the mainspring of this active ‘patriotism.’” H. W. Boynton
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Review 3:422 N 3 ’20 380w
The Times [London] Lit Sup p104 F 12 ’20 540w
OEMLER, MRS MARIE (CONWAY). Purple heights. *$2 (2c) Century
20–17411
The hero is Peter Devereaux Champneys, a boy of eleven when the story opens. The scene is South Carolina where Peter lives in a four-roomed cabin with his mother, who runs a sewing machine to keep herself and Peter alive. Peter, who is considered a dunce in school, spends all his odd moments making pictures. One day he sketches the Red admiral—the beautiful butterfly that alighted on the milkweed pod by the side of the road—and the Red admiral proves to be his good fairy. His mother dies and Peter brings himself up, with the aid of Emma Campbell, a faithful negress. An unknown uncle appears out of the West and offers to send Peter to Paris, and so anxious is Peter to get to Paris that he accepts the uncle’s strange terms, marriage with an unknown Nancy Simms. His first sight of Nancy Simms is disconcerting, for she is a red-haired virago, but he runs away to Paris immediately after the ceremony and forgets her. In Paris he becomes famous and in the meantime Nancy grows up to be a beautiful woman and all ends well.
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Booklist 17:73 N ’20
“Excellent, forceful writing appears on the earlier pages. Soon the benevolent persons enter, one after another, and they reflect urban life. The naturalness and sincerity of the story lessen.” R. D. W.
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Boston Transcript p4 O 27 ’20 500w
“A new author, writing real literature, is Mrs Oemler.” Lilian Bell
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N Y Evening Post p8 N 27 ’20 950w
“The author knows the South, and her understanding of the black man’s mind is demonstrated on nearly every page. ‘The purple heights’ is a worthy successor to Mrs Oemler’s first success, ‘Slippy McGee.’”
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N Y Times p23 O 24 ’20 600w
“When Peter grows up and goes to Paris and becomes famous the charm vanishes and interest lags. It is in her beginnings that the author is most successful.”
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Pub W 98:1192 O 16 ’20 200w
“Decidedly inferior to ‘Slippy McGee,’ but nevertheless an entertaining story, with some delightful passages describing the hero’s youth.”
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Wis Lib Bul 16:238 D ’20 30w
OGILVIE, PAUL MORGAN. International waterways. *$3 Macmillan 387
20–2670
“‘International waterways’ is a history of the development of maritime enterprise. It sets forth the efforts of certain nations to secure the exclusive enjoyment of the seas. The first part of Mr Ogilvie’s book concludes with a critical discussion of the question of the freedom of commercial navigation. Part II is composed of a reference manual, where is to be found a list of all the international inland waterways of the world, together with the treaties and laws governing the same.”—Springf’d Republican
Reviewed by A. F. Hershey
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Am Pol Sci R 14:519 Ag ’20 700w
Booklist 16:300 Je ’20
“A valuable reference work. If there is any fault to be found with Mr Ogilvie’s work it is a fault perhaps inseparable from the breadth of the task and the limited size of the volume. The author has neither the time nor the space to pause for that wealth of illustration which the reader would like to demand. But he constantly cites his sources and the reader who is interested in more detailed study may turn to them.” G. H. C.
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Boston Transcript p9 My 29 ’20 850w