Book Review Digest Devoted to the Valuation of Current Literature Reviews of 1920 Books (continued 40)

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N Y Call p10 Ja 2 ’21 1050w

TUELL, HARRIET EMILY. Study of nations; an experiment in social education. (Riverside educational monographs) *80c Houghton 909

20–5596

This is a plea that we substitute for our old “dry as dust” method of teaching history “an elementary study of nationality.” In a high school course such as this book proposes, “each nation is carefully considered by itself, that pupils may gain a definite impression of its individual characteristics. First it is viewed as it appears today; then its development is briefly traced. After this historic background has been sketched in, an attempt is made to evaluate the peculiar gifts of the country and its people to the sum of modern civilization.” (Preface) This is a pioneer book, for the use of teachers, and, as such, the main part of it is devoted to helpfully suggestive material, outlines, and comments upon the following nations: France, England, Germany, Russia, Italy, Austro-Hungary, Turkey and the Balkan states, China, Japan, and the Philippine Islands (“a nation in the making”). The book includes a complete bibliographical list, and a connected outline of all the chapters. The chapters on China and Japan were contributed by Dr K. S. Latourette. Dr Tuell is the head of the department of history, Somerville high school, Massachusetts.

Booklist 16:239 Ap ’20

“Books of this sort are undoubtedly useful to teachers who have access to well-equipped libraries and are themselves trained to get the materials out of these libraries, but the movement which Miss Tuell represents will hardly be successful until someone has prepared in detail and in a form that can be presented to children the materials that she has gone over in outline. The book is in this sense a first step in the direction of actual school use of this sort of material.”

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El School J 20:547 Mr ’20 380w

School R 28:312 Ap ’20 380w

TUOHY, FERDINAND.^[2] Secret corps. *$2 Seltzer 940.485

(Eng ed 20–11008)

“Captain Tuohy deals with all the methods of espionage and counter-espionage practised during the war, enlivening his exposition here and there with anecdotes. He explains incidentally the value of seemingly harmless military details to an alert enemy and thus justifies the censorship. He declares that our own system proved highly efficient and that our French allies had, after February, 1916, to implore the assistance of our secret service in Germany as all their own agents had been captured. The British system was based on the principle that each agent should know and be known to his chief alone.”—Spec

“‘The secret corps’ is thrilling in its every paragraph, and, speaking personally, it is the first book of the war we have enjoyed for two years.”

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N Y Evening Post p13 D 31 ’20 170w

“This volume has value unsurpassed, if not unequaled, by any other that has dealt with the same material.”

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N Y Times p26 Ja 30 ’21 420w

Reviewed by E. L. Pearson

Review 3:229 S 15 ’20 340w

Spec 124:872 Je 26 ’20 160w

TURNER, EDWARD RAYMOND. Europe, 1789–1920. *$3.50 Doubleday 940.2

20–17882

The raison d’être of the book is the alteration in historical perspective wrought by the last few years which makes the epoch since 1789 “the most important and interesting in the history of mankind. It began with a revolution whose effects are not yet all measured; it ended with another whose consequences can scarcely yet even be guessed at.” (Preface) During this period immense changes took place in the relations of people with each other, with their governments, with capitalists and employers, in the attitude of people toward the problems of the world in which they lived, and in their habits of thought. The book falls into two parts: 1789–1871; and 1871–1920. The outstanding points of part one are the old Europe before, during and after the French revolution, the Congress of Vienna, the rise of Prussia after 1870 and the condition of Russia during the period. Part two begins with the military triumphs of Germany between 1864–1871, its subsequent development and that of the other great powers, and treats of events before and during the great war. There are numerous maps, a bibliography at the end of each chapter, an appendix and an index.

“About the completest single volume history of Europe covering the years between the two most epochal events in her experience. Excellent historical work.”

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Boston Transcript p6 N 17 ’20 300w

“It is naïve, sincere, and, if the English is sometimes colloquial, one has no difficulty in understanding what the author means. It is a book intended to be read by the person of average cultivation, and not very much instruction—and judged from that point of view the author’s task is very well done.” M. F. Egan

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N Y Times p5 D 19 ’20 2700w

“In style and method the latter half of the book is somewhat like those editorial summaries of current events contained in some of the best modern journals. It is concise, considered, rather neutral, but useful for exactly the purpose for which it was designed. The book’s value lies not so much in the backward glimpses of the past from the present point of view as in the light thrown forward on the war and upon our present state by the course of events since 1879.”

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No Am 213:138 Ja ’21 750w

TURNER, FREDERICK JACKSON. Frontier in American history. *$2.50 Holt 973

20–18058

Professor Turner’s essay on “The significance of the frontier in American history” was read at a meeting of the American historical association in Chicago in 1893 and has had a profound influence on American historical thinking and writing. It is to be found in the Proceedings of the State historical society of Wisconsin for 1893, and in the Report of the American historical association for the same year and is reprinted here together with other papers bearing on the same theme. A statement of his thesis may be taken from “The West and American ideals”: “American democracy was born of no theorist’s dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier.” The other papers are: The first official frontier of the Massachusetts bay; The old West; The middle West; The Ohio valley in American history; The significance of the Mississippi valley in American history; The problem of the West; Dominant forces in western life; Contributions of the West to American democracy; Pioneer ideals and the state university; Social forces in American history; Middle western pioneer democracy.

“Interesting to students or general readers.”

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Booklist 17:109 D ’20

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Boston Transcript p6 N 3 ’20 880w

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Grinnell R 16:356 F ’21 720w

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Ind 104:249 N 13 ’20 70w

“The high significance of this work has long been recognized by writers on American history; but if the influence of Mr Turner were to be estimated on the basis of his published work alone, it would be accounted far less than it has in fact been.” Carl Becker

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Nation 111:536 N 10 ’20 1050w

“Though the chapters in this book are essays on aspects of frontier history and written at different times, they might well have been written within a few months. The book contains a fund of information, clearly reasoned, significantly and concisely expressed. It is readable, and it is suggestive.” C. L. Skinner

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N Y Evening Post p6 D 4 ’20 800w

N Y Times p10 N 7 ’20 1500w

“Are we hypercritical in thinking that essays of such pith and moment demand a better format?”

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Outlook 126:558 N 24 ’20 60w

“The present volume sets forth in the clearest possible manner the view of American expansion which has inspired and illuminated all of Professor Turner’s work from the beginning. Among all American historians no one has so fully caught the meaning of the frontier in our national development.”

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R of Rs 63:110 Ja ’21 200w

“As a treatise, Prof. Turner’s book loses something from being a compilation of articles and addresses, but it makes an excellent general presentation of a subject which is insufficiently understood by the average American, yet is so fascinating that any reader will be thankful to have it brought to his attention.”

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Springf’d Republican p9a O 24 ’20 1050w

“The book is highly suggestive to one who wishes to understand the American attitude toward social problems and the course which social work has taken in America.” Lilian Brandt

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Survey 45:578 Ja 15 ’21 200w

Wis Lib Bul 16:236 D ’20 200w

TURNER, GEORGE KIBBE. Hagar’s hoard. *$2.25 (2c) Knopf

20–17178

The story describes a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis in 1878 in all its weirdness and horror. In a large brick house lived an old man, Athiel Hagar, with his daughter and adopted nephew. The man is a miser and many are the stories current among the negroes about the fabulous sums he has hoarded in his house. His property is his obsession which keeps him rooted in the house when fleeing from the fever is the only sane thing to do. At last he succumbs to the enemy and in his last death agony accidentally pulls the cord which brings his treasure down upon him, burying the dead man under it.

Booklist 17:119 D ’20

“The plot of ‘Hagar’s hoard’ is unconvincing as regards its chief motive. Then, too, the characters are sadly stock-in-trade. Even the negroes are grossly machine-made and lack warmth and conviction, and the author certainly has overlooked a fine opportunity to add color and the throb of life to a fairly interesting tale.”

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N Y Evening Post p21 O 23 ’20 320w

“Mr Turner has unfortunately made a full-length novel out of what should have been a long short story, or at most, a novelette. The plot is of the very slightest. The merit of the book lies in its excellent description of the fever-stricken town, but excellent as this is it becomes wearisome when repeated again and again.”

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N Y Times p23 O 24 ’20 700w

TURNER, JOHN HASTINGS. Place in the world. *$1.75 Scribner

20–3578

“The heroine of ‘A place in the world,’ Iris Iranova, is an illegitimate and temperamental young woman of about twenty-five. Married to an over-amiable Russian, she lost her temper and stuck a knife into him. This inconsiderate action made it necessary for her to leave Russia and come to England, where she is living very comfortably when the book opens. Following a whim, she decides to settle for a time in an English suburb, and it is with her relations with the persons she meets there that the novel is principally concerned. Among these persons two are of especial importance—a really charming old clergyman, broad-minded, sympathetic and possessed of a keen and abundant sense of humor, and Henry Cumbers, an apparently fussy and insignificant little man who, in time of stress and sorrow, proves that he has splendid stuff in him.”—N Y Times

“Mr Turner has a clever pen, and the fluttering of the dovecotes caused by Iris’s unconventionality gives him scope for a number of incisive character-sketches. Mr Turner is to be congratulated on the keenness of his observation as well as the liveliness of his style.”

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Ath p127 Ja 23 ’20 100w

“Fairly amusing.”

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Booklist 16:284 My ’20

Reviewed by H. W. Boynton

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Bookm 51:342 My ’20 300w

“Mr Turner has written a charming novel, fresh and vivid in dialogue, with characters that live in every pulse and gesture.” W. S. B.

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Boston Transcript p8 Mr 10 ’20 1000w

“Witty comedy.”

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Cleveland p50 My ’20 100w

“The plot of the tale is extremely slight and at times the novel drags badly, but the style is often agreeable and the characters of Henry Cumbers and of the Rev. John Heslop are very well drawn indeed.”

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N Y Times 25:2 Mr 7 ’20 300w

“Mr Turner’s ‘Simple souls’ was amusing; this novel goes deeper. It is fine workmanship as to its writing, and in its essence it makes for soundheartedness and human tolerance.”

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Outlook 124:479 Mr 17 ’20 60w

“The especial merit of the book is the Rev. John Heslop, a character any writer might have been proud to invent.”

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Sat R 129:336 Ap 3 ’20 80w

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Spec 124:354 Mr 13 ’20 40w

“Mr Turner’s fiction challenges comparison with that of Mr Locke, not because he imitates the latter’s method, but chiefly because his work falls within the same general field of whimsical personalities, kindly humor, and pleasing romance so long cultivated by Mr Locke. The characters charm and delight and provide the zest to an unusually entertaining story.”

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Springf’d Republican p13a Ap 18 ’20 580w

TURNER, JOHN KENNETH. Hands off Mexico. pa 35c Rand school of social science 327

20–3857

This pamphlet is devoted to an exposition of the motives that lie back of intervention propaganda, and concludes with a plea to the American people to make common cause with the people of Mexico against the interests that are a menace to both. In proposing his solution the author says, “In the cause of the Mexican ‘problem’ is found its solution. As our meddling has been a decisive factor in creating and prolonging the disorder, and in subjecting Americans to danger, so an opposite policy would tend to produce the opposite result. We must stop threatening Mexico, stop invading Mexico, stop embargoing Mexico, enter into a fair agreement for policing the border, keep a few of our fine promises, make a fair trial of treating our neighbor as an equal.”

“The author of this brochure, which as a plea for the rights of the Mexican people is fundamentally admirable and excellent, employs a great deal of the hammer-and-tongs method of his previous volume, ‘Barbarous Mexico.’ Nevertheless the booklet is a timely summary of information concerning the facts of the controversy.” G. B. Winton

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Survey 44:311 My 29 ’20 320w

TURNER, W. J. Dark wind. *$2 Dutton 821

20–3700

“‘The dark wind’ has been most cordially received in London and is especially interesting to students of poetry because it combines much of the colorcraft of the imagists with the melodies of the Georgians. Indeed, none of the young English poets has given us verse in which sense impressionism plays a more important part than it plays here.” (N Y Times) “Not the least interesting peculiarity of Mr Turner’s art is that he has made no startling departures into irregular verse forms. Nor does Mr Turner seek to startle by the choice of bizarre subjects. He writes on Haystacks and Sunflowers and Hollyhocks and Aeroplanes and Recollecting a visit.” (Bookm)

“There is no careless rapture in any of his verse: it has the studious rigidity of a cultivated and audacious craftsmanship, but with the magic of genuine inspiration.” R. M. Weaver

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Bookm 51:456 Je ’20 800w

“One might name such poems as In the caves of Auvergne, The search for the nightingale, The sky-sent death and Magic, which not only show Mr Turner at his best poetically but at his subtlest allegorically.” W. S. B.

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Boston Transcript p10 My 15 ’20 600w

“Mr Turner possesses, simultaneously with the knack of astonishing, the knack of cloying and blurring. He is intoxicated with exotic masses and meanings. He has visual genius; his images expand in the mind’s eye. Yet, once he has created a scene, he does nothing with it. He has not the firmness to finish what he gloriously begins.” M. V. D.

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Nation 110:855 Je 26 ’20 160w

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N Y Times 25:194 Ap 18 ’20 200w

“Turner’s ‘The dark wind’ is first of all a book of color and beautiful rhythms. He possesses the virtue of flinging lovely pictures before the reader, not the hard emphasized colors that cry from Miss Amy Lowell’s efforts, but a soft yet glittering mingling of hues that is warm with sunlight and harmonious with spring and autumn.”

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N Y Times 25:16 Je 27 ’20 700w

TURPIN, EDNA HENRY LEE. Treasure mountain. il *$1.75 (3c) Century

20–16341

This story for girls has a picturesque setting in the southern mountains. Page Ruffin, the young heroine, is helped out of a dangerous situation by a mountain boy who gives his name as Harson Ruffyan. She is struck with the likeness to her own name and her teasing companions see a facial resemblance as well. Page’s father suspects a real relationship but he is angrily turned away by Mac Ruffyan, who refuses to recognize the kinship. On another occasion Page is lost on the mountain and is rescued by Mac Ruffyan and taken to his cabin home. Here she sees her possible cousin in a new light and becomes his champion. In the meantime her father has been investigating family history to learn the secret of the relationship. A second mystery of the story, which leads to a still more thrilling adventure and rescue, is concerned with a cave, buried treasure and a ghost. Incidentally the author introduces the lesson of wild flower preservation.

“Will interest girls from ten to fifteen.”

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Booklist 17:164 Ja ’21

Reviewed by A. C. Moore

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Bookm 52:262 N ’20 50w

“It would be worth while to put up with the disagreeable little heroine if young folks could learn from this to enjoy wild-flowers in their native setting.” M. H. B. Mussey

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Nation 111:sup672 D 8 ’20 80w

“A real story with plenty of action and thrills.”

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N Y Times p21 O 24 ’20 140w

“Here is that rarity, a good story for girls.”

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Wis Lib Bul 16:199 N ’20 120w

TUSSAUD, JOHN THEODORE. Romance of Madame Tussaud’s. il *$5 Doran 791

20–27479

The story of the famous wax works, established in Paris during the revolution and later brought to London, written by one of the great-grandsons of the founder, the present proprietor of the exhibition. Madame Tussaud, altho a young girl at the time of the revolution, was already famed as a modeler in wax and had been a favorite at court. She was conscripted and compelled to model the guillotined heads of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Marat murdered in his bath, and other horrors, a number of which are reproduced in the illustrations. The story is brought down to the present day, describing many of the recent additions, with illustrations. Hilaire Belloc has written an introduction and the book is indexed.

Ath p109 Ja 23 ’20 1650w

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Booklist 17:145 Ja ’21

“The amazing feature of the book is, however, the manner in which its author has made so intrinsically interesting and romantic a theme dull and commonplace. It is evident that he possesses absolutely no qualifications for his task. He is simply adept at the compilation of a scrap-book. Yet his subject is so fascinating that it is better to have his account of Madame Tussaud’s life and work than none at all.” E. F. E.

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Boston Transcript p4 O 27 ’20 1450w

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Cath World 112:686 F ’21 250w

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N Y Evening Post p12 N 27 ’20 130w

“‘Romance’ is possibly a strong word for this book, and is applicable only where some story connected with a character in the collection is told. Sometimes this takes Mr Tussaud far afield. But as a collection of anecdotes it ranks almost with Siboutie’s ‘Souvenirs of a Parisian.’”

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N Y Times p2 O 31 ’20 1700w

“Mr Tussaud has appreciated the value of his materials both from the historic point of view and from the viewpoint of human interest. His narrative, like his wax figures, simply presents facts of undeniable interest. But it is the pictures that make the book unique.”

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No Am 213:287 F ’21 520w

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Outlook 126:654 D 8 ’20 80w

“The book is often pleasantly gruesome.” E. L. Pearson

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Review 3:531 D 1 ’20 120w

The Times [London] Lit Sup p16 Ja 8 ’20 780w

TUTTLE, W. C. Reddy Brant: his adventures. il *$1.75 (5c) Century

20–18257

A series of short stories reprinted from Boy’s Life. The hero is fourteen-year-old Reddy Brant, a young vagrant who wanders into the cattle country of the far West. His adventures are many and exciting and aided by his native wit and courage, with the occasional help of coincidence, he acts as both agent of justice and angel of mercy. The titles are: A rooting tooter; The go-getters; The clean-up kid; A sage-brush Santa Claus; The jump of a forty-five; Reddy’s muzzle-loader; A bunkie of the buckaroos; Reddy Brant—thinker; When Reddy wondered why; Good-night, knight; Three wise men and a star.

“There is a genuine flavor of old-time American humor in the telling, and an unusual spirit of good fellowship.” M. H. B. Mussey

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Nation 111:sup674 D 8 ’20 80w

“There are more adventures to the square inch in this book than any other that has come to hand since ‘The three musketeers.’ The manner of telling is swift, humorous, breezy. Reddy is a find.” Hildegarde Hawthorne

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N Y Times p8 D 12 ’20 90w

Springf’d Republican p9a O 24 ’20 40w

TWEEDALE, CHARLES L. Man’s survival after death: or, The other side of life in the light of Scripture, human experience, and modern research. *$6 Dutton 218

“The researches made of late years to determine some proof of existence, especially bodily existence after death, have been mainly based upon science applied to psychical intuition and evidence. This method is one elimination, discarding all the agents and influences that might spring from irrational and abnormal factors in human experience, and tracking what remained of evidence as proof of communication with identities translated to a life beyond the grave. Mr Tweedale in this work seeks to prove a similar fact but his evidence has its origin in faith, and faith receives its confirmation in the doctrines of Scripture. Mankind in general, he believes, holds the germ of this faith but fails to make it an active conviction by reason of insufficient knowledge of the realities supporting that faith. On his part Mr Tweedale rejects psychic phenomena as the theory whereby to command the knowledge of survival, though he does not hesitate to refine upon its evidence to prove his own convictions of faith.”—Boston Transcript

Boston Transcript p6 S 8 ’20 310w

“No such vast array of evidence, consisting of well-authenticated occurrences, has ever before been brought together in one volume. Not only this vast survey of the entire field of psychic phenomena, with admirable presentation in its relation to man’s religious nature and spiritual development, but there is added the clear explanations and lofty thought of Mr Tweedale.” Lilian Whiting

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Springf’d Republican p9a O 17 ’20 600w

TWEEDALE, MRS VIOLET (CHAMBERS). Beautiful Mrs Davenant. *$1.75 (1½c) Stokes

20–15067

There are two mysteries in this story, that concerning the past of the beautiful Mrs Davenant and the mystery of Lake House, which Letty Thorne senses on first coming there to stay with her uncle. In the solution of the second the secret of the first is also revealed. It is revealed to the reader and to one other person in the story, but Mrs Davenant, feeling that there is that in her life which forbids remarriage says no to the man who loves her and keeps her own confidence. A minor love story develops between the vicar and Mrs Davenant’s friend Agnes Howard, and to this affair as well as to the love story of Letty there is a happy ending.

“The story is not very probable, but it is entertaining and cleverly handled. It belongs to a rather old-fashioned type of romance, but it is treated in a modern way.”

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N Y Times p25 D 26 ’20 300w

“A very good mystery story.”

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Sat R 129:545 Je 12 ’20 60w

“If this ‘novel of love and mystery’ is somewhat crudely melodramatic and makes considerable demands on the improbable, Mrs Tweedale at least gives her readers plenty of incident.”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p202 Mr 25 ’20 70w

TWEEDALE, MRS VIOLET (CHAMBERS). Ghosts I have seen, and other psychic experiences. *$2 (2c) Stokes 133

19–19376

Supernatural experiences of a lifetime are recorded here. The author has the convictions of the theosophist, and in these pages there are occasionally brief essays on reincarnation, spiritualism, the “other side.” Unlike most current spiritualistic books, there is here no argument on alleged “irrefutable evidence.” The author is a psychic, has seen these things, we may believe or not. At any rate, reading at midnight, in a dimly lit house alone, we cannot remain indifferent. Some of the titles are: “Silk dress” and “rumpus”; The ghost of Prince Charlie; The invisible hands; Peacock’s feathers—the skeleton hand at Monte Carlo; I commit murder; The angel of Lourdes; “The new Jeanne d’Arc”; Auras. An interesting picture of Madame Blavatsky (in the flesh) is presented in this book.

Ath p1136 O 31 ’19 120w

Reviewed by Preserved Smith

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Nation 110:sup483 Ap 10 ’20 120w

“This book introduces the reader not only to many interesting visitors from the world beyond mortal ken but to a very interesting human being as well. For the author’s own sake, it is well worth reading.” Cornelia Van Pelt

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Pub W 97:611 F 21 ’20 360w

Review 2:183 F 21 ’20 400w

The Times [London] Lit Sup p643 N 13 ’19 700w

TYRRELL, GEORGE. Letters *$7 Dutton

(Eng ed 21–197)

“‘George Tyrrell’s letters,’ selected and edited by Miss M. D. Petre, author of the ‘Life of George Tyrrell,’ will bring the opportunity of a more familiar acquaintance to the many Americans who have been interested in the well-known Irishman’s life and work. Modernism claimed great sacrifices and the labor of some years; but it was not all his life. And in this selection of letters it has been the intention to show him in his dealings with widely moral and undenominationally spiritual issues, to show him also in his lighter moments, when he spoke true words in jest, or hid his meaning under a veil of persiflage.”—Springf’d Republican

“So long as there are Christians of even a simple type, Tyrrell will be read, because of his instinct for the things of Christ. His cruel ironies and his flaming resentments, his rash speculations and his tottering syntheses may all be buried in his grave.”

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Ath p15 Ja 7 ’21 840w

Boston Transcript p7 N 6 ’20 500w

“These highly interesting letters have been published, as we are told, with the view of showing Tyrrell in ‘his lighter and brighter, as in his sadder and graver moods.’ We must confess to finding him sometimes equally depressing in both. His humour has a tinge of that professional flippancy (as lay-people esteem it) which seems common to clergymen of every denomination. The ‘letters of advice’ included in this collection show us Father Tyrrell at the best, wise, comforting, sympathetic, with no thought but the welfare of his correspondents.”

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Sat R 129:519 Je 5 ’20 1000w

“Miss Petre has done well to publish this selection from his correspondence. He was a many-sided man, and his letters reflect his many-sidedness.”

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Spec 124:695 My 22 ’20 1350w

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Springf’d Republican p8 O 16 ’20 450w

“Miss Maud Petre has shown good judgment in issuing this collection of George Tyrrell’s letters as a supplement to his ‘Autobiography and life.’ It is plain that Tyrrell was a born correspondent. He expresses himself with more ease in a letter than in a volume. And he would, we think, have spared both himself and his church much trouble had he written more letters and published fewer books.”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p253 Ap 22 ’20 900w

TYRRELL, ROSS. Pathway of adventure. *$1.90 (2c) Knopf

20–8517

Stuart Wayne, writer of detective stories, finds himself involved in a genuine plot. He picks up a note dropped by a girl in a passing taxi and it starts him on the road of adventure and mystery. It is an appeal for help from a girl held imprisoned in an abandoned house in the Chicago suburbs. Through a lucky chance he gains entrance to the house and talks to the girl, Zaida Grayson, but his presence is discovered, with all but fatal consequences to himself, and the gang of crooks, with their fair prisoner, eludes him. But he has learned enough of her story to gain a clue and to connect it with the sudden death of Patrick Cullom, the iron king, whose young granddaughter is to inherit his wealth. With the aid of the secret service the band of kidnappers and murderers are brought to justice and by his own devotion and daring he wins the girl.

“Any lover of this type of tale must have discovered here [in the Borzoi books] a number of excellent examples, of which ‘The pathway of adventure’ is by no means the least successful.”

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Boston Transcript p3 N 27 ’20 170w

N Y Times p26 Ag 1 ’20 260w

“Events follow familiar lines, but with just enough variation to sustain the interest as incident follows incident.”

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Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 25 ’20 160w

U

ULLMAN, ALBERT EDWARD. “Line’s busy.” il *$1 (4½c) Stokes 817

Goldie is the telephone operator in a large hotel and she tells her story in slangy letters to her pal Myrtle. Events in which she takes a share from her switchboard reveal her as a girl “always there with the helping hand, no matter how much it’s been lacerated in the past.” In particular the love affairs of her patrons and co-workers interest her, and she straightens out several tangles, and finally, her own love story develops happily.

“A love story that is both clever and jolly is so rare nowadays that one seizes with avidity upon the romance of little Goldie.”

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Boston Transcript p5 O 6 ’20 200w

“Mr Ullman deserves full credit for a lot of ‘good lines.’ The wit of Goldie’s letters is catchy and largely original—not current vaudeville wheezes warmed over. We wish there was more of it and less of the ‘good-old-ham-and-eggs,’ ‘man-from-home’ brand of philosophy.”

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N Y Times 25:27 Je 27 ’20 500w

UNCENSORED letters of a canteen girl. *$2 (3c) Holt 940.48

20–14006

These letters were “scratched down on odds and ends of writing paper, in a rare spare moment at the canteen; at night, at my billet, by candle-light, in the mornings, perched in front of Madame’s fire-place.... Why were they never sent? Simply because all letters mailed from France in those days, must of course pass under the eyes of the censor.” (Foreword) They contain everything that happened generously interspersed with the conversations of the doughboys. Contents: Company A; The doughboys; The front; The artillery; The engineers; The ordnance; The French; Pioneers, M. P.’s and others.

“Rather more tempting to the jaded war appetite than most personal narratives because of the fresh frankness which anonymity permits. Will be liked better later on.”

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Booklist 17:150 Ja ’21

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Boston Transcript p4 O 23 ’20 220w

“So piquant and fine-humored are the observations and revelations that one regrets that the book is anonymous. The publishers’ claim, that this ‘gives the human side of soldiering as no book yet published has done,’ does not seem extravagant.”

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Springf’d Republican p8 Ag 27 ’20 270w

UNDERHILL, EVELYN (MRS STUART MOORE). Jacopone da Todi; poet and mystic—1228–1306; a spiritual biography. *$6 Dutton

20–4482

“Jacopone da Todi, that remarkable Italian mystical poet, was born soon after the death of St Francis of Assisi, about 1228 or 1230, while Dante was yet in the prime of his manhood. Living in the world until he was forty, a shrewd lawyer, a man of vivid temperament, of wide culture and refined tastes, he received at that age his first religious call. For the next ten years he wandered about as a missionary hermit and in 1278, being then about fifty, he became a Franciscan lay brother. Miss Underhill’s book is divided into two parts of about equal length. The first is devoted to Jacopone’s life, set in its proper historical environment. In the remaining part of the book Miss Underhill gives us a chronological selection from his mystical poems, so well known as the Laude, accompanied in the fellow page by an English translation (also into poetry) by Mrs Theodore Beck.”—Cath World

“Miss Underhill has a fine flow of language, a nice choice of adjectives, and a thorough, if somewhat undiscriminating, knowledge of the literature of her subject. Altogether her book is well done in its way, and it is not the slightest use wishing, as we do, that it had been done in another.” R. S.

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Ath p636 My 14 ’20 760w

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Boston Transcript p7 Mr 13 ’20 1500w

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Cath World 111:819 S ’20 620w

“The biographer’s comprehension of the worldly accomplishments of her subject and her equal insight into his spiritual attainments, is strikingly the counterpart of that two-sidedness which she emphasizes in the man himself. The bibliography apart from its immediate value as indicating the sources of the present work, will be of service to those interested in the whole subject of Christian mysticism.” Marianne Moore

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Dial 70:82 Ja ’21 1650w

“When the romantic personality falls into the hands of the scholar there is necessarily something of glamour and delight lost. This is what has happened in this austerely spiritual biography of Evelyn Underhill.” L. C. Willcox

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N Y Times 25:169 Ap 11 ’20 1200w

“Friar Jacopone was a poet of extraordinary power, and the fire, ease, and accomplishment of his rather erotic mystic poems are astonishing.”

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Spec 124:426 Mr 27 ’20 1450w

“The materials are rather flimsy for the construction of a biography. We cannot agree with Miss Underhill that Jacopone was a great poet. Intense religious feeling, vividly and forcibly expressed, does not of itself constitute poetry, and beyond such expression Jacopone does not often rise.”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p229 Ap 15 ’20 4100w

UNDERHILL, RUTH MURRAY. White moth. *$2 Moffat

20–20002

“Miss Underhill has converted the old fable of the ant and the grasshopper into a very modern romance which she calls ‘The white moth.’ Hilda Plaistead is the earnest plodder, Guy Nearing the gay and irresponsible hero, and the setting is the town of Cato. The two have a childhood engagement, become widely separated, and in the final chapter again discover that they were always meant for each other, but it is only after Guy has learned the folly of being jack of all trades and master of none.”—N Y Evening Post

“We can scarcely claim for Miss Underhill’s story either originality of substance or of treatment. What she does accomplish is an exceedingly readable and very human story, which possesses certain scenes of quiet and insistent realism.”

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Boston Transcript p6 F 5 ’21 250w

“High school days are described as well as in Booth Tarkington’s ‘Seventeen.’ The characters are all well drawn. However, the true merit of the book is in taking some new aspects of life, such as the business rivalry between man and woman or the problems of factory management and using them to construct a good old-fashioned romance which holds the attention from start to finish.”

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N Y Evening Post p10 O 30 ’20 140w

“It is a real romance and has a charming atmosphere.” Hildegarde Hawthorne

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N Y Times p9 D 12 ’20 70w

UNSEEN doctor. *$1.75 (5c) Holt 134

20–15457

The book is one of the Psychic series and describes the cure of a case of illness of fifteen years’ standing in the course of a year and eight months by an invisible spirit doctor. It contains a preface by J. Arthur Hill, testimonials by several personal friends of the patient and a report by the physician long in charge of the case in the flesh. The contents are: A chance paragraph; A chain of coincidences; The first interview; A further surprise; The invisible hand; Experiences and experiments; Fellow-lodgers; Royal progress; Learning to walk; “My little girl”; Six months later; Comments and criticisms; Appendix and index. The book was published in England as “One thing I know, or, The power of the unseen.”

“‘The unseen doctor’ is as respectable a book of psychic experiences as has come to the public. There is no doubt that it is a record of real experiences. But, respectable as the book is, it still leaves open the eternal question, ‘Why should spirit doctors cling to the earth, and why have they no concerns of their own?’”

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N Y Times p16 N 14 ’20 320w

“As a ‘psychic’ tale the book is futile and foolish, indeed, rather fertile in folly.”

−

Review 3:393 O 27 ’20 230w

“There is nothing fantastic in the story, and it is told with such convincing truth that the reader seems to have no choice save to accept it on its face value.” Lilian Whiting

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Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 23 ’21 330w

UNTERMEYER, LOUIS, ed. Modern American poetry. *$1.40 Harcourt 811.08

20–1516

“In his anthology, ‘Modern American poetry’ Louis Untermeyer has selected 132 poems by 80 authors, arranged them effectively, with brief notices for each writer and handy indices. Old favorites are here; ‘Little boy blue’ rubs shoulders with ‘The purple cow,’ and ‘When the frost is on the punkin’ with ‘A stein song.’ Franklin P. Adams, Oliver Herford, and Carolyn Wells are represented.”—Springf’d Republican

“All the best recent things are here.” H: A. Lappin

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Bookm 51:212 Ap ’20 70w

“This verse is remarkable for vigor and energy, form being sacrificed for content. An interesting feature is the group of seven poems on Lincoln by seven different poets.”

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Cleveland p41 Ap ’20 60w

“Though it too often misses the authentic current, is too often led away into stagnant marshes, it is perhaps as good a map as we yet possess. The editor is a better conversationalist than guide.”

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Dial 68:667 My ’20 60w

Dial 69:664 D ’20 60w

“It is a comprehensive and unusually satisfying collection.”

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Ind 104:64 O 9 ’20 130w

Reviewed by R. P. Utter

Nation 110:237 F 21 ’20 420w

“The present reviewer’s quarrel with Louis Untermeyer’s ‘Modern American poetry’ is not so much because of its selections and omissions—both often very wise ones—as because of Untermeyer’s attitude of mind in his introduction. It is the typical attitude of the poets of our present little ‘renaissance,’ and perhaps one should hardly quarrel with it, but smile at it. You would suppose poetry that was honest, fresh, contemporary, had never been written before.” W. P. Eaton

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N Y Call p10 Ja 18 ’20 1000w

“If there be any critic in the country who ought not to make a schoolbook, that critic is Louis Untermeyer. He is much too brilliantly individual and his likes and dislikes are too pronounced. It is a book of verse that young people probably will like, if they like verse at all. Many of the selections included are humorous.... A good professor would make a better anthology for use in schools.” Marguerite Wilkinson

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N Y Times 25:140 Mr 28 ’20 480w

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School R 28:630 O ’20 160w

“The criticism may be raised that Mr Untermeyer has been too generous to the ultra-moderns. But the selections of Carl Sandburg, John Gould Fletcher and Alfred Kreymborg are chosen with discrimination, and serve to accomplish the editor’s purpose.”

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Springf’d Republican p6 Ja 26 ’20 300w

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Survey 43:554 F 7 ’20 150w

“This book is a delightful one to read; it has a distinct individuality, and if Mr Untermeyer, in avoiding the beaten track, does not always publish the finest work of his poets, he recovers many a line that has been undeservedly forgotten.” E: B. Reed

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Yale R n s 10:199 O ’20 390w

UNTERMEYER, LOUIS, ed. Modern British poetry. *$2 Harcourt 821.08

20–13991

A companion volume to Mr Untermeyer’s ‘Modern American poetry.’ Over seventy-five poets are represented, ranging from Thomas Hardy, born in 1840, to Robert Graves, born in 1895. Among the others are Alice Meynell, William Watson, Francis Thompson, A. E. Housman, Ernest Dowson, Hilaire Belloc, Walter de la Mare, G. K. Chesterton, W. W. Gibson, John Masefield, Ralph Hodgson, Harold Monro, John Drinkwater, Siegfried Sassoon, Francis Ledwidge, Irene Rutherford McLeod, Richard Aldington, Robert Nichols and Charles H. Sorley. In an introduction the editor discusses the new influences and tendencies.

Booklist 17:23 O ’20

Dial 69:664 D ’20 60w

“A few months ago saw the birth of Mr Untermeyer’s book of ‘Modern American poetry,’ a work remarkable as showing the wide variety of theme and treatment which is at least one characteristic trait of American poetry today. Now Mr Untermeyer, for some obscure reason, essays the same feat with ‘Modern British poetry.’ And the result is conspicuously a failure.” J: G. Fletcher

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Freeman 2:116 O 13 ’20 1100w

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Nation 111:278 S 4 ’20 50w

“The disproportionate amount of space allotted to the various poets gives a false emphasis: Mr Hardy, Mr Bridges and Mr Russell have each less than three pages, while Mr Chesterton has nine and Mr Kipling and Mr Noyes (Mr Noyes!) twelve each. The anthologist is tolerant of many schools; but his eye is more on the present than on the immediate past.” S. C. C.

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New Repub 24:49 S 8 ’20 800w

“Aside from the small flecks the book presents itself as an admirable attempt and one that, through its delightful snapshots of the poets prefixed to each writer’s work, should inveigle readers into a closer scrutiny of British verse.”

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N Y Times p16 N 7 ’20 490w

“The editor’s taste is sensitive, and his curious bitterness towards the Victorians, which is the main drawback to his liberality, does not greatly affect the catholicity of the work.”

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Review 3:321 O 13 ’20 280w

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School R 28:630 O ’20 160w

UNTERMEYER, LOUIS. New Adam. *$1.75 Harcourt 811

20–16871

As an introduction to this book of poems Mr Untermeyer reprints “A note on the poetry of love” from the New Republic. He comments on the artificiality of the love poetry of the preceding age and notes that in our day there is a tendency to return “to the upright vigor, the wide and healthy curiosity” of our earlier ancestors, the Elizabethans. Among the poems of the book are: The new Adam, Hands, Asleep, Summer storm, A marriage, Wrangle, Equals, Supplication, The eternal masculine, Windy days, The embarrassed amorist, Words for a jig, Disillusion, The prodigal.

“There is nothing about love or woman in this collection, except it be in the verses called ‘The wise woman,’ that is new in love poetry, and there is many a mood and theme that has been both artistically and emotionally better expressed by any number of poets in the past ‘two centuries.’” W: S. Braithwaite

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Boston Transcript p4 D 31 ’20 1000w

Reviewed by Babette Deutsch

Dial 70:89 Ja ’21 380w

“There is in this recent work of Mr Untermeyer’s a note that is singular in American poetry. It shows a writer who has become curious about the soul.” H. S. Gorman

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Freeman 2:332 D 15 ’20 320w

“Mr Untermeyer is casual, as he promised, and flippant, and frank, and dutifully vulgar; but seldom is his effect other than that of an agile pen tracing a facile passion.”

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Nation 112:86 Ja 19 ’21 160w

“Neither the rhapsodic nor the mocking quality, however, gives the substance of Untermeyer’s work. The roots of his power lie deeper. Upright vigor, wide and healthy curiosity describe his own work excellently.” Babette Deutsch

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N Y Evening Post p5 N 6 ’20 860w

“One of Mr Untermeyer’s most marked traits is a delightful whimsicality. It crops up again and again throughout the volume, for, strangely enough, this book, which purports to be so revealing, is really extremely reticent. But a dissatisfaction obtrudes itself. Why, oh why, has Mr Untermeyer, master of so many differing forms, chosen to follow Heine in his tight little rhythms and mathematically cut stanzas? In Mr Untermeyer’s case, the effect is not exactly what I imagine he hopes.” Amy Lowell

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N Y Times p8 O 10 ’20 3500w

Springf’d Republican p8 Jl 10 ’20 70w

USHER, ABBOTT PAYSON. Introduction to the industrial history of England. il *$2.50 Houghton 330.942

20–5634

The book is a narrative of all the historical facts in the industrial development from the earliest beginnings to the present time, which presumably explains the word introduction in the title. The ground covered is shown in the contents: Forms of industrial organization; The rise of the crafts in antiquity; Crafts and craft gilds in medieval France; The population of England: 1086–1700; Village and manor; The traders and the towns; The development of gilds in England; The woolen industries: 1450–1750; The enclosure movement and land reform; The industrial revolution; The East India company and the vested interests; The new cotton industry; The reorganization of the metal trades; The rise of the modern factory system; The rise of collective bargaining; The protection of health and welfare by the state; The development of the railway; The government and the railways; Combinations and monopolies; Incomes, wages, and social unrest; Selected references; Index, maps, figures, and graphs.

“His exposition is generally clear. The balance of general statement and of particular fact is in most chapters good. The author is usually a trustworthy guide. The most serious weakness of the work, when it is appraised as a manual for college undergraduates, lies in its plan rather than in its execution. I think, however, that few teachers who examine the book will dissent from the conclusion that it would be greatly improved if a large part, almost one third of the whole, were cut out, and if the space saved were used for the consideration of the topics now omitted.” Clive Day

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Am Econ R 10:572 S ’20 1050w

“The facts are presented with scholarly care, but the style is not too technical.”

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Booklist 16:224 Ap ’20

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Boston Transcript p6 Jl 31 ’20 490w

“Marked by scholarliness and originality.”

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Cleveland p90 O ’20 10w

“English industrialism, is, primarily, a consequence of certain philosophic ideas, but the author fails to comprehend this major fact, not from any lack of knowledge of the complexities of economic organization, but rather, one surmises because such intricacies are too much for him. He has not seen the wood for the trees, and he fears generalizations—except the one implied throughout the book, that there are no generalizations possible.” R. W.

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Freeman 2:141 O 20 ’20 980w

“The book shows throughout the discriminatory use of the latest available results of research and much painstaking original work. The controversial treatment, the careful qualification in discussion, as well as occasional heaviness in style, make the book unsuited for an undergraduate text.”

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J Pol Econ 28:520 Je ’20 500w

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New Repub 23:341 Ag 18 ’20 1650w

“It is encyclopædic in its character and is much more full in dealing with the mechanical aspects and the mechanical development of industry than with the history of the men, women, and children who have been engaged in the industries of England. In this respect it is a disappointing book.”

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Outlook 126:67 S 8 ’20 170w

“It is no small task to formulate a general text-book covering so enormous a field and involving many disputatious matters. Professor Usher has, however, accomplished this with skill. Some of his chapters are inadequate. In his discussion of land reform and the inclosure movement, for example, the plight of the evicted peasant farmers seems to be poorly understood. A similar criticism of a narrowness of sympathy, or at any rate of an inadequacy of understanding, might be directed against the final chapter. Professor Usher has a very thin knowledge of the British labor situation today.” W. L. C.

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Survey 45:288 N 20 ’20 300w

USHER, ROLAND GREENE. Story of the great war. il *$2.50 Macmillan 940.3

19–19080

“Professor Usher begins his story with the assassination of the Archduke of Austria; but he shows beyond doubt that the war really began months before this event. The German attitude in 1914 is described; the reports of spies concerning the French and the Russian preparedness and the British reluctance to enter into war. With these preliminaries, which include the first five chapters of his book, Professor Usher begins his narrative with the story of the campaign on Paris and the wonderful strategy displayed by General Joffre, followed by the aggressiveness of Foch.... He traces the work of Hindenburg; the entrance of the British and the Italians into the struggle; the submarine campaign and the incident of the Lusitania; ... the German offensive of 1918; the entrance of America into the war; Chateau-Thierry and the surprising fighting qualities of the American soldier; St Mihiel, the crumbling of the German line; and the final crash and fall.”—Boston Transcript

“Many of the illustrations, taken from newspapers published in the most acute moments of the war, are full of extreme feeling. The book, therefore, does not tend to form cool and restrained views of the world war. Probably the author did not wish to form such views. Its strong point is in its large amount of information presented clearly and directly.”

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Am Hist R 26:136 O ’20 300w

“It is distinctive for the clearness of statement, an interpretation rather than a catalogue of events. May be read with interest by upper grade pupils or grown-ups. Good illustrations and maps.”

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Booklist 16:165 F ’20

“Professor Usher’s story is told with wonderful vigor, great picturesqueness and with a rare comprehension of causes and of effects. His final brief discussion of the query, ‘Who won the war?’ is illuminating and beyond doubt thoroughly correct in its findings.” E. J. C.

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Boston Transcript p6 Ja 17 ’20 550w

“It was to be expected that what was written under the stress of war should partake largely of the character of propaganda, but the war is now a matter of history and we have a right to expect that historical students will try to assume a more judicial attitude toward the events of the past few years. The chief objection to Mr Usher’s work is that its viewpoint is that of 1917.” L. M. L.

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Mississippi Valley Hist R 7:76 Je ’20 330w

“It is a serious handicap to American history that much of it is now written to meet the needs of the immature mind, that is, for the college audience. Professor Usher has composed a ‘story of the war’ in which the bright boy will find just what he wants, but in which the thoughtful man can grasp little to satisfy him.” Preserved Smith

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Nation 110:302 Mr 6 ’20 220w

“This history is terse, clear, and well proportioned. It will serve satisfactorily as a ready reference book and for schools, and will help in reading the more elaborate histories that will later appear.”

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Outlook 124:161 Ja 28 ’20 40w

“The volume is attractively illustrated.”

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R of Rs 61:220 F ’20 100w

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School R 28:315 Ap ’20 380w

The Times [London] Lit Sup p242 Ap 15 ’20 30w

V

VACHELL, HORACE ANNESLEY. Whitewash. *$1.90 (1c) Doran

20–7763

The past, the present, and the future are represented in this story, and, as must be expected, clash. Lady Selina Chandos, widow of the Squire of Upworthy, writes with a quill and carries on her husband’s work along his lines. Consequently the picturesque village of Upworthy is in a state of decay, and sickness and death lurk between the rotten floors and leaking thatched roofs. Her daughter Cicely has been at school and her chum there was Tiddy, the very incarnation of modernity and daring feminism. Also the old parish doctor, owing to conditions in the village, is obliged to take on a partner in the person of young Dr Grimshaw. Lady Selina’s nearest neighbor is Lord Wilverley, an up-to-date landlord. Of course there is trouble and not until Lord Selina’s son, Brian, is dead in France, the village in revolt, the manor house in ashes, and Cicely has jilted Lord Wilverley and declared her love for Grimshaw, does Lady Selina realize that whitewashing time is over and a new day has dawned.

“A trenchant indictment of obsolete systems of estate-management.”

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Ath p464 Ap 2 ’20 100w

“In spite of its sociological theme, a well told story untainted by preachiness.”

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Booklist 16:351 Jl ’20

“All this seems very serious, and somewhat in the nature of a social and political tract for the times, but the discussion of conditions in the village of Upworthy and on the Chandos estate are so closely interwoven into the story that they are made much more effective than if they were direct propaganda. The love element in the story is ingenious.” E. F. E.

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Boston Transcript p8 Je 19 ’20 1400w

“The story is mediocre in characterization but rich in the dramatic portrayal of a wealth of incident.”

+ −

Cleveland p71 Ag ’20 60w

“It is pleasant, leisurely writing with some excellent character drawing.”

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Ind 103:53 Jl 10 ’20 180w

“In a characteristic English country home the old and the new order strive for supremacy in Mr Vachell’s new novel. And the story through which he portrays the conflict between them is a fine piece of workmanship, telling a real story—which so much English fiction does not—and having a compact framework and an ample supply of interesting and illuminating incident.”

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N Y Times 25:292 Je 6 ’20 550w

“The novel is capital both for its entertainment and its picture of old and new English society.”

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Outlook 125:281 Je 9 ’20 120w

“The dénoûement is ingeniously contrived, with a good curtain, and throughout there is no lack of animated and appropriate, if undistinguished, dialogue. Yet the book leaves us with far less sympathy for the representatives of either régime than Mr Galsworthy’s more serious studies of patricians and rebels.”

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Spec 125:118 Jl 24 ’20 420w

“Mr Vachell invariably writes in an optimistic vein and with due sense of the humorous and romantic possibilities of a situation. But the serious under-current is always visible beneath the sun-tipped waves of the author’s light mood.”

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Springf’d Republican p9a Jl 4 ’20 800w

“It is the sudden confrontations, the changes of fortune and the impact of fate against fate that go to make the book, and they make it in spite of Mr Vachell’s deficient insight into character. The dialogue is clever, amusing, enterprising; but it does not seem to be just exactly what the given person must have said on the given occasion. Mr Vachell supplies a good plot, and the plot is nine-tenths of the novel.”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p200 Mr 25 ’20 350w

VALLANCE, AYMER.^[2] Old crosses and lychgates. il *$7.50 Scribner 718

(Eng ed 20–18244)

“Mr Vallance sees in the erection of crosses a suitable way to memorialize England’s dead in the great war. ‘It is hoped,’ he says, ‘that it might prove useful to gather together a collection of examples of old crosses and lychgates, as affording the most appropriate form of monuments for reproduction or adaptation to the needs of the present.’ In his historical and descriptive studies of the crosses to be found in England and Wales, except for some unclassified varieties, Mr Vallance classifies them under five types to which he devotes a chapter each. They are the monolith crosses, the shaft-on-steps type, the spire-shaped or Eleanor crosses, preaching and market crosses.”—Boston Transcript

“The volume is richly illustrated in lithograph of over two hundred crosses and lychgates with many plans and details in line, making with the documentary and historical and descriptive text a fascinatingly instructive work.”

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Boston Transcript p6 Jl 21 ’20 1250w

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Sat R 130:96 Jl 31 ’19 820w

“Mr Vallance surveys his field both widely and closely, and we find but few occasions of criticism.”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p343 Je 3 ’20 1100w

VANCE, LOUIS JOSEPH. Dark mirror. il *$1.75 Doubleday

20–5778

“Priscilla Main, the heroine, is subject from childhood to strangely realistic dreams. She is a wealthy young society woman and artist; but in the dreams she assumes another personality and moves in an unfamiliar environment. In the dream existence she associates with denizens of the underworld in ‘the street of strange faces,’ and is known as ‘Red Carnahan’s girl.’ She is loved by Mario, who belongs to another world, but dwells in the lawbreakers’ region of the city, and who wants to remove her from those unwholesome surroundings. Priscilla grows to love this man of her dreams. The dreams become so vivid and distressing that the girl seeks the aid of a psychoanalyst who loves her, and who undertakes to solve the mystery of her wandering ego. The mental experimentalist gradually is able to harmonize dreams with reality and startling data from the realm of psychology are brought to light.”—Springf’d Republican

“Plausible though slightly overdrawn. The end is unexpected and also fresh.”

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Booklist 16:315 Je ’20

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Springf’d Republican p13a Ap 25 ’20 250w

VANDERLIP, FRANK ARTHUR. What happened to Europe. *$1.50 (3c) Macmillan 940.314

20–8050

For the second edition of this work Mr Vanderlip has written a new preface of twenty-one pages in which he analyzes the financial and economic development in Europe in the ten months following the writing of his book. “On the whole,” he says, “the events which have since occurred have been in harmony with the broad analysis made last May [1919].” He believes that America has missed a great opportunity and thinks that there is now little that we can do. “Our first task now is to put our own house in order.” Descriptive note with critical excerpts for the first edition will be found in the Annual for 1919.

N Y Times p17 Ag 15 ’20 460w

Springf’d Republican p8 S 9 ’20 140w

VAN DIEREN, BERNARD.^[2] Epstein. il *$12.50 (26c) Lane 735

Jacob Epstein, whose genius the author of this volume compares to that of Rembrandt, is said to be one of the greatest living sculptors. He belongs to that order of original creative minds “who have made the world, made humanity what it is in its best aspects. Human achievement is their work, human thought takes its foundation from what they have recognized and revealed, and the sum total of knowledge progresses by cumulative effect from one of such masters to the next one.” As it is the author’s opinion that words can not help in the appreciation of an art that does not speak to the spectator in its own language, the observations of the book are chiefly devoted to the problems of appreciation and understanding of art in general. The book contains fifty reproductions in collotype of the sculptor’s work.

Boston Transcript p6 N 20 ’20 330w

“The reproductions are beautiful in the profoundest sense. The volume is an accessible enrichment to the world of art.”

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Dial 69:666 D ’20 120w

“In spite of a treatise as heavy-handed as any ever inflicted by pretentious and empty shoptalk the illustrations of the sculptor’s art still interest and entrance. It is characteristically absurd that a public which does not buy a sculptor’s work should purchase a comparatively expensive book about him in which none of his spirit lives and which, while it contains his apotheosis as a divinity, contains still more the apotheosis of up-to-date studio and café commonplace.”

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N Y Evening Post p7 D 4 ’20 1200w

N Y Times p9 D 26 ’20 340w

“If we gather anything from it all, it is a general impression that most people who interest themselves in the arts are fools, and that Mr Van Dieren has tried to say so in a hundred and thirty pages with a persistent implication that he is not one of them. As for Mr Epstein, if we wish to add to our knowledge of him, we must look at the fifty plates considerately separated from the text at the end of the book.”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p349 Je 3 ’20 1550w

VAN DOREN, MARK. Poetry of John Dryden. *$3 Harcourt 821

20–19675

“This is an effort to brighten the most neglected side of the greatest neglected English poet. There is some novelty, I hope, in a treatment on an extended and more or less enthusiastic scale of Dryden’s non-dramatic verse as a body, with attention to the celebrator, the satirist, the journalist, the singer, and the story-teller all together.” (Preface) The contents are: The making of the poet; False lights; The true fire; The occasional poet; The journalist in verse; The lyric poet; The narrative poet; Reputation; conclusion; Appendix; Index.

“His study of a great poet and a great dramatist is a singular mingling of contradictions and it is hardly necessary as an introduction to a poet who needs no introduction.” E. F. Edgett

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Boston Transcript p1 D 18 ’20 1800w

“Mr Van Doren has read his English poetry devouringly up to Dryden and down from him, with the purpose of showing from whom the poet received each genre, what he did to each, and what it became in the hands of his successors. By letting in these sidelights skilfully and relevantly, he manages, without clogging his exposition, to make his discussion of Dryden a compendious history of poetic form. The effect upon the reader is, as I can testify, almost riotously stimulating.” S. P. Sherman

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Nation 111:619 D 1 ’20 1600w

“Our debt to America in the matter of criticism and true scholarship applied to English literature grows greater year by year. An admirable example of the thoroughness, nay, of the exhaustive quality of American criticism, even when it is most sympathetic and least pedantic, is to be found in this delightful study of John Dryden. The present writer must confess to a personal interest in Mr Van Doren’s book because it happens that the American critic’s judgment, not merely in the whole, but in the parts, agrees in an uncanny way with his own.”

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Spec 125:739 D 4 ’20 1600w

VAN DYKE, JOHN CHARLES. Grand canyon of the Colorado; recurrent studies in impressions and appearances. il *$2 Scribner 917.91

20–4459

“The book of the northern rim [of the Grand canyon] has yet to be written, but Professor Van Dyke has studied the scenery from the southern side and in his recently published book ‘The Grand canyon of the Colorado,’ gives us a popular account of the geology of the region. He protests against the naming of the great temples and buttes of the canyon after the gods of India. The views from a number of the southern points are described and details are given of the principal trails to the river. Reference is made to the animals, birds, and trees, and to the discoverers and prehistoric inhabitants of the canyon.”—Bookm

“Will delight readers, especially those of a slight scientific bent, who are not traveling.”

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Booklist 16:240 Ap ’20

Reviewed by Le Roy Jeffers

+

Bookm 51:360 My ’20 900w

“The most complete, picturesque and satisfactory account of the Grand canyon that we have.”

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Cleveland p77 Ag ’20 80w

“Written with all his graceful style and imagery, it may be called a literary guidebook of a superior kind. About half the book is devoted to the rock structure of this geologist’s paradise, and as these pages have not only been carefully prepared by the author but have been read in proof by Mr Ransome, of the Geological survey, they may be accepted as accurate.” F: S. Dellenbaugh

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Nation 110:771 Je 5 ’20 400w

“It is a good book for a pleasant afternoon. Mr Van Dyke does not philosophize or preach or rub in his colors so intensely that he forces you to yawn. There are none of the clichés of the improving book here.” M. F. Egan

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N Y Times 25:284 My 30 ’20 200w

“Here is an exceptionally good book about the Grand canyon.”

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Outlook 124:563 Mr 31 ’20 60w

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Springf’d Republican p6 Ag 2 ’20 220w

VAN DYKE, TERTIUS. Songs of seeking and finding. *$1.50 Scribner 811

20–6369

“It would have been rather disappointing if the music of many little (and unpronounceable) rivers, spilled down his boyhood years, had not left song in the heart of the master of Avalon’s son. So it is not at all surprising to discover that ‘Songs of seeking and finding’ is a book of very pleasant and profitable verse. The strong, virile faith behind the poems—their wholesome Christianity—impresses the reader more than the polish of their lines. Mr Van Dyke pleads for real values of life and real religion.”—Springf’d Republican

“Tertius Van Dyke writes poetry in the manner of his father, but not quite so well.”

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Ind 104:66 O 9 ’20 50w

“The best things in the book seem to me to be ‘The war-makers,’ because there is a bit of good healthy rage in it, and ‘A minister learns about life,’ because it has a good idea in it and ends at just the right moment.” M. Wilkinson

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N Y Times p18 Ag 8 ’20 300w

“Mr Van Dyke is more successful in poems thus reflective than in his lyrics, though in them the same forceful spirit is unmistakable.”

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Springf’d Republican p12 Je 8 ’20 310w

VANE, DEREK. Ferrybridge mystery. *$2 Moffat

20–17412

“A suburb of London is the scene of Derek Vane’s story. Basil Monck, a member of the London stock exchange, whose antecedents are unknown to his most intimate acquaintances, is found shot dead in his home. There is not the slightest clue to the identity of the murderer, but there are many people who might logically be suspected of the crime. Monck had more enemies than friends; he was generally known to have used his fascinating personality unscrupulously in his dealings with women, and more than one man blamed him for the loss of a fortune. Motives for the murder are plentiful and every man or woman who had cause to hate Monck falls naturally under suspicion.”—N Y Times

“It is a pleasure occasionally to find one story of the kind which justifies the publisher’s contention. The latest book by Miss Derek Vane is a worthy example. It is above the average of its kind.” C. H. O.

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Boston Transcript p4 S 4 ’20 540w

“In choosing the character upon whom to settle responsibility for Monck’s death, the author has displayed a courage and an originality that may react against the popularity of her story.”

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N Y Times p23 S 19 ’20 370w

VANE, GEORGE (VISCONDE DE SARMENTO). Waters of strife. *$1.75 (2c) Lane

20–12603

Beginning before the war in England we get a glimpse of the pre-war intrigues carried on by a German count, exiled in England, and his accomplices. But the greater part of the story transpires on Belgian soil in war-time showing up the ruthlessness of the Germans, and the indignities to which the Belgians were subjected. The heroism of an American boy and girl of Belgian descent furnish most of the thrills, and some fine friendships among the English aristocracy and the middle-class are depicted.

“The story is full of vigor and coloring befitting the day and scene in which it is laid.”

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Boston Transcript p6 Jl 28 ’20 160w

“The book is very badly constructed and the character drawing amateurish, but the account of Aline’s experiences in Belgium is interesting and occasionally dramatic.”

+ −

N Y Times p22 Ag 8 ’20 450w

“The book has some good episodes, but in the ordinary way it is difficult to work up much excitement, principally because the heroes and scoundrels alike ignore probabilities.”

+ −

The Times [London] Lit Sup p305 My 13 ’20 130w

VAN LOON, HENDRIK WILLEM.^[2] Ancient man. il *$3 Boni & Liveright 571

“‘Ancient man’ is to be the first of a series of nine history books in story form, which ‘will explore the intricate wilderness of the bygone ages’ and in summing up ‘try to show where the human race has lived up to its highest possible achievements and wherein it has failed to rise above the status of the earliest cavemen.’ (Ind) “It begins about fifty thousand years ago with a broad sketch of prehistoric man, struggling against elemental nature. It skips to the Nile and comes on down the ages to the Phoenecians.” (N Y Times)

“The text is terse, up to date, and thoroughly interesting.” A. C. Moore

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Bookm 52:260 N ’20 110w

“The famous historian undertook this task for his own boys, eight and twelve years old, and he has sensed unfailingly the way to stimulate the interest and satisfy the curiosity of youngsters of about that age.”

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Ind 104:379 D 11 ’20 250w

“Absorbingly interesting. This is the way to tell history to children—and to the rest of us.” Hildegarde Hawthorne

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N Y Times p9 D 19 ’20 130w

VANSITTART, ROBERT GILBERT. Singing caravan; a Sufi tale. *$2 Doran 821

(Eng ed 19–14218)

The device of the pilgrimage, with alternating narrative and song, is put to new uses by this young English poet. For the end of the matter is not mere entertainment by the way, but philosophical discussion, in which the views of the watchmen, the merchant, the scholar, the sheikh, the sceptic, and even the camel, are represented.

“‘The singing caravan’ hammers mysticism into clean, efficient verse, which in its ease and correctness, displays the immense technical equipment of the recent English poets; but his subject matter shows the lack of freshness and homeliness that handicaps the Georgian poets as a group in comparison with their American rivals.”

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Dial 68:537 Ap ’20 50w

“Eastern mysticism and the imagery of the caravan form the vehicle by which Mr Vansittart conveys his mind upon final things; but there is no affectation of the Orient in his thought, and even his words are straightforward and plain; he has Schubert’s knack of turning common phrases into bewitching melody.”

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Spec 123:118 Jl 26 ’19 50w

“The charm of Persian landscape, the wealth of Persian poetry have been woven into these tales, and they may be read just as profitably for the pictures they paint as for the lessons they teach.”

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Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 25 ’20 150w

“‘The singing caravan’ is ‘a tale of Persian mystics,’ and with the Persian mystics we are few of us on intimate terms. But its rich and clear colouring, innocent of purple patchwork, though ‘local,’ may none the less charm the untravelled; and the poem may be enjoyed either for its landscape and characters, its allegory, its remarkable craftsmanship, or for the sake of the mind and spirit which are revealed in it.”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p447 Ag 21 ’19 1000w

VAN VECHTEN, CARL. In the garret. *$2 (3c) Knopf 780.4

20–926

From the garret of his memory the author produces many things, scrutinizes them whimsically and chats about them at random. The things are authors and books and music and people he has met. Contents: Variations on a theme by Havelock Ellis; A note on Philip Thicknesse; The folk-songs of Iowa; Isaac Albéniz; The holy jumpers; On the relative difficulties of depicting heaven and hell in music; Sir Arthur Sullivan; On the rewriting of masterpieces; Oscar Hammerstein: an epitaph; La tigresse; In the theatres of the purlieus: Mimi Aguglia as Salome, Farfariello, The negro theatre, The Yiddish theatre, The Spanish theatre.

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Ath p257 F 20 ’20 80w

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Booklist 16:198 Mr ’20

“He has a magnificent way of being unimportant. His touch is light and artistic. His culture is Hunekeresque. His scholarship is musicianly, sometimes jazzy.” Mary Terrill

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Bookm 51:193 Ap ’20 350w

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New Repub 22:161 Mr 31 ’20 80w

“The author does himself injustice by opening with the least attractive essay in the book, though it shows the most erudition.... It is when he surveys the American scene that we go all the way with Mr Van Vechten.”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p77 F 5 ’20 800w

VAN VECHTEN, CARL. Tiger in the house. il *$5 Knopf 636.8

“I have written, how skilfully I cannot tell, on the manners and customs of the cat, his graces and calineries, the history of his subjugation of humankind. Through all the ages, even during the dark epoch of witchcraft and persecution, puss has maintained his supremacy, continued to breed and multiply, defying, when convenient, the laws of God and man, now our friend, now our enemy, now wild, now tame, the pet of the hearth or the tiger of the heath, but always free, always independent, always an anarchist who insists upon his rights, whatever the cost. The cat never forms soviets; he works alone.” (Apotheosis) The illustrations are many and beautiful. There is an exhaustive bibliography and an index and the contents are: By way of correcting a popular prejudice; Treating of traits; Ailurophobes and other cat-haters; The cat and the occult; The cat in folklore; The cat and the law; The cat in the theatre; The cat in music; The cat in art; The cat in fiction; The cat and the poet; Literary men who have loved cats; Apotheosis.

“The book is a revelation concerning the more or less important part which cats have played in history and literature.”

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Bookm 52:367 Ja ’21 160w

“The suggestive ingenuity of its title is matched by the far-reaching skill with which he has amassed and arrayed his facts so as to make them into a continuous story that blends both fact and the imagination.” E. F. Edgett

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Boston Transcript p2 D 11 ’20 1600w

“Mr Van Vechten is less fortunate in his choice of pictures than in his text.” J. W. Krutch

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Nation 112:sup243 F 9 ’21 780w

Reviewed by E. L. Pearson

Review 3:648 D 29 ’20 150w

VAN VORST, MARIE. Fairfax and his pride. *$1.75 Small

20–4010

“Miss Van Vorst’s narrative is the story of the struggles of Antony Fairfax to gain distinction as a sculptor. He is largely self-taught, but soon after coming to New York in 1880, at the age of twenty-three, we find him perfecting an epoch-making piece of modeling in the studio of a famous sculptor. The latter steals the credit for Fairfax’s work, and starts the young man on the career which threatens to snuff out his ambition and great talents. It is after this mischance that Fairfax becomes successively fireman and engineer for the New York Central. His railroad service ends abruptly with the receipt of a small inheritance from an admirer. This takes him to Paris, where he establishes his fame, experiences a brief romance, and finally has the satisfaction of confounding the man who stole the early fruits of his genius.”—Springf’d Republican

“Not as interesting as ‘Big Tremaine’ and will not be as popular.”

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Booklist 16:284 My ’20

“It is safe to say that no American novel of the season so far surpasses the quality of ‘Fairfax and his pride.’ It tells a story that takes you astray and brings you back to the main current of events with surprising interest. The characters are all well drawn. We close the book with the consciousness that here is a real American novelist.” W. S. B.

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Boston Transcript p6 Mr 24 ’20 1550w

N Y Times 25:170 Ap 11 ’20 320w

Reviewed by H. W. Boynton

Review 2:393 Ap 17 ’20 160w

“The young sculptor and his difficulties do not produce a very lively impression. Miss Van Vorst never brings her readers into intimate touch with him, and the short, jerky chapters are irritating in their effects.”

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Springf’d Republican p11a My 30 ’20 550w

VAN WESEP, HENDRIKUS BOEVE. Control of ideals. *$2 (5c) Knopf 171

20–18312

This “contribution to the study of ethics” (Sub-title) is concerned primarily with the problem of war prevention. The author holds that man is more an imaginative than a rational animal and apt to mistake his imaginative world for the world of reality. By learning to control our ideals we learn to distinguish between an ideal and a fixed idea and to live by rather than die for them. The book takes up in turn the origin, nature, and function of human ideals and the supreme worth of the individual and of human life. Contents: Variety of ideals; Attitude toward ideals; Assimilation of ideals; The survival of ideals; Nations; Development of self-consciousness; Society versus the individual; Utopianism; Democracy; Tolerance; Harmony; Symbiosis; Atomism; Functions of ideals; Moral courage; Index.

“Scholarly but written for the layman.”

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Booklist 17:92 D ’20

“His optimism seems a little too easy for a disillusioned civilization, but at least he is intelligible, a great recommendation for any one educated among the fogs of metaphysics.”

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N Y Evening Post p13 O 30 ’20 70w

The Times [London] Lit Sup p670 O 14 ’20 90w

VAST, HENRI. Little history of the great war. il *$2 Holt 940.3

20–20075

A short history of the war, translated from the French by Raymond Weeks of Columbia university. Contents: The German race—pangermanism; The environment—William II and Europe (1900–1914); The critical moment—responsibility for the war; The sudden attack—battle of the Marne; Eastern front—Serbia and Russia (1914–1916); Distant theaters of war—in the Orient—on the sea and in the colonies; The Italian effort—the army of Saloniki; Retrospective preparation (1915–1916); The ruin of Russia (1916–1918); American aid; Peace offensives; Victory—capitulation of Germany. There are twenty-seven maps, but no index.

“A wonderfully compact story of the war, composed with characteristic French clarity.”

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R of Rs 62:671 D ’20 60w

VAUGHAN, WALTER.^[2] Life and work of Sir William Van Horne. il *$5 Century

20–20625

The life of Sir William Van Horne is something of a romance, he having made his way from a poor boy in Illinois to an English peerage. He gained his fame and his fortune as a builder of railroads of which the Canadian Pacific was his greatest achievement. With his natural abilities, says his biographer, he would have achieved greatness in any field; as a military commander, as an engineer or architect, as a painter or in the natural sciences. The book has several maps, illustrations and an index.

“The chief merit of the book is its really vivid picture of a striking personality.” Allan Nevins

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N Y Evening Post p8 Ja 29 ’21 1250w

R of Rs 62:670 D ’20 100w

VEBLEN, THORSTEIN B. Place of science in modern civilization, and other essays. *$3 Huebsch 330.4

20–6953

“The assumptions of the existing economic order are studied in Thorstein Veblen’s latest book, ‘The place of science in modern civilization.’ This is a carefully selected series of papers published in economic journals during the past twenty years, and sums up the principles of an economic attitude so popular among modern economists that it has been entitled ‘Veblenism.’”—Springf’d Republican

“If these old essays are valuable, in the face of all that their author has since contributed, it is because of their emphasis upon the spirit of his work; because, as much as anything he has done, they show the impulse and intention of his scholarship. There are here, as elsewhere, passages that rouse impatience because of the author’s very carelessness of pragmatism.” Babette Deutsch

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Dial 69:79 Jl ’20 1250w

“There are serious difficulties in the way of a ‘scientific’ treatment of economics, over which Mr Veblen does not help us, and many of which he does not see. A keen critic, he is not a close or clear thinker; destructively valuable, we can hardly follow him as a constructive leader.” F. H. Knight

+ −

J Pol Econ 28:518 Je ’20 1100w

“The book is a rich contribution to economic and social literature, and is, in a way, Mr Veblen at his scientific best.” H. A. Overstreet

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Nation 111:250 Ag 28 ’20 500w

“Nowhere in them is there any indication of that subtle wit, the telling thrust, the finely pointed characterization that rewarded the hours of toil through his other writings. While our author’s standing as a humanist is enhanced by the essays, his reputation as an economist will not be.” N. W. Wilensky

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N Y Call p10 My 16 ’20 1050w

“One cannot help wondering whether Mr Veblen himself knows what an excellent literary quality his writings have, and what a boon to the jaded reader is the absence in his work of certain conventional literary virtues—solemnity, geniality, sonority, and the like.”

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No Am 211:424 Mr ’20 1350w

“The position of Mr Veblen is so deserving of attention that one must regard his involved style and ponderous vocabulary as a misfortune.”

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Springf’d Republican p8 Mr 18 ’20 580w

“Several of them are on academically important topics which, nevertheless, the more general public that has become interested in the author’s theories can afford to skip. Others deal with fundamental issues which the layman should try to understand. Among these we would class the three papers on the preconceptions of economic science which demonstrate the shifts in the boundaries of that science, and especially the newer emphasis on its human aspects.”

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Survey 44:352 Je 5 ’20 150w

VERNÈDE, ROBERT ERNEST. Port Allington stories, and others. *$1.90 (2c) Doran

20–21335

A volume of short stories by an English author who was killed in the war, issued now as he had prepared them for publication, with a preface by his wife. Some of them had appeared in Harper’s Magazine. Contents: “This is Tommy”; The greatness of Mr Watherstone; The outrage at Port Allington; The offense of Stephen Danesford; Soaring spirits; The bad Samaritan; The sunk elephant; The adventure of the Persian prince; The smoke on the stairs; On the raft; Madame Bluebird; The missing princess; A night’s adventure; The maze.

“Deftness of phrasing, and a sense of character and of the social ironies mark a volume of tales whose sarcasm is never bitter and whose laughter is always good-natured.”

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N Y Times p26 D 26 ’20 310w

“Nowhere except in Mrs Wharton’s matchless ‘Xingu,’ and possibly in Mr Benson’s current ‘Queen Lucia,’ have the humors of feminine club-made culture been more amusingly displayed.” H. W. Boynton

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Review 3:253 S 22 ’20 300w

VERNÈDE, ROBERT ERNEST. War poems, and other verses. *$1.50 Doran 821

20–20444

Edmund Gosse in his introduction gives a biographical sketch of the author, an Englishman of French descent who, altho past military age, enlisted at the beginning of the war and was killed in 1917. Among the war poems are England and the sea, The call; The Indian army; A legend of the fleet; To the United States; Christmas, 1914; To Canada; Before the assault. These are followed by a small group of “other verses” on such themes as The July garden, Friendship, To an English sheep-dog. The volume was published in England in the fall of 1917.

+

Lit D p33 F 16 ’18 100w

Reviewed by E. L. Pearson

Review 3:269 S 29 ’20 250w

“In Lieutenant Vernède’s unhesitating and uncompromising verse the man sustains the poet, but the poet merits that support.” O. W. Firkins

+

Review 3:318 O 13 ’20 120w

R of Rs 57:333 Mr ’18 230w

“Some of the finest poems that have come from the trenches. They are instinct with an exalted patriotism.”

+

Spec 120:14 Ja 5 ’18 320w

VERRILL, ALPHEUS HYATT.^[2] Islands and their mysteries. il *$1.75 Duffield 551.42

20–20916

The author offers this volume as a companion to “The ocean and its mysteries.” It explains in a non-technical manner how islands are formed, how they resemble or differ from one another, how they become covered with vegetation, and are inhabited by animal life and many other puzzling and interesting features of islands and insular life. Imaginary trips to imaginary islands of various types hold the young reader’s attention. Contents: The romance of islands; Islands and islands; Volcanic islands; Coral islands and other islands; Island life; Island vegetation; A ramble on a lake island; An island in the sea; Exploring an island in a tropical river; A visit to an island in tropical seas; The island of salt; The island of pearls; When people dwell in a volcano; Islands of the frozen seas. There are illustrations.

“The story is an extremely fascinating one and although designed undoubtedly for the reading of adults, cannot fail to be both interesting and instructive to boys and girls in their teens, whose minds are beginning to expand and to reason and inquire into the causes of things.”

+

Boston Transcript p1 D 11 ’20 330w

“Always he retains a human viewpoint, so that his book reflects the wonder and mystery of life instead of degenerating into a mere scientific treatise.”

+

N Y Evening Post p14 Ja 8 ’21 480w

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R of Rs 63:112 Ja ’21 80w

“Although the style, which smacks somewhat of the elementary geography, grows a bit monotonous at times, he leaves one wishing for more.”

+

Springf’d Republican p10 Ja 28 ’21 200w

VESTAL, SAMUEL CURTIS. Maintenance of peace. *$5 (2c) Putnam 341

20–9987

“The foundations of domestic and international peace as deduced from a study of the history of nations.” (Sub-title) At the hands of history, going as far back as ancient Assyria, the author endeavors to prove that peace can only be secured on a basis of militarism and preparedness and on a “balance of power” rather than on a world confederacy or a league of nations. Sea power ought naturally to belong to the nation weakest in land power, in order that the balance of power may be maintained and “freedom of the seas” can be little more than a phrase. Of pacifism he will have none for it teaches “a spiritless doctrine of cowardice.” Preparedness is as necessary for the maintenance of domestic peace as of peace between nations. A partial list of the contents is: The domestic peace of nations; The integration of nations; World federation; The balance of power; Early history of the balance of power; The thirty years’ war; Part taken by England in maintaining the balance of power since the treaty of Utrecht; Lessons that should be drawn from attempts to overthrow the balance of power and establish world empires; The Holy alliance; Arbitration as a panacea for war; Neutralization of small states; Disarmament; Germany prepares for world conquest; Growth of pacifism outside of Germany; Index.

“Many new ideas are broached in this thoughtful volume, which is worthy of the close study of statesman and militarist.”

+

Boston Transcript p6 Je 16 ’20 400w

Ind 103:292 S 4 ’20 20w

VILLARS, MEG. Broken laugh. *$2 (1c) McBride

The heroine, a very simple and trusting little English girl, who answers to the name of Kissy-Girl, is betrayed at the age of seventeen and goes to London alone to await the birth of her child. A chance clue from a newspaper sends her to Paris in search of the man and she is there decoyed into a house of ill fame. Refusing to become one of the professional inmates she is allowed to remain as a servant. In this capacity she meets Jim Crighton, an Englishman who falls in love with her and takes her to Brussels. He has made up his mind to marry her when the war breaks out. He enlists and succeeds to a title. His intention to marry Kissy remains, but a German bomb puts an end to everything.

“If she had been content to develop her whole story in the milieu she knows best, she would probably have produced a really effective narrative.”

+ −

Ath p1386 D 19 ’19 60w

“A novel of more than usual literary excellence. The reader’s sympathy with this story will depend almost entirely upon his conception of the importance of conventionally fixed morality.”

+

N Y Times p24 N 7 ’20 470w

“Like much latter-day fiction, this work has numerous touches of interest and reality; but, as a whole, gives an effect of weakness.”

− +

Sat R 129:193 F 21 ’20 230w

“Such a tale might be sensational, but, in Miss Villars’s telling, it is delicate.”

+

Springf’d Republican p9a Ag 29 ’20 420w

“Obviously the war should not have been allowed to intrude; it spoils everything. But one day she may write a book as good from cover to cover as the first hundred pages of ‘The broken laugh.’”

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The Times [London] Lit Sup p769 D 18 ’19 480w

VILLIERS, FREDERIC, il. Days of glory. il *$5 Doran 940.49

20–4792

“The sketch book of a veteran correspondent at the front.” (Sub-title) The volume consists of a series of fifty full-page illustrations showing scenes at the front, each accompanied by brief descriptive comment. Philip Gibbs contributes an introduction, “A salute to Frederic Villiers.”

“A well made book.”

+

Booklist 16:277 My ’20

“It is worth whole tomes of verbal description. The pictures are vivid and accurate.” N. H. D.

+

Boston Transcript p10 Ap 17 ’20 560w

“Villiers represents the type of the old-guard war correspondent at its best. The sketches in ‘Days of glory’ have no special artistic merit. They look very old fashioned beside the modern methods of Nevinson and Nash. In character they are topographical, anecdotal, documentary. There is no doubt that they possess a certain historical significance.”

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Nation 111:785 D 29 ’20 250w

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Outlook 124:657 Ap 14 ’20 60w

“The artistic merit of Mr Villiers’s work consists not merely in the personal element wrought into the pictures as contrasted with the mechanical work of a camera, but also in the fact that here are pictures at which no camera had a chance in 1914–15, and the other pictures which no camera could have furnished with all the license in the world.”

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Springf’d Republican p6 Ap 26 ’20 360w

VILLIERS, FREDERIC. Villiers, his five decades of adventure. 2v il *$6 (7½c) Harper

20–20650

Two volumes devoted to the life of a veteran war correspondent and artist. He was born in 1851, in England, and his first association with wars came in 1870 when he went over to Paris to pick up material for a panorama of the Franco-Prussian war. The next adventure that offered was the war between Serbia and Turkey in 1876, and others followed, taking him to every part of the earth, down to the great war. The volumes are illustrated.

“These tales of five decades of adventure must be placed among the greatest of autobiographies.” E. J. C.

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Boston Transcript p11 D 8 ’20 750w

“Here between covers are the dramatic figures and the stirring events of two and a half generations presented by a writer trained throughout a lifetime in the art of bringing out all the high lights and shades of dramatic contrasts.”

+

N Y Times p18 D 12 ’20 2600w

“With long practice in telling the public what it wanted to know, it might go without saying that this autobiography is chatty and interesting from start to finish.”

+

Springf’d Republican p10 Ja 21 ’21 520w

VINCENT, FLORENCE SMITH. Peter’s adventures in Meadowland. il *$2 Stokes

20–18753

A nature-fairy story for children. Peter is a little boy who has no playmates. For saving the life of an oak tree that his father had wanted to cut down, he is rewarded with the friendship of all the living things. He not only learns their language, he is able at will to make himself smaller and smaller until he meets butterflies and grasshoppers and crickets on equal terms. He can enter their houses, climb up spider web ladders and ride on a butterfly’s back. So he learns of their ways, and finds out that they are just as wise, and sometimes wiser, than humans.

VORSE, MARY MARVIN (HEATON). Growing up. *$1.75 Boni & Liveright

20–12378

“This book is concerned solely and entirely with the growing up of a small family of children and the trials, perplexities and mooted questions which the parents of those children faced every day of their lives in their effort to do the right thing by their offspring.” (N Y Times) “Very likely many who start this book will be impressed with a sense of familiarity since Tom and Alice Marcey and their three children have already seen the light some years ago in the pages of a magazine, but we must know Robert and Sara and Jamie in book form to fully appreciate them.” (Boston Transcript)

“Will delight all modern troubled parents and other grownups.”

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Booklist 17:75 N ’20

“One of the most interesting characteristics of the book is the breadth of its appeal. The children are so natural, their parents are so natural, that it seems impossible that anyone could fail to find something attractive in their story.”

+

Boston Transcript p6 Jl 17 ’20 450w

“The tale presents a more or less deft but quite obvious mixture of pedagogy and feminism, in an ample solution of juvenile prattle and misdemeanour. The whole, however, is so well spiced with humour and sweetened with domestic sentiment that (to quote the publisher’s tribute) ‘the tired business man and the weary housewife will find a real release in reading it.’” H. S. H.

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Freeman 1:574 Ag 25 ’20 580w

“Her humor is fresh and rich and delicate. One may quite forget her psychological implications and yield to the mirth and human charm of her story and her people.”

+

Nation 111:275 S 4 ’20 440w

“Mrs Vorse’s story, though backed by sound psychology and keen observation, is yet light fiction. Its merit is rather in the contribution it makes to the growing volume of child thought, to the explanation of such pieces as ‘The young visiters’ than in the intrinsic value of either the tale or the style.” Henrietta Malkiel

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N Y Call p10 Ag 15 ’20 500w

“It is a most engaging book. The freshness, the humor and the spontaneity that characterized Mrs Vorse’s former novel are equally manifest here, along with a deeper purpose and a greater significance.”

+

N Y Times 25:25 Jl 4 ’20 820w

“Every one who enjoyed ‘The Prestons’ will be glad to read ‘Growing up.’”

+

Outlook 125:507 Jl 14 ’20 40w

“This story is as delightful as ‘The Prestons,’ and that is saying much for it. The author has an uncanny understanding of children and the problems that they offer to conscientious parents.”

+

Springf’d Republican p8a S 19 ’20 500w

+

Wis Lib Bul 16:239 D ’20 40w

VORSE, MARY MARVIN (HEATON).^[2] Men and steel. *$2 (3c) Boni & Liveright 331.89

After a graphic description of the power of iron and of how coal, iron and steel rule our civilization, of the great machines in the mills to which man is but a negligible adjunct, of the mill towns—the slummiest and the comparatively decent—all with the common motive: “Man is puny; Industry great”—the author gives the history of the great steel strike which she has personally followed up and observed in detail. The book falls into four parts: Strike background; The steel strike; Silence; The dying strike.

“Skillfully written the book is, but it proves next to nothing, for throughout the author uses the individual’s story (easy to find among several hundred thousand people) to prove broad truths.”