L
LABOULAYE, EDOUARD RENÉ-LEFEBRE DE. Laboulaye’s fairy book; tr. by Mary L. Booth. il *$2.50 (5c) Harper
20–19778
This book of fairy tales, translated from the French, was copyrighted in America in 1886. Kate Douglas Wiggin has written an introduction for the new edition. The titles are: Yvon and Finette; The castle of life; Destiny; The twelve months; Swanda, the piper; The gold bread; The story of the noses; The three citrons; The story of Coquerico; King Bizarre and Prince Charming. The pictures are by Edward G. McCandlish.
Booklist 17:126 D ’20 + Lit D p89 D 4 ’20 130w
Reviewed by Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p4 N 28 ’20 220w
“Delightful collection of tales.”
+ Springf’d Republican p7a D 12 ’20 70w
LADD, GEORGE TRUMBULL. Intimate glimpses of life in India; a narrative of observations in the winter of 1899–1900. il *$3 Badger, R. G. 915.4
19–15644
“In his observations of Indian life Professor Ladd was chiefly concerned with educational, social and religious conditions. For the study of these he had unusual opportunities. This book gives a summary of what he learned from personal interviews with the viceroy and secretary of education in Calcutta, with natives and missionaries, and with Hindu philosophers. Professor Ladd also describes the social customs of the people and outlines some of the political reforms that are demanded by the native leaders.”—R of Rs
“Although the book makes no contribution to the literature regarding India, it is interesting as reflecting the impressions of an American professor concerning the practices and cults of the Indian peoples.”
+ Bib World 54:430 Jl ’20 220w Boston Transcript p4 N 5 ’19 440w
“Whether the generalizations he makes, based upon conditions as he observed them two decades ago, still hold true in full or not, they are interesting as reflecting the reaction of a foreigner, well equipped by his training in educational and philosophical work, to an alien and intricate civilization.”
+ N Y Evening Post p7 Mr 6 ’20 300w R of Rs 61:221 F ’20 100w
LAIDLER, HARRY WELLINGTON. Socialism in thought and action. *$2.50 (2c) Macmillan 335
20–3555
The author is secretary of the Intercollegiate socialist society and editor of the Socialist Review. The important service of his book is that it gives an up-to-date treatment of the new developments in socialism and relates them to the movements of the past. It covers “the socialist criticism of present day society, the socialist theory of economic development, the socialist conception of a future social state and the activities, achievements, and present status of the organized socialist movement in various countries of the world.” (Preface) It is divided into two almost equal parts: Socialist thought, and The socialist movement. The work is intended to serve as a textbook for college classes and study groups, and “as a ready reference book for the thinkers and doers who have come to realize that an intelligent understanding of this greatest mass movement of the twentieth century is absolutely essential to enlighten citizenship.” There is a select bibliography on socialism and allied subjects, and an index.
“Of especial interest is the discussion of the Russian revolution, and recent developments in European and American socialism, concerning which the data are the latest available.” G. S. Watkins
+ Am Econ R 10:633 S ’20 480w
“Throughout the entire work differences of opinion are given; arguments are sound and the proof offered scientific. In fact it is a splendid presentation of this movement. Not only does the book deserve serious attention but it would make an excellent text.” G. S. Dow
+ Am J Soc 26:374 N ’20 630w
Reviewed by L. M. Bristol
+ Am Pol Sci R 14:520 Ag ’20 200w Booklist 16:300 Je ’20
“Dr Laidler has that discreet receptivity for conflicting opinion and dogma which gives his work, within the limits of socialism, the stamp of a firm, intelligent neutrality.”
+ Dial 68:670 My ’20 120w
“As a text book, Mr Laidler’s volume is invaluable. It reveals a ceaseless and remorseless study and reading of the socialist movement in all its manifestations and in all the questions that have aroused controversy. Impartial as a text book, it is yet vivid as a chronicle of events caught almost on the wing.” H. S.
+ Nation 110:728 My 29 ’20 160w
“On its interpretive side, Comrade Laidler has used his material judiciously and his presentation is such that no charge of bias will be made by the reader, whatever may be the latter’s own view. His attitude is an objective one. A very good index rounds out one of the best contributions that has come from the pen of any American socialist author.” James Oneal
+ N Y Call p11 Mr 28 ’20 900w Outlook 126:653 D 8 ’20 120w
“Probably as full and clear a statement of modern socialistic concepts as can be had in the English language.”
+ R of Rs 61:671 Je ’20 80w
“As a book it suffers from two distinct faults. In the first place it tries to cover too much ground. No one can write a competent survey of every aspect of socialism in a moderate-sized volume. The book attempts, in the second place, a treatment of the most recent events in the socialistic movement at a time when the evidence for anything more than a bare and jejune statement of congressional resolutions is simply not available. Yet the book transcends these deficiencies. It shows, even to an outsider, what immense justification there is for a faith in the prospects of socialism.” H. J. Laski
+ − Socialist R 8:379 My ’20 600w
“Any one interested in the labor movement will use his book several times a week. Its mass of facts is not a mess, but an orderly mobilized compilation.” Arthur Gleason
+ − Survey 44:592 Ag 2 ’20 370w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p490 Jl 29 ’20 110w
LAING, MARY ELIZABETH.[[2]] Hero of the longhouse. (Indian life and Indian lore) il *$1.60 (2½c) World bk.
21–649
The “hero of the longhouse” is the historical Hiawatha, an entirely different person from the legendary figure in Longfellow’s poem. The real Hiawatha lived in the fifteenth century, was a member of the Onondaga tribe and was one of the founders of the League of the Iroquois and the author has drawn her story from the most authentic sources, chiefly from Horatio Hale’s Iroquois book of rites and manuscripts in the New York state archaeological department. Arthur C. Parker, state archæologist, writes an introduction, and there is a bibliography and glossary. The story has been told primarily for school children.
LAKE, KIRSOPP. Landmarks in the history of early Christianity. *$3 Macmillan 270.1
“The purpose of the book, briefly stated, is to trace the Greek and oriental ideas in Christian thought and practice by reference to six early centers—Galilee, Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Rome and Ephesus. The work aims to illuminate critical points rather than to provide a complete survey, and it may be said to focus sharply the searchlight of thought upon salient aspects of the large subject. Prof. Lake first presented the substance of these chapters in a series of lectures at Oberlin college.”—Springf’d Republican
“There is no mistaking the keenness of Prof. Lake’s thought or the brilliant cogency of his style.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 N 12 ’20 1000w
“On many matters we must strongly dissent from him; but his work will be useful to every student of early Christianity, if only because it compels its readers to re-examine the presuppositions of their religious thought and to test their theories of the church’s development. If we say that the author of this work raises far more questions than he answers, he might be expected to reply that this precisely was his purpose.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p733 N 11 ’20 960w
LAMB, HAROLD. Marching sands. *$1.75 (2½c) Appleton
20–5227
The American exploration society sends Captain Gray to the Desert of Gobi to find the lost tribe of the Wusun, supposed to be the remnant of an Aryan race, the original inhabitants of China. At the same time an English rival expedition starts on the same quest. The expeditions are facing the dangers not only of the desert but of the hostile Chinese Buddhist priests and of the leper colony with which Wusun is surrounded. By the time the desert is reached the American expedition consists of only one member, Captain Gray, and a Kirghiz guide. He comes upon the English expedition under Sir Lionel Hastings and his niece Mary. Being rivals they part company, each bent on reaching Wusun first. Sir Lionel is killed after he had set foot on its environs. Mary is taken captive by the Chinese and placed in charge of the Wusun. By sheer pluck Gray penetrates into the stronghold and puts up a gallant fight for Mary and the reader takes leave of them free but alone in the “infinity of Asia.”
Booklist 16:313 Je ’20 Cleveland p72 Ag ’20 50w
“Mr Lamb has written a gripping tale abounding in thrills and mystery, adventure and danger, bravery and love; and the narrative of this search for a hidden city presents a unique and exciting plot.”
+ N Y Times 25:326 Je 20 ’20 320w
“While rather slow in getting into action, this tale is thrilling in the extreme after it once gets its American explorer into the Gobi desert.”
+ − Outlook 125:29 My 5 ’20 70w Springf’d Republican p11a Je 6 ’20 160w
LAMBUTH, WALTER RUSSELL.[[2]] Medical missions: the twofold task. il $1 S. V. M. 266
20–9358
“The growth of medical work in Christian missions is a romantic chapter in the record of the extension of the kingdom of God on earth. The writer draws from a wide range of material and experience and presents the great work of medical missions in a most attractive form. The book furnishes a mighty appeal to the young man or woman who is looking forward to the practice of medicine and surgery as a life-work. One is forced to face the need of the world and to decide whether it is right to remain in one’s own land struggling for a practice, or whether it is far better to go where the need is desperate and invest life there.”—Bib World
“The pictures are well chosen; the specific examples of effective missionary service are stimulating; the field of study is wide and is surveyed with discrimination. An excellent book for private reading or class study.”
+ Bib World 54:650 N ’20 160w
“Unfortunately the book is propaganda and the references to the adventures of the medical missionary are drowned in a misrepresentation of heathendom. Although he, Bishop Lambuth, does voice the cry for service in an antiquated religious idiom, he is really bigger than his creed and values humanity more than proselyting.”
− + N Y Evening Post p26 O 23 ’20 280w
LAMOTTE, ELLEN N. Opium monopoly. *$1 Macmillan 178.8
20–2983
“‘The opium monopoly,’ by Ellen N. LaMotte, the author of ‘The backwash of war,’ ‘Peking dust,’ ‘Civilization,’ etc., is a remarkable monograph on the ‘opium question,’ based upon government blue book reports, statistical extracts and official data. In this work, the author discusses the problems of opium monopoly and consumption in India, the Malaya peninsula, Siam, Hongkong, Srawak, Turkey, Persia, Mauretius, British Borneo and British Guiana, and gives a brief outline of the history of the opium trade in China and of Great Britain’s opium monopoly.”—N Y Call
“National pharisaism and a strong anti-English feeling are a conspicuous part of the writer’s equipment, but the facts which she adduces must give us to think.”
+ − Ath p685 My 21 ’20 80w
“Well documented.”
+ Booklist 16:258 My ’20
“One of the best arguments yet advanced against the mandatory system pieced together at Paris.”
+ Dial 68:669 My ’20 50w
Reviewed by C: R. Hargrove
+ Freeman 2:501 F 2 ’21 840w
“Miss LaMotte, in spite of her rather obvious desire to have her fling at Britain, is at the same time evidently actuated by a desire to reveal a grievous state of affairs. Having exposed the outstanding features of the cultivation and sale of opium by the British, it is obviously Miss LaMotte’s duty to continue her interesting investigations in this country.”
+ Lit D p89 My 1 ’20 900w
“Miss LaMotte’s little book might be taken more seriously if she were not at such pains to paint Great Britain black. It is idle to draw fine moral distinctions between the British government which sells opium to the Japanese and the Japanese who smuggle it into China. The whole trade is bad enough in all conscience, however, and to have attacked it is to have done something useful.”
+ − Nation 110:805 Je 12 ’20 340w
“Miss LaMotte did a great service to the cause of human justice when she wrote her admirable work. It will prove a valuable asset in rousing the conscience of the civilized people of the world against this gigantic international crime of drugging nations. Let us hope that the book will soon be translated into various languages of the civilized nations and the truth spread broadcast to remedy the wrongs of the helpless millions.” Taraknath Das
+ N Y Call p10 Ap 25 ’20 2750w
“Miss LaMotte’s book is intended as a severe indictment of Great Britain’s policy with regard to opium. Her account would, however, be a fairer one if consideration were given to the British side of the case as presented, for example, by Sir John Strachey in his ‘India: its administration and progress.’”
+ − Review 2:400 Ap 17 ’20 280w R of Rs 62:448 O ’20 60w
“It is a delight to read one of Miss LaMotte’s books, and even in this which is little more than a pamphlet, one finds the unflinching courage and the keen insight which made her ‘Peking dust’ and the stories which make up ‘Civilization’ so different from the productions of most tourists in the Far East.” E. W. Hughan
+ Socialist R 8:315 Ap ’20 400w
“No one who has in the last ten years studied the hydra-headed problems of narcotism could be anything but grateful to Ellen LaMotte for her book.... Does the American public realize to what extent opium is coming in over the Canadian boundary? It might for that reason alone pay that American public to open its eyes a little wider to the facts of British opium sold at public monthly sales in Calcutta as recorded in Ellen LaMotte’s ‘Opium monopoly.’” Jeannette Marks
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Ap 11 ’20 2200w
“For two reasons the opium monopoly is worthy of our attention: first, the world interest, the salvation of the eastern peoples, the Chinese especially; second, the danger that the United States will take China’s place as the great market for these products. Either is enough to interest Survey readers in this small book, the author of which has the gift of making official reports and statistics tell an interesting and fascinating story.” J. P. Chamberlain
+ Survey 44:252 My 15 ’20 550w
LAMPREY, LOUISE. Masters of the guild. il *$2.25 (3½c) Stokes
20–18171
Like the stories in the author’s previous book “In the days of the guild” these new tales do honor to the ideals of fine craftsmanship of the middle ages. The titles are: Peirol of the pigeons; A tournament in the clouds; The puppet players; Padraig of the scriptorium; The tapestry chamber; The fairies’ well; The wolves of Ossory; The road of the wild swan; The sword of Damascus; Fool’s gold; Archiater’s daughter; Cold Harbor; The wisdom of the galleys; Solomon’s seal; Black magic in the temple; The end of a pilgrimage. Poems alternate with the stories. There are illustrations by Florence Choate and Elizabeth Curtis, and notes on the stories come at the end.
+ Booklist 17:123 D ’20
LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE. Day-book of Walter Savage Landor, chosen by John Bailey. *$1.25 Oxford 828
(Eng ed 20–16302)
“Men of taste, men with an ear for the classic note in prose, must always read Landor. That some have failed in this elementary duty is the burden of a delightful essay by Mr John Bailey prefixed to a little collection of Landor’s prose and verse,—a fine quotation for every day in the year, beginning with the famous epitaph on himself, and proceeding with symphonic development to the Latin epitaph on a young scholar. Mr Bailey—himself, as we know from other publications, an agreeable compound of the man of letters and the man of affairs—offers his little book, not as the last word in Landor, but as the first—as the preliminary encouragement to that larger reading it should do much to stimulate.”—Sat R
+ Ath p1037 O 17 ’19 400w + Boston Transcript p11 Ja 31 ’20 550w
“We recommend a course of Landor. In days when the rabble has to be wooed with flattery, it is bracing to the spirit to find one, who, liberal as he called himself, inhabited the mountain tops of life, and, never descending among the wrangling crowds, beckons us continually aloft.”
+ Sat R 128:507 N 29 ’19 1850w
“Charming little book.”
+ Spec 123:511 O 18 ’19 140w
“To glance through an admirable volume of selections from Landor, such as that edited by John Bailey is to be filled with delight and regret. What writer of the second rank has more to yield to the discoverer than he? What prose more squarely can support the weight of the exactest scrutiny than his?”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 N 8 ’19 280w (Reprinted from Ath) + Springf’d Republican p13 F 1 ’20 1000w (Reprinted from The Times [London] Lit Sup p564 O 16 ’19)
“As, however, Mr Bailey implies by making a day-book of his selections, Landor not only constantly said beautiful things beautifully, but as constantly things that stand the wear and tear of daily life. No doubt the blank page at the end of this charming little book is provided to hold a good resolution—namely, whatever else may happen in nineteen twenty-one, to read Landor through.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p564 O 16 ’19 850w
LANE, MRS ANNE (WINTERMUTE), and BEALE, MRS HARRIET STANWOOD (BLAINE).[[2]] Life in the circles. (Deeper issues ser.) *$1.25 Dodd 134
20–19176
This book is a continuation of the volume entitled “To walk with God,” and contains “further lessons received through automatic writing.” (Sub-title) There are lessons on will, knowledge, joy, truth, understanding, sympathy, and love.
“The level of intelligence of the sending spirits is not very high—a grade or two above the kindergarten.”
− N Y Evening Post p12 O 30 ’20 80w
LANE, MRS ANNE (WINTERMUTE), and BEALE, MRS HARRIET STANWOOD (BLAINE).[[2]] To walk with God. (Deeper issues ser.) *$1.25 Dodd 134
20–6367
A series of “lessons” which the authors received in the form of automatic writings. An introduction gives the circumstances under which the messages were received and the lessons have to do with the power of love, helpfulness, kindness and the need for spiritual guidance. The authors say: “We realise that it will be said that there is nothing new in the teaching, and we admit that there is repetition to what seems an unnecessary degree, but we pledge our word that we have put nothing of our own into the text.” (Introd.)
“The fact that the wife of the Secretary of the interior and the daughter of James G. Blaine are the recipients of these messages will make a certain demand for the book.”
+ Booklist 16:327 Jl ’20
LANE, MRS ROSE (WILDER). Making of Herbert Hoover. *$3.50 (4½c) Century
20–18582
Herbert Hoover represents America, says the author, and his is the spirit of five generations of American pioneers. His life began at the end of one pioneer age and the beginning of the other. His ancestors had been sturdy pioneers of Quaker stock—his father a blacksmith. They had conquered the soil, he conquered the world of finance. Much of the material of the book has been collected by Charles Kellogg Field, classmate and friend of Hoover.
“Written with the interest in really delightful settings and small circumstances of life such as a novelist employs to characterize a hero. Children will like this book.”
+ Booklist 17:113 D ’20
“It is a story of a wonderful career, written with a brightness and a dash that captivates and enthralls.”
+ Boston Transcript p7 O 30 ’20 580w + N Y Evening Post p9 O 30 ’20 240w R of Rs 62:669 D ’20 100w
“The book is readable for its vivid presentation of an active and adventurous career.”
+ Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 30 ’21 330w
LANG, EDITH, and WEST, GEORGE. Musical accompaniment of moving pictures. il pa *$1.25 Boston music co.; Schirmer 780
20–4471
“A practical manual for pianists and organists and an exposition of the principles underlying the musical interpretation of moving pictures.” (Sub-title) There are three parts: Equipment; Musical interpretation; The theatrical organ. Musical scores are given and there is an index.
“Not exhaustive but very suggestive to the player and illuminating to the listener.”
+ Booklist 16:232 Ap ’20
“It is a book we can warmly commend.”
+ Survey 44:309 My 29 ’20 260w
LANGDON-DAVIES, JOHN. Militarism in education; a contribution to educational reconstruction. 80c Headley bros., London; for sale by Survey 371.43
19–12681
“The author contrasts the German and English systems of education, gives an account of the scholastic methods adopted in Norway, deals at considerable length with the aims of real physical training, devotes a chapter to boy scouts, and brings many arguments against compulsory national service, to which he is strongly opposed.”—Ath
Ath p475 Je 13 ’19 50w
“The faults of anti-militarist literature are usually rancour, sentimentality, and exaggeration. Mr Langdon-Davies has escaped all three. The merit of this book consists in its clearness and its shortness, in the fact that the author knows what he wants to prove, and proceeds to prove it without fuss or sentiment and with considerable moderation.”
+ Ath p621 Jl 18 ’19 550w Brooklyn 12:62 Ja ’20 30w
“From the point of view of physical health, Mr Langdon-Davies gives many proofs from experienced educationists of the deleterious effects on children of military training. In a valuable chapter on the psychological aims of physical education, he points out that character must be built on the basis of instinct and that ‘the cornerstone of the superstructure is the acquirement of habit and self-control.’” B. U. Burke
+ Nation 110:335 Mr 13 ’20 1150w
LANGFELD, HERBERT SIDNEY.[[2]] Aesthetic attitude. *$3.50 Harcourt 701
21–113
The author holds that a sense of beauty is as vital to the complete existence of the individual and of the race as is the sense of justice and that a nascent appreciation of what is beautiful can be developed into a strong, useful and satisfying reaction to the world of colors, sounds and shapes. The emphasis of the book, therefore, is put upon a description of the nature of appreciation and of the mental processes involved therein, ... its wider applications to the problems of human happiness. He concludes that “whenever we are able to adjust ourselves successfully to a situation, so that our responses are unified into a well-integrated or organized form of action, we call that situation beautiful, and the accompanying feeling one of æsthetic pleasure.” The contents are: Introduction; The science of beauty and ugliness; The æsthetic attitude (two chapters); Empathy; Illustrations of empathy from the fine arts; Unity and imagination; Illustrations of unity from the fine arts; Balance and proportion; Illustrations of balance from the fine arts; The art impulse; Conclusion; Index.
LANGFORD, GEORGE. Pic, the weapon-maker. il *$1.75 Boni & Liveright
20–13544
“Like Kipling’s ‘Jungle stories,’ but laid in western Europe perhaps 40,000 years ago, the story of ‘Pic, the weapon-maker,’ is George Langford’s popularization as fiction of such facts as science has revealed about the cave men of the Mousterian era. Pic, the ape-boy, with the hairy mammoth and the wobbly rhinoceros, formed a triple alliance of friendship and adventure. Pic was in search of the secret of cutting flints in such a way as to put a fine edge on them without spoiling them in the attempt, and before the story closes he has found it and made it the key to renewed fellowship with the tribe that had cast him out. As to the scientific quality of the story no less an authority than Henry Fairfield Osborn, director of the American museum of natural history, writes a brief approving introductory note.”—Springf’d Republican
+ Booklist 17:37 O ’20
“Anthropology and adventure are jumbled—naively, at times—in this story which, for all its prehistoric licence, still clings to the technique of Stratemeyer and other weavers of juvenile romance.” L. B.
− + Freeman 1:526 Ag 11 ’20 280w
“A troublesome fault is the author’s imaginative cocksureness. A higher degree of vagueness would actually have yielded an impression of greater exactness here. But where all is dark and chaotic, much must be forgiven to the first imaginative explorers. It is certain that Mr Langford’s book will fruitfully awaken the interest of the young in the remote past of the race, nor will maturer minds read it without some fresh light on dim places.” Ludwig Lewisohn
+ − Nation 111:190 Ag 14 ’20 260w
“The characterization of the Mammoth and the Rhinoceros is not the least clever part of this whimsical, fanciful and yet true story of this little, prehistoric man, and it is with real regret that the book is laid aside as the story closes.”
+ N Y Times p18 S 19 ’20 650w
“An unusual and a powerful juvenile. The spirit and narrative of the book will be enjoyed even by children too young to attempt the reading for themselves.” R. D. Moore
+ Pub W 97:1296 Ap 17 ’20 180w Springf’d Republican p11a Ag 22 ’20 300w Wis Lib Bul 16:198 N ’20 60w
LANIER, HENRY WYSHAM. Book of bravery; third series. il *$2.50 Scribner 920
20–15939
“This is a book of courage, wherein people in their daily pursuits meet with obstacles which they surmount through excellences of character. The man who is paid for his brave work, like the life-saver, the policeman, the fireman, is none the less brave and his deed is none the less fraught with the tingling quality of bravery. In the missionary field and on the battlefield Mr Lanier finds material for this volume.”—Lit D
Booklist 17:123 D ’20
“It is a collection worth making.”
+ Ind 104:378 D 11 ’20 60w + Lit D p96 D 4 ’20 90w
“For the inspiration of these volumes, children and parents alike may well be grateful to Mr Lanier.” M. H. B. Mussey
+ Nation 111:sup674 D 8 ’20 60w
“The stories are vividly presented, and the book is one to stir the heart of youth.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p9 D 12 ’20 80w + Outlook 126:470 N 10 ’20 50w
LANKESTER, SIR EDWIN RAY. Secrets of earth and sea. il *$3.50 Macmillan 504
“These popularly written chapters on a wide variety of scientific and anthropological topics, such as What is meant by a species? Species in the making; The biggest beast; The earliest picture in the world; The art of pre-historic men; The swastika; etc., form a sequel to the same author’s ‘Science from an easy chair’ and ‘Diversions of a naturalist,’ and like them is mainly a reprint, with considerable additions, of articles published in daily or weekly papers.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup S 23 ’20
Booklist 17:144 Ja ’21
“The essays are entertaining but have no high literary qualities. Men like Shaler, Burroughs, Muir, Mills, and Slosson have done this sort of book far better in America.”
− + N Y Evening Post p12 N 27 ’29 140w + N Y Times p6 Ja 2 ’21 3100w
“Let it be said at once that ‘Secrets of earth and sea,’ though extremely interesting, is not in the best sense as diverting as was ‘Science from an easy-chair.’ The subjects treated are delightfully interesting to the layman but the style is unfortunately rather redundant and heavy.”
+ − Spec 125:861 D 25 ’20 190w
“The book is indicative of what will be common in that happy day when science will be written about as fully and as charmingly as purely literary subjects are today.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 D 3 ’20 350w The Times [London] Lit Sup p623 S 23 ’20 90w
“Parents and guardians who are desirous of introducing their boys to the study of natural science and who, in pursuance of that praiseworthy aim, are looking for a book which, while sound and exact in statement, is yet light and easy to read and, above all, has no tincture of the school classroom, would do well to think of Sir Ray Lankester’s ‘Secrets of earth and sea.’”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p831 D 9 ’20 370w
LANSBURY, GEORGE. These things shall be. $1 (5½c) Huebsch 261
In these six essays the author proclaims himself a revolutionist and downright hater of the existing order but he does not see salvation in a terrific cataclysm with hopes of a new order arising from the ruins of the old. He pins his faith upon a change of heart in individual men and women and in the message “Ye must be born again.” The spirit of the essays is faith in a God of love and in the teachings of Christ of human brotherhood and love and cooperation. Mr Lansbury is editor of the London Daily Herald.
Ath p166 Ja 30 ’20 80w
“He has nothing startlingly new to say, but the serenity and steadfastness of his faith in humanity and in a society of individuals living the gospel of Christian love, will afford comfort and reassurance to minds tired for the moment of their searching.”
+ Booklist 17:142 Ja ’21 + Survey 44:355 Je 5 ’20 310w
LANSBURY, GEORGE. What I saw in Russia. *$1.50 (3c) Boni & Liveright 914.7
21–434
In his introduction to the American edition of this book, Matthew F. Boyd, after reviewing the attitude towards Russia of the European powers, of which France is now the only one still openly hostile, finds that the United States has once more become the arbiter of world destiny and that her policy towards Russia will decide the future of the world. George Lansbury went to Russia to discover what was the spirit moving the men and women responsible for the revolution. He found it to be that of a band of people striving to build the New Jerusalem, that they are actuated by purely moral and religious motives and are doing what Christians would call the Lord’s work. Contents: Finland to Moscow; Lenin and other leaders; Lenin, bolshevism and religion; Co-operation, trade and business; Trade unions and labour organization; Children and education; Law and order; Prisoners and captives; About people; Public health; Moscow to London; Appendix.
“The chapter on religion will interest churchmen.”
+ Booklist 17:142 Ja ’21
“Any one who wishes to gain a vivid picture of life in Soviet Russia, drawn with entire honesty and animated by sympathy and good will should, by all means, read Mr Lansbury’s book.” A. C. Freeman
+ N Y Call p10 D 19 ’20 420w
LANSING, MARION FLORENCE, and GULICK, LUTHER HALSEY. Food and life. il 68c Ginn 613.2
20–5746
The book has been suggested by the new importance that the war has placed on food as a universal human need and on the desirability of a full knowledge of its potentialities even for children. “From its pages the child will learn the facts he should know concerning the great food business into which he is born and in which he is a partner.... There is hardly a virtue or an ideal of family, community, and world life which does not take a natural place in a study of the fundamental human problem of food.” (Preface) Every aspect of the food problem, the personal, the social, the economic and the scientific is entertainingly put before the child in detached stories. The contents are: A life business; The food tether; In business for yourself; Food as fuel; Our dally bread; The magic touch; Likes and dislikes; A world appetite; The first step; The moment of eating; In the world’s food market; The pitcher and the loaf; The gift of a garden; Kitchen service; Food and money; For future use; Food and health; Food and the government; At a world table. In Facts and figures are given tables, charts and lists of a scientific nature. The book has an index and illustrations.
+ Booklist 17:123 D ’20
LASKI, HAROLD JOSEPH. Political thought in England from Locke to Bentham. (Home univ. lib.) *75c (1c) Holt 320.9
20–14002
The author holds that the eighteenth century began with the revolution of 1688, that it was a period of quiet after a storm and can make little pretence to discovery, but that its stagnation was mainly on the surface and that the period was fruitful of much thought resulting in future activity. The significance of Locke—who alone in this period confronted the general problems of the modern state—of Burke, Hume, Adam Smith and their contemporaries, forms the subject matter of the book. Contents: Introduction; The principles of the revolution; Church and state; The era of stagnation; Signs of change; Burke; The foundation of economic liberalism; Bibliography and index.
Booklist 17:92 D ’20
“The method of treatment is not coldly analytical but genial and speculative. Care is taken to relate political theory to ethics; there are flashes of penetration into matters psychological; but economics receives scant consideration. To the present reviewer neglect of economics seems fatal. The truth seems to be that Mr Laski has written a conventional story, bolstered up English political mythology, and left the great muddle of so-called ‘political thought’ just about where he found it.” C: A. Beard
− + New Republic 24:303 N 17 ’20 1200w
“A really admirable little book.” F: Pollock
+ N Y Evening Post p4 N 6 ’20 1250w
“There are a few obscurities of phrase throughout the book, and a few far-fetched judgments. But, on the whole, Mr Laski writes brilliantly and suggestively, evincing a clear comprehension of essentials, against a background of necessary learning. It is his most broadly considered and best-balanced work.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a S 12 ’20 1250w
LATANÉ, JOHN HOLLADAY. United States and Latin America. *$2.50 Doubleday 327
20–14147
“This book is based on a smaller volume ... ‘The diplomatic relations of the United States and Spanish America,’ which contained the first series of Albert Shaw lectures on diplomatic history. That volume has been out of print for several years, but calls for it are still coming in.... I have revised and enlarged the original volume, omitting much that was of special interest at the time it was written, and adding a large amount of new matter relating to the events of the past twenty years.” (Preface) Contents: The revolt of the Spanish colonies; The recognition of the Spanish-American republics; The diplomacy of the United States in regard to Cuba; The diplomatic history of the Panama canal; French intervention in Mexico; The two Venezuelan episodes; The advance of the United States in the Caribbean; Pan Americanism; The Monroe doctrine; Index and maps of South America and the Caribbean.
Booklist 17:166 Ja ’21
“The American people are thoughtless, careless, heedless concerning the questions that affect them as regards Latin America, because they are ignorant of those questions. But should they be fed with misstatements like this?” S. de la Selva
− N Y Evening Post p4 O 30 ’20 580w R of Rs 62:446 O ’20 60w
LATHAM, HAROLD STRONG. Jimmy Quigg, office boy. il *$2 (5c) Macmillan
20–18923
A new story for boys by the author of “Under orders” and “Marty lends a hand.” At fourteen Jimmy goes to work as office boy in a big publishing house and the story shows the opportunities for advancement open to the boy who is industrious and willing to learn. One of Jimmy’s fellow workers, Fred Garson, has different ideals. He introduces Jimmy to the Office boys’ league and attempts to organize a strike. Fred disappears and with him some of the company’s funds. Jimmy, who refuses to believe his friend guilty, does some amateur detective work, clears Fred’s name and circumvents a group of bomb plotters in the bargain.
“There is a pronounced moral flavor, but it is quite wholesome.”
+ Ind 104:376 D 11 ’20 60w
“Mr Latham improves in his narrative style and cumulative interest of plot.”
+ Lit D p89 D 4 ’20 140w
“The author understands the types he has drawn, and he understands also the universal boy.”
+ N Y Evening Post p12 N 13 ’20 140w
“The theme of Americanization inspires the book, but first of all it is a good story, a delightful bit of character study, and it is written by a man who knows his job.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p9 D 12 ’20 90w
LATHAM, HAROLD STRONG. Marty lends a hand. il *$1.60 (3½c) Macmillan
19–16144
Marty, the young hero of this story for boys and girls, is in his sophomore year in high school. He has won first honors in the sophomore oratorical contest and is to play “Tony Lumpkin” in the class production of “She stoops to conquer.” And then just at that happy moment an accident to his father takes him out of school to shoulder the responsibilities of a bread winner. He finds an original way of earning a living—growing mushrooms in an abandoned mine. The mine proves to be the secret hiding place of German plotters and Marty sees that they are brought to justice. But the chief interest of the story is in the mushroom experiment, and thru cooperation of his loyal friends, it succeeds beyond Marty’s fondest hopes. His father recovers and takes charge of the new business and Marty looks forward to a return to school.
+ Booklist 16:175 F ’20
“A distinct advance over his book of last year.” A. C. Moore
+ Bookm 50:382 N ’19 60w
“Mr Latham knows his boys and girls, and he makes them not mere automatons but living figures on the stage he has set so skilfully.”
+ N Y Evening Post p9 N 8 ’19 400w
“‘Marty lends a hand’ is a good story for young readers for the same reason that ‘Under orders’ was a good story for them, because it is what they are themselves when they are what they should be—simple, wholesome, natural and unconsciously democratic.”
+ N Y Times 24:636 N 9 ’19 500w
LATZKO, ANDREAS. Judgment of peace. *$1.75 Boni & Liveright
20–1372
“The author of that bitter polemic against warfare, ‘Men in war,’ repeats his denunciation in ‘The judgment of peace.’ Lt. Latzko has written an argument rather than a novel. The thesis is that war is a diplomats’ game and wholly evil for the ‘impotent pieces.’ The hero of the book is George Gadsky, a pianist, who volunteered, submitted to arbitrary discipline, and ‘felt crushed, torn out of his real self, degraded to the level of a shabby, beaten sneak.’ The overbearing, stupid sergeant, the stay-at-home enthusiast and the families rivaling each other in iron crosses and deaths are scored. One ringing declaration in this novel is contained in the words of the Frenchman, Merlier: ‘Have not these four years taught every nation that you cannot seek to enslave others without robbing yourself of all freedom?’”—Springf’d Republican
+ Booklist 16:349 Jl ’20
“Were it not for the devout prayer for human brotherhood which is made throughout the book, it would, not merely by its grimness and gloom, but by its lightning flashes of revelation, leave the night more black.” M. E. Bailey
+ Bookm 51:206 Ap ’20 650w
“The ‘Judgment of peace’ appears to be the work of one who has gone through intense suffering by reason of the war, and whose life has become permanently embittered. Few writers equal his descriptions of the bloody agonies of the battlefield and his pictures of soldiers, but his outlook on life is morbid and gloomy.”
+ − Cath World 111:108 Ap ’20 360w
“His story fails as art because it is forever running into bald propaganda, as propaganda because its grounds are emotions instead of thoughts.”
− Dial 68:536 Ap ’20 80w
“Like ‘Men in war,’ ‘The judgment of peace’ is swift and strong, lucid and incandescent, appalling and irresistible. Latzko’s fierce arraignment and mighty tract should be welcomed by lovers of peace and should be kept alive in order that an epic memory all plumes and purple may not go down from our generation.” C. V. D.
+ Nation 110:597 My 1 ’20 600w
“‘The judgment of peace’ is a book of hate—hate not for ‘enemy’ countries, but for selfish rulers and militarists everywhere. So far, so good—but the author goes too far; his condemnation of ruthless militarism, of selfish uncontrolled power, is good and true; his apparent assumption that all rulers, all governments, all holders of power everywhere, are thus actuated by utter selfishness, is neither. And one is left, at the end of this absorbing, brilliant, thoughtful and passionate book, with the sense that after all the author has not got us very far on the road toward the brotherhood of man.”
+ − N Y Times 25:89 F 15 ’20 700w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
Review 2:257 Mr 13 ’20 420w
“Patience is somewhat strained by the manner of this book; the protest is not new, and the tale is rather hastily and crudely constructed. The most effective part comes near the end, where Gadsky as a prisoner of war gets to know a French soldier.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p13a F 22 ’20 240w
“A significant book, comparable with Barbusse’s ‘Under fire.’ Not for the smaller libraries.”
+ Wis Lib Bul 16:126 Je ’20 50w
LAUDER, SIR HARRY (MACLENNAN). Between you and me. $2.50 McCann
19–18483
“‘I’m no writin’ a book so much as I’m sittin’ doon wi’ ye all for a chat,’ Harry Lauder says in his first chapter; and he carries the plan through to the last. The book is a biography, a Scot’s philosophy of life, and a shrewd discourse on current social problems, combined.”—Outlook
“A book which will be liked only by the enthusiastic Lauder-ites. It is written in Scotch dialect which often runs unevenly into pure English. Not as good as ‘A minstrel in France.’”
+ − Booklist 16:167 F ’20
“Sir Harry mentions the possibility of two more books. We shall welcome them eagerly, as we always welcome him, but we cannot help hoping that, despite the charm of his gossipy style, the next ones will have to some degree the skeleton of an outline.” I. W. L.
+ − Boston Transcript p4 Mr 17 ’20 850w + Dial 68:403 Mr ’20 60w
“Readers who are not frightened at a glimpse of Scotch dialect will love the book for its genuine human note, its humor, and its underlying pathos.”
+ Outlook 124:203 F 4 ’20 70w
“This book gives Lauder and his message in a unique and inimitable way. It is well worth reading as Lauder himself is worth hearing.”
+ R of Rs 61:671 Je ’20 100w
LAWRENCE, C. E. God in the thicket. *$2 Dutton
“It is a delicately worked narrative of a glittering world peopled by pantomime folk, whose names have been familiar to us all from childhood—Harlequin and Columbine, Pierrot, Punchinello, Aimée and Daphne, and many others. They live in the Forest of Argovie; and their life is the pantomime life, with its queer, sudden approaches to the greyer conditions of human existence and irresponsible withdrawals to the spangled regions of fantasy.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) “The god of the title is none other than he of the pipes and the goat-thighs, Pan himself.” (N Y Times)
Cath World 112:688 F ’21 130w
“In many passages here there is a surplus of adjectives, a lack of precision and reality. There are times when the author writes with a pleasing irony that would be even more enjoyable if the vein were not overdone.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p10 D 31 ’20 140w
“Very delicately, very gracefully written, a little too long perhaps, but full of quaint conceits, poetically fanciful and therefore a good deal out of the ordinary.”
+ N Y Times p20 N 21 ’20 550w
“A little masterpiece.”
+ Sat R 130:262 S 25 ’20 60w
“It is perhaps refreshing in these prosaic days to exist for an hour in the world of fantasy.”
+ Spec 125:372 S 18 ’20 30w
“It is a pretty story, which fails rather disappointingly to be something more.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p367 Je 10 ’20 550w
LAWRENCE, DAVID HERBERT. New poems. *$1.60 Huebsch 821
20–17904
Mr Lawrence prefaces his collection of new poems with a discussion of the nature of poetry, saying in part, “Poetry is, as a rule, either the voice of the far future, exquisite and ethereal, or it is the voice of the past, rich, magnificent.... The poetry of the beginning and the poetry of the end must have that exquisite quality, perfection which belongs to all that is far off.... But there is another kind of poetry: ... the unrestful, ungraspable poetry of the sheer present.” And it is for this third type of poetry, he continues, that new poetic forms must be forged. Among the poems of the book are: Apprehension; Coming awake; Suburbs on a hazy day; Piccadilly Circus at night; Parliament Hill in the evening; Bitterness of death; Seven seals; Two wives; Autumn sunshine.
“The more stringent their form the better these poems are; and when, as in Phantasmagoria, Mr Lawrence finds a subject suited to his strained and ‘pent-up’ manner, he ‘gets his effect’ very wonderfully.”
+ − Ath p66 F ’19 220w
“Mr Lawrence’s ‘New poems’—like the overwhelming bulk of ‘the rare new poetry’—seems inspired less by any remote touch of divine madness, than by a labored and sophisticated anxiety to exemplify a theory. Mr Lawrence has none of the brilliancy of Miss Lowell, none of the power of Mr Lindsay. His slim new book offers the pathetic spectacle of a shabby manikin pirouetting in caricature of the muse.” R. M. Weaver
− Bookm 52:59 S ’20 880w
Reviewed by Babette Deutsch
Dial 70:89 Ja ’21 380w
“Apart from a brilliant preface, there is scarcely anything in this book which is pitched at the same level of intensity as the best poems in ‘Look, we have come through.’ The touch is somewhat slacker and vaguer, the feeling less fused with the words. ‘New poems’ contains as least one poem which I am almost inclined to set higher than anything Lawrence has ever done. This is the poem called ‘Seven seals.’” J: G. Fletcher
+ − Freeman 1:451 Jl 21 ’20 900w
“Mr Lawrence’s preface poses spontaneity as an ideal, promising poetry that ‘just takes place.’ That is interesting, but it does not explain Mr Lawrence’s poetry, which here as always betrays elaborate trouble in its preparation.”
+ − Nation 111:sup414 O 13 ’20 50w
“His ‘New poems’ reasserts his place among the most gifted, the most arresting of the English poets.” H. S. Gorman
+ N Y Times 25:16 Jl 4 ’20 630w
“As you read the whole volume through it seems to you more and more that he feels too intensely about a great many things. There is this difference between him and older sentimentalists, that they were at the mercy of pleasant feelings, while he is often at the mercy of unpleasant; but it is still the same poet’s disease, and in both cases the feelings seem too intense for their cause.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p67 F 6 ’19 1100w
LAWRENCE, DAVID HERBERT. Touch and go. (Plays for a people’s theatre) $1.25 Seltzer 822
20–12050
Altho the background of this drama is a strike in a British colliery it is not intended as a propaganda play. The author is concerned with the tragic element in the struggle between capital and labor. He has defined tragedy as “the working out of some immediate passional problem within the soul of man.” The play also represents his idea that a “people’s” theater should deal with people, with men and women, not with stage types.
“Mr Lawrence, of course, cannot escape his genius. The secondary qualities of ‘Touch and go’ are superior to the big things in the work of many other dramatists.” Gilbert Seldes
+ − Dial 69:215 Ag ’20 100w
“Mr Lawrence’s new play, ‘Touch and go,’ seems to indicate that, while the author may have gained compensations in other ways, he has lost, temporarily, it is to be hoped, under the blighting strains and trials of the last few years, some of the vital energy that is essential to a dramatist.” Elva de Pue
− + Freeman 2:332 D 15 ’20 390w
“This is a play serious in purpose, of vital contemporaneous interest, unexceptionable motive and written with knowledge and ability, which is nevertheless ineffective, because while it exhibits a comprehensive sense of existing conditions and states its problem very clearly, it has nothing to offer or suggest in the way of a possible solution except a series of benevolent platitudes.” J. R. Towse
+ − N Y Evening Post p3 N 27 ’20 680w
“The preface is so excellent, so much in the manner of the great English tradition that it holds, and urges, and ends by being, I think, even better than the play, a fine little masterpiece of eight pages.” Amy Lowell
+ N Y Times p7 Ag 22 ’20 2000w
“The only thing amusing in the little volume is the preface, which is entertaining enough. Mr Lawrence does not make this mistake of open didacticism when he writes poetry. Why, oh! why, does he write drama like this?”
− + Spec 125:279 Ag 28 ’20 360w
“The preface has been most stimulating and formative. Preface and play, however, are widely separated. Never once are we led to feel the promised reality of the characters. The story moves in a confusion of the fundamental details.” Dorothy Grafly
− + Springf’d Republican p11a S 5 ’20 440w
“His characters are overdrawn, and his action has to do with struggles of temperament rather than of contrasting philosophies.”
− Survey 44:592 Ag 20 ’20 100w
“The strength of the play lies in its picture of colliery life.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p304 My 13 ’20 80w
LAWRENCE, DOROTHY. Sapper Dorothy Lawrence; the only English woman soldier. (On active service ser.) *$1.25 (4c) Lane 940.48
20–5239
Miss Lawrence gives this account of her exploits in France as a soldier of the Royal engineers, 51st division. 179th tunnelling company. It was as a last desperate effort to get to the war that she plotted and struggled her way into the ranks. Twelve times she had applied for various forms of war work and had been turned down. Her efforts to go as newspaper correspondent met the same fate. The Tommies were more accommodating and helped her to accomplish her purpose. Contents: At Creil; Sleeping in Senlis forests; In soldier’s clothes; On the march for the trenches; Arrest; Tried at Third army headquarters; In a convent; On board.
Spec 123:411 S 27 ’19 200w
“A brightly written tale of pluck, energy, and determination.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p502 S 11 ’19 100w
LAY, WILFRID.[[2]] Man’s unconscious passion. *$2 Dodd 157
20–18051
Dr Lay, author of “Man’s unconscious conflict” and “The child’s unconscious mind,” writes here of the part which the unconscious plays in love and marriage. Contents: The total situation; Conscious and unconscious passion; Affection is not passion; Insight; The transfer of passion; The emotion age.
+ Nation 111:694 D 15 ’20 20w
“Dr Lay’s book is written in a most readable and interesting style and should make a great appeal to all those interested, professionally or otherwise, in this dominant and important phase of individual human life and its relation to the tissue of the whole social organism.” S. W. Swift
+ Survey 45:545 Ja 8 ’21 880w
LEACH, ALBERT ERNEST. Food inspection and analysis. 4th ed il *$8.50 Wiley 543.1
20–5902
“This manual, designed for the use of analysts, health officers, chemists and food economists, has been revised and enlarged to the extent of ninety pages; new material having been added or substituted for material in earlier editions. The former arrangement of chapters has been retained but the list of references at the end of chapters has been left out and, instead, more attention has been given to footnote references. A special feature is the final chapter by G. L. Wendt, ‘Determination of acidity by means of the hydrogen electrode.’ The book includes such subjects as food, its functions, proximate components, and nutritive value; general methods of food analysis including microscope and refractometer; milk and milk products; flesh foods; eggs; cereal grains; tea, coffee, and cocoa; edible oils and fats; sugar; as well as artificial food colors, food preservatives, artificial sweeteners, flavoring extracts, and substitutes.”—J Home Econ
Booklist 16:356 Jl ’20 + J Home Econ 12:426 S ’20 240w
“As a whole, however, the new edition well maintains the reputation of the work. It contains so much trustworthy information that chemists concerned with foodstuffs will find it invaluable.” C. S.
+ − Nature 106:141 S 30 ’20 560w
LEACOCK, STEPHEN BUTLER. Unsolved riddle of social justice. *$1.25 (4½c) Lane 330
20–1689
The author sees in the present state of human society an extraordinary discrepancy between human power and resulting human happiness and analyzes the reasons for the present-day social unrest. He points to the complete breakdown of the Adam Smith school of political economists with their doctrine of “natural liberty” and laissez-faire. In asking “What of the future?” the author finds himself confronted with the phenomenon of modern socialism. This he relegates to the realm of beautiful but impracticable dreams and suggests as a mid-way course that the government should supply work for the unemployed, maintenance for the infirm and aged, and education and opportunity for children, and should enforce a minimum wage and shorter working hours. Contents: The troubled outlook of the present hour; Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; The failures and fallacies of natural liberty; Work and wages; The land of dreams: the utopia of the socialist; How Mr Bellamy looked backward; What is possible and what is not.
“Dr Leacock writes with great clarity and force. While the limits of the volume do not permit detailed treatment of any of the topics taken up, the reader will find every page suggestive and will be thankful for a chance to see the woods instead of the trees.” O. D. Skelton
+ Am Pol Sci R 14:522 Ag ’20 360w
“Written in a vigorous, easy, though not humorous, style, that will make it popular with those who seek a middle track.”
+ Booklist 16:262 My ’20
“The author of ‘Literary lapses,’ and all the rest of them, could not be dull if he tried. His new volume on the problems of modern life is fully as live as any of his humorous sketches, and nearly as readable.” I. W. L.
+ Boston Transcript p5 Mr 13 ’20 1250w + Cleveland p44 Ap ’20 50w
“A readable and frequently keen analysis of industrial society. Professor Leacock’s delicately manipulated scalpel cuts perilously close to the heart of the price system, in his perception of the paradox of value.... While the honest sunlight of criticism declares the insufficiency of individualist economics, the light that Professor Leacock throws upon socialism—taking Bellamy’s bleak vision of bureaucracy as sample—is almost a moonbeam from the larger lunacy.”
+ − Dial 68:404 Mr ’20 80w
“The riddle is not only unsolved when Professor Leacock tackles it, but it remains so when he has finished with it. The author has merely re-stated the problem in a lucid and concise manner and fused it with a sort of primer of economics, and comes out in the end with a middle-of-the-road vagueness as his major contribution to the subject.” L. B.
− + Freeman 2:430 Ja 12 ’21 100w Ind 103:319 S 11 ’20 20w
Reviewed by C. E. Ayres
+ − J Pol Econ 28:439 My ’20 550w
“Stephen Leacock is far from happy in his study of ‘The unsolved riddle of social justice.’ He reveals himself as a clever man, of course, but not as a serious economic thinker. He, surely, cannot be so ignorant as this book would lead one to infer.”
− + Nation 110:772 Je 5 ’20 550w
“As a book for the general reader this little treatise can scarcely be too much commended. It is eminently humane in spirit, sensible, serious without being ‘dead serious,’ and thorough on the essential points. The author seems to know how average, educated people think and feel about the present state of society, and to have an unusually good idea of how to write for persons who do not know much about political economy.”
+ No Am 211:430 Mr ’20 750w
Reviewed by Lyman Abbott
Outlook 125:124 My 19 ’20 750w
“It is sound common sense doctrine that he preaches, and for that reason it will be popular with but few people in these days of emotional ‘thinking.’”
+ Review 2:234 Mr 6 ’20 750w R of Rs 61:447 Ap ’20 40w
“Professor Leacock’s book is an appeal to pure reason; it is argumentative, but not quarrelsome; it is progressive in its aims, but it is not revolutionary. His picture may be overdrawn and too highly coloured, but it substantially represents what many thoughtful and clear-sighted men see today when gazing upon the eastern and western worlds.”
+ − Sat R 129:501 My 29 ’20 950w
“There is much good sense in this attractive book.”
+ Spec 124:526 Ap 17 ’20 250w
“His solution may seem to be inadequate; but without doubt Mr Leacock has written a valuable popular analysis and has stated sane and forward-looking remedies.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p10 F 19 ’20 180w
“Mr Leacock’s treatment of the problem is not intentionally humorous or flippant, but it is surprisingly superficial. As soon as he comes to a discussion of the social thought that governs the demands of large masses at the present time, he becomes positively absurd. Mr Leacock is most successful where he pricks current misconceptions.” B. L.
− + Survey 43:782 Mr 20 ’20 220w
“He does not overload his subject with the useless ballast of philosophic jargon, or obscure a poverty of thought by abundance of words. His book is short, lucid, always to the point, and sometimes witty.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p175 Mr 11 ’20 350w
LEACOCK, STEPHEN BUTLER. Winsome Winnie, and other new nonsense novels. *$1.50 Lane 817
20–21990
This is a sequel to “Nonsense novels,” published in 1911. Again the author parodies the style of various popular types of fiction. Among the numbers in this second series are Winsome Winnie: or, Trial and temptation, narrated after the best models of 1875; The split in the cabinet: or, The fate of England, a political novel of the days that were; Who do you think did it? or, The mixed-up murder mystery; Broken barriers, or Red love on a blue island; and Buggam Grange, a good old ghost story. The stories have appeared in Harper’s Magazine.
“While this later volume lacks to a slight degree the fresh spontaneity of Mr Leacock’s older books, there are plenty of sincere laughs left.” S. M. R.
+ Bookm 52:371 D ’20 140w
“The great majority of readers will find ‘Winsome Winnie’ almost as good as the author’s best books. In other words: the work of a man who, in the silence of Mr Dooley, is the most amusing writer in North America.” E. L. P.
+ Boston Transcript p4 D 24 ’20 490w
“Despite his delicious drolleries, Mr Leacock’s book of verbal cartoons contains an amazing amount of truthful criticism—doubly effective because its form and oblique method of delivery rob it of all malice.”
+ N Y Times p11 D 19 ’20 670w
“A book of parodies which is as amusing as the first series. ‘Winsome Winnie’ and ‘Who do you think did it?’ are as good as any of the sketches which Professor Leacock has ever written.” E. L. Pearson
+ Review 3:558 D 8 ’20 540w
“It will be a very superior person who does not laugh the first time he reads Mr Leacock’s version of these jocular subjects. But as the laugh comes from the verbal surprise or from the technical improvement in an established joke, it is not likely to be repeated.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p795 D 2 ’20 600w
LEADBITTER, ERIC. Rain before seven. *$2 (2c) Jacobs
20–9473
Michael Lawson was an awkward, shy and colorless youth, the fourth and youngest in a family of waning fortunes. As a gawky boy of fifteen he falls in love with the daughter of his tutor, Vicar Hargrieves. Some years later, Isobel’s heartless flirtations give him his first deep emotional experience. At school he discovers his love and talent for music and finds a patron who finances his musical education. But funds fail before he has launched upon a career, and he is reduced to playing in a picture-drome. He meets with a succession of failures and becomes a tramp. As such he is discovered by his sister Rosie—his family having been ignorant of his whereabouts for years. His brother, a successful scientist and inventor, takes him on in business. Michael makes good, drops music altogether, achieves tranquillity of heart and wins the love of a dear quiet girl, who had adored him even as a child.
“The first novel of a very grave and very garrulous young Englishman who has not yet discovered how many things have been said before. The trail of his story is lost under an underbrush of truisms, though through the brambles one catches glimpses of landscape not unlike some of Mr Mackenzie’s milder panoramas.”
− + Dial 69:211 Ag ’20 100w
“It is rather more than a good example of the usual thing.” H. W. Boynton
+ Review 3:561 D 8 ’20 270w
LEARY, JOHN J., Jr. Talks with T. R. il *$3.50 (4c) Houghton
20–11574
Extracts from the diaries of a veteran newspaper man who had been for many years in the habit of recording carefully his conversations with Theodore Roosevelt. These are now arranged under appropriate headings, some few of which are: Roosevelt and 1920; Dewey and Fighting Bob; The break with Taft; The attempt on his life; Clashes with the Kaiser; On election eve, 1916; Senator Lodge’s fist fight; Roosevelt’s one talk with Mr Wilson; Roosevelt on labor; Loyalty; Germans in America; Colonel Roosevelt on boys; Pershing and Wood. There are a number of illustrations.
“The picture is less attractive than that of the writer of the letters to his children, or of the state papers that have been included in Mr Bishop’s selection, but it seems to present with fidelity one of the poses of the most versatile statesmen of our day. The absence of an index makes the book more difficult to use than it need have been.” F: L. Paxson
+ − Am Hist R 26:149 O ’20 400w
“A wonderful readable book about a wonderful personality.” E. J. C.
+ Boston Transcript p8 Je 12 ’20 450w
“The volume is a racy, authentic, well-considered work, but instead of revealing the inner springs of motive, instead of a transvaluation of strenuous values, it merely adds to the sum total of current impressions.” L. B.
+ Freeman 2:118 O 13 ’20 280w
“Better than any photograph or any biography I know, they give you the feeling of having talked with the man in the flesh.”
+ Ind 104:242 N 13 ’20 110w
“It is in all respects one of the best Roosevelt books we have ever seen, and in some respects the best.”
+ N Y Times p19 Ag 15 ’20 1700w
“It is all vastly entertaining, though one wonders whether the obligation of discretion which private conversation implies has not in certain cases been prematurely sacrificed in the interest of impartial history.”
+ Outlook 126:292 O 13 ’20 580w
“‘Talks with T. R.’ is an unusually interesting book. It is a really valuable book. It is certain to be read; it deserves to be read. The author of the book had done well to omit certain virulent assaults on living Americans, notably President Wilson.”
+ − Review 2:656 Je 23 ’20 350w + R of Rs 62:111 Jl ’20 100w
“It is a readable and informing book. The principal criticism that may be made concerns the typography and make-up of the volume. It could be condensed nearly fifty per cent without detracting from its readableness.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p8 Je 24 ’20 550w
LEBLANC, MAURICE. Secret of Sarek. il *$1.75 Macaulay co.
20–5586
“To put into his narrative the right degree of thrill, the correct dose of horror, M. Leblanc takes us to the gloomy island of Sarek, off the coast of Brittany, which has the cheerful nickname of ‘Island of the coffins,’ and there plunges his characters into a welter of murder, mystery and terror that has few parallels in this kind of fiction. Strange figures robed in white, flitting in and out of the woods on the island, make one suspect that the ghosts of the druids of ancient times, or else descendants of theirs dwelling in caves beneath the island, have got on the rampage in the modern world. Arsène Lupin, the peerless solver of mysteries, arrives on the island in his little private submarine. He takes the situation in hand with his usual combination of ability, bravery and luck. Things move fast from the moment that he sets foot on the old stamping ground of the druids. It would be unfair to tell the series of strokes of genius, combined with strokes of the incredible luck, whereby Arsène Lupin circumvents the atrocious Vorski and makes it possible for ‘The secret of Sarek’ to have a happy ending.”—N Y Times
Ath p495 Ap 9 ’20 100w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
+ Bookman 51:584 Jl ’20 230w
“Suffice it to say that it is an enthralling story, carried forward breathlessly amid a whirl of shooting, stabbing, crucifying and general bloodshed, cleverly raised above most of its kind by a really baffling atmosphere of mystery, a genuine thriller among thrillers.”
+ N Y Times 25:199 Ap 18 ’20 700w
Reviewed by E. C. Webb
Pub W 97:996 Mr 20 ’20 250w
“The book is full of eerie mysteries and disasters violent enough to merit honourable mention in a competition with Greek tragedies and tinged with a suggestion of archaic survivals and black magic which will pleasantly thrill even a jaded reader.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p242 Ap 15 ’20 180w
LEDWIDGE, FRANCIS. Complete poems of Francis Ledwidge. *$2.50 Brentano’s 821
20–2931
Francis Ledwidge, the young Irish poet, lost his life in the war. His poems are brought together in this volume, with an introduction by Lord Dunsany. “Readers familiar with his work will find all of the favorites in this volume—June, To my best friend, Desire in spring, and others. They will find also his poems written during the great war. It is interesting to note that he did not write much of battle and all that went with it, but made his songs out of memories or out of new glimpses of beauty.” (N Y Times)
“His scope was limited. Trees, flowers and the recurring seasons were his theme. But he evidently believed in these things, and did not write of nature because since Wordsworth’s day, it is the correct thing to do. Ledwidge was a countryman and loved the country; the desire to express himself came, and he moulded into what are often exquisite forms, the simple country thoughts which were natural in him.”
+ Ath p1255 N 28 ’19 340w + Booklist 16:234 Ap ’20
“A book which many lovers of modern Irish poetry will rejoice to possess. In many of the poems there is evidence of a delicate and fragrant talent, but one refuses to speak, as the editor so confidently does, of Ledwidge’s genius.” H: A. Lappin
+ − Bookm 51:215 Ap ’20 160w
“It is difficult to predict what his future development might have been, but at least there is nothing in this collection to justify the editor in speaking so confidently of his protégé as a genius. Although there is here a great deal of fragrant and delicate imagination, and much keen and intimate observation of sky and tree and field and bird, there is nothing quite so full of Irish reality as any one of a dozen lyrics one might mention by Joseph Campbell or Padraic Colum, for example.”
+ − Cath World 110:827 Mr ’20 260w
“There is little in the slight evidence before us to indicate that he would have made his place by sheer power; his success, had he lived, and had he obtained it, would have been of the idiosyncratic sort. And success of this sort he would, I think, no doubt have obtained. For through all his work runs a strain of lyric magic.” Conrad Aiken
+ − Dial 68:376 Mr ’20 1900w
“Francis Ledwidge was an honest songster, a poet of the blackbird in a time of hawks and vultures. He was in no sense an important poet, it must be said.” Mark Van Doren
+ − Nation 111:sup415 O 13 ’20 60w
“When it is said that he is somewhat unvarying and that he is sometimes immature it remains to be said that in everything Francis Ledwidge wrote there is the shapely and the imaginative phrase.” Padraic Colum
+ − New Repub 22:190 Ap 7 ’20 680w
“He knew the simplicities and austerities of wild life in fields and woods so well that he could borrow from them a little sternness to go with the sweetness of his song.”
+ N Y Times 25:27 Ja 18 ’20 500w
“It is simple, sincere, beautiful. Yet it is always quiet and restful. It is not emotional, it soothes. The pictures are gems.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 Ap 27 ’20 900w
“It is true that he is ‘the poet of the blackbird,’ that his ‘small circle of readers’ will turn to his work for its mildness, sweetness, and serenity, ‘as to a very still lake ... on a very cloudless evening.’ But that small circle must not be disappointed to discover that his limpidity and naturalness are often blurred with the derivative, that his taste is uncertain, ... that his imagination is less active than his fancy. Complete poems, unflawed by inequalities of tone and workmanship are therefore rare.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p607 O 30 ’19 1700w
“It is impossible to read these again without realizing that Ledwidge is Ireland’s foremost poet of landscape, a poet who will undoubtedly win lasting recognition.” N. J. O’Conor
+ Yale R n s 10:207 O ’20 130w
LEE, GERALD STANLEY. Ghost in the White House. *$2 Dutton 342.7
20–8716
“‘The White House is haunted by a vague helpless abstraction,—by a kind of ghost of the nation, called the People.’ Gerald Stanley Lee gives expression to what he regards as the common aspiration of the people—a yearning to emerge from the ghost stage and to take on tangible shape and substance through which to give expression and to render service. This transformation must be wrought through the organization of the people—the consumers—into a large club or league with branches and chapters. Thus organized, the individual would have a channel for the expression and application of their constructive thought. On the individual is the responsibility of arming himself with knowledge adequate for good judgment, with perspective for sound progress, with vision for comprehensive planning. Then shall the President be simply the chief of a practical religion.”—Survey.
“Mr Lee writes for the most part in words of one syllable, a style admirably suited to reflect his own mental processes.” H. K.
− Freeman 2:333 D 15. ’20 190w Ind 103:292 S 4 ’20 80w
“The author has thought, or mused, a lot, but he has hardly studied the problems at all. He fancies that economics is a very simple science—and so it is, his economics. He has not the faintest conception of the real forces that are now reshaping the industrial world.”
− Nation 111:276 S 4 ’20 430w
“Mr Lee’s book is thought provoking, stimulating, and much of it is true. It will provoke thought in persons who do not habitually think. One is not quite sure whether a good book like this helps or hinders one.” M. F. Egan
+ − N Y Times 25:5 Jl 4 ’20 3000w
“It is a remarkably successful attempt to formulate the definite, practical desires of the plain people.”
+ R of Rs 42:109 Jl ’20 120w + Springf’d Republican p6 O 4 ’20 670w
“It deserves to be widely read. It deals in a fascinating way with a common experience and a serious problem. While it does not solve this old problem, it serves a good purpose by stimulating new interest and new thought.” A. J. Lien
+ Survey 44:591 Ag 2 ’20 200w
LEE, HARRY SHERIDAN. High company. *$1.50 Stokes 811
20–16183
A collection of war poems under the subtitle “sketches of courage and comradeship,” mostly hospital scenes full of pathos and touches of humor. Contents: The upper room; The pipe and the fire; Angeline; April hearts; The hidden wound; Trees; Baldur the bright god; Winged heels; Ninette and Rintintin; Deferred payment; “Soldiers three”; Biddle’s kid; The good brown earth; The roll of honour; Pudgyfist visits the hospital; Lights out; The pie lady; “Every dog has his day”; “All in the blue unclouded weather”; Buddies; The shadow of the cloud; “Men of good will.”
+ Cath World 112:402 D ’20 170w
“The wounded doughboys are depicted with humor, sympathy, and originality, but the free verse form often degenerates into literal and banal prose.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p13 N 6 ’ 20 90w
“The tribute is beautiful in spirit, beautiful in expression.”
+ N Y Times p24 D 19 ’20 380w
LEE, JAMES MELVIN, ed. Business writing. (Language for men of affairs) il $4 Ronald 808
20–9490
This volume has been prepared by a number of writers connected with the business department of colleges, and with business periodicals and is intended to help business men to write reports, articles for trade papers, make effective speeches at dinners, conventions or clubs, and to instruct advertising writers. The seven divisions of the book are headed: Essentials of writing; The reinforcement of reading; Letter for men of affairs; Report-writing; Advertising copy; The journalism of business; Mechanical and incidental. The appendices consist of bibliographies for both volumes and there is an index. The companion volume on “Talking business” is by John Mantle Clapp.
Booklist 16:334 Jl ’20 + R of Rs 62:672 D ’20 70w + School R 28:636 O ’20 130w
LEE, JENNETTE BARBOUR (PERRY) (MRS GERALD STANLEY LEE). Chinese coat. *$1.75 (6c) Scribner
20–14288
To Eleanor More and her husband, Richard, a blue Chinese coat that she could not afford to buy became a kind of a symbol. The desire to give it to her stayed with her husband all thru their early married life—while their family was growing up and even after the children were men and women. Their pilgrimage to a far country to at last gain possession of the coat is the climax of a story which is part allegory and part romance.
“A quiet tale of married life told with a charming simplicity and a touch of symbolism.”
+ Booklist 17:71 N ’20
“Companionable, sweet and comfortable, filling the mind with dreams of times when, unwillingly and under pressure, we were forced to let the great desire go.”
+ Bookm 52:175 O ’20 60w
“A sweet little story, charmingly told, and illustrating the lovable qualities of husband and wife.”
+ Cath World 112:271 N ’20 60w
“A story that is remarkably compact and sustained in interest throughout. Throughout it is woven the glimmering web of poetry, and this is due partly to the theme itself and partly to the simplicity of the prose. One feels upon reading the story that Mrs Lee possesses unsuspected talents. The idealism and symbolic qualities of ‘The Chinese coat’ are never in doubt. It is a book to be read.”
+ N Y Times p23 S 26 ’20 480w
“A charmingly simple story that has just enough of a plot to hold it together.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a S 26 ’20 230w Wis Lib Bul 16:194 N ’20 80w
LEE, VERNON, pseud. (VIOLET PAGET). Satan the waster. *$2.50 Lane 822
20–16301
Vernon Lee’s satirical allegory, “The ballet of the nations,” was published in 1915 and was reviewed in the Book Review Digest at that time. It is now reprinted here, with prologue and epilogue which take account of the deeper causes leading to the war and of the chaos that has followed it. In the trilogy thus completed Satan appears as “the waster of human virtues.” And since the greater and more useless the waste, the greater his delight, he finds his chief joy in self-sacrifice which is vain, and the author, who in the furnace of the war has come to doubt and question all accepted values, suggests that what the world needs in place of self-sacrifice is that altruism “which is respect for the other rather than renunciation of the self.” This and other philosophical aspects of the war are discussed in the Introduction and in the notes which follow the play.
Ath p846 Je 25 ’20 190w
“We are casting about for a reason why a book so honest, intelligent, well-written, clever, should not stimulate but depress, should be a tiresome book. We may mention that the masque, ‘Satan the waster,’ occupies 110 pages out of about 340; the remainder consists of introduction and notes. That is a damning—or at least a damnable—fact.” F. W. S.
+ − Ath p299 S 3 ’20 640w Booklist 17:106 D ’20
“It is an interesting discussion of our international imbecilities and sets forth with pomp those precise opinions whose less elegant expression recently sent several hundred Americans to jail.”
+ Dial 70:232 F ’21 70w
“Enormously stimulating and quickening book. It ought to be one of the real factors in that spiritual re-adjustment which is now a major democratic necessity.” F. H.
+ New Repub 24:244 N 3 ’20 3650w
“Her satire fails because never from beginning to end can the reader believe in it. It is merely an expression of her opinions in a very artificial form; and, whether or no we agree with them, we would rather have them expressed in the natural form of argument.”
− The Times [London] Lit Sup p389 Je 24 ’20 3200w
“It embodies the reaction to the world war of one of the sanest minds and most finished stylists of her day. One who compares Romain Rolland’s dramatic satire ‘Liluli’ with this work, is struck with the similarity in purpose, in point of view, in fundamental concept, and even in their common form of cosmic burlesque. Neither the great Frenchman nor the great Englishwoman has written a ‘play’ in the ordinary sense, but each has made an uncommon contribution to literature.”
+ Theatre Arts Magazine 5:85 Ja ’21 320w
LEES, GEORGE ROBINSON. Life of Christ. il *$5 Dodd 232
20–18310
Considering it of supreme importance to be able to visualize the scenery amid which the life of Christ was laid, the writer of this volume spent six years in Palestine during which he learned “how real was the life of Christ in the scenes depicted in the records of the Evangelist.” Thus with much local and historic coloring the life of Jesus is reinterpreted from the accounts of the apostles which are closely followed. The book is indexed and has one hundred and twenty-five full page illustrations.
“Inevitably it provokes comparison with Renan in point of literary style, if not in actual treatment, for Mr Lees is a convinced believer. His style fails badly by the test. Though a book of this kind is not greatly to our taste, we cannot but acknowledge the author’s devotion.”
− + Ath p868 D 24 ’20 90w
“His narrative is plain, simple, understandable, but not marked by either remarkable scholarship or remarkable insight.”
+ − Outlook 126:767 D 29 ’20 100w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p687 O 21 ’20 90w
LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD. Junk-man, and other poems. *$1.75 Doubleday 811
20–17992
With a wealth of imagery and a poet’s wisdom all life is mirrored in these poems in the time-honored garb of rhyme and metre. The first line of the poem “On re-reading Le morte d’Arthur,” “Here learn who will the art of noble words” can be applied to this collection, the author’s first since the war.
+ Booklist 17:105 D ’20
“If his extreme youth was a little hectic with the heady wine of passion his maturity has grown beautifully sane with the philosophic mind. He was never more youthful than now, when he has recaptured the song of the lark, regained the lightness of foot that measures the pace of any gypsy up hill and down dale, and with an eye for illusions that any lover might envy.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ Boston Transcript p5 N 6 ’20 1300w Dial 70:233 F ’21 130w
“It is a sad day for poetry when an authentic craftsman attains such facility that he writes from sheer momentum. This, we suspect, is what has happened in the case of Mr Richard Le Gallienne, whose new book, ‘The junkman’ is the mere shell of poetry—the forms without the feeling.” L. B.
− Freeman 2:165 O 27 ’20 200w + Ind 194:246 N 13 ’20 150w
“It is compact with beauty, filled with all those things that we instinctively know to be the real marks of authentic poetry. The flare, the passion, the abiding sense of things that may not readily be put into words, are all here. It is the sort of poetry that endures, that becomes memorable and takes place in the memories and hearts of its readers.” H. S. Gorman
+ N Y Times p11 O 10 ’20 1500w
“A collection of verse that equals anything this prolific author has done.”
+ Springf’d Republican p9a O 31 ’20 400w
LEIGHTON, JOHN LANGDON. Simsadus: London; the American navy in Europe. il *$4 (11c) Holt 940.45
20–9639
“Sims—Admiral—U.S.” explains the title of the book. It was the cable address of Admiral Sims’ headquarters in London. The author was connected with the Intelligence section of Admiral Sims’ staff and as such is conversant with the inside facts and history of our naval operations. The book gives his personal impressions and disclaims official sanction. A partial list of the contents: The situation in April, 1917; Admiral Sims in London; The establishment of bases; Submarines off the American coast; A discussion of submarines and their methods; The distraction of submarines; Why American troopships were not sunk; The end of the submarine campaign; The man on the bridge (in homage); Appendix, charts and illustrations.
“After the host of war books which have kept our heads buzzing with anecdotes and statistics incoherently packed into a jumbled whole it is not only refreshing but instructive to read a clear, sane, and comprehensive exposition of our naval activities in Europe as set forth by Mr Leighton.” P. E. Stevenson
+ N Y Times 25:23 Je 27 ’20 1000w
“It is something of a relief to find a war-book that does not strain one’s nerves, or overwhelm one with facts, and that has hardly any note in it of propaganda, or eulogy, or criticism. Mr Leighton has given a clear-cut, well-ordered account of what our navy did in connection with the British navy.”
+ No Am 212:862 D ’20 1050w + R of Rs 62:112 Jl ’20 90w
“Pervading his book is a whole-hearted devotion to his chief, which goes beyond mere professional loyalty and suggests kinship with the spirit that surrounded Nelson. Readers of Admiral Sims’s own book can hardly fail to discern the secret of this spirit and it is pleasant to find it reflected from the pages of his subordinate.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p3 Ja 6 ’21 860w
LE QUEUX, WILLIAM TUFNELL. Doctor of Pimlico; being the disclosure of a great crime. *$1.75 Macaulay co.
20–1211
“Weirmarsh is a criminal who operates all over the continent of Europe, as well as in England, and, possessing certain hypnotic powers, he finds it easy to bend other wills to his for his own profit. So not only is Sir Hugh Elcombe—with his splendid record as a British officer in several hard campaigns, including the great war just ended—made a pitiful object by his fear of an ‘exposure’ by Weirmarsh, but Sir Hugh’s beautiful stepdaughter, Enid Orlebar, who seems to be a perfect example of the high-class modern English girl is also under his baleful shadow. She is loved by the middle-aged cosmopolite who is intended to be the hero of the book. He is a talented author of mystery romances which bring him an income of several thousand pounds sterling a year. His real name, under which he writes, is Walter Fetherston. But he has a penchant for amateur detective work—he avers that he always ‘lives’ his romances—and when he is engaged in trying to get to the bottom of some criminal mystery he calls himself John Maltwood.”—N Y Times
Ath p1242 N 21 ’19 50w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
Bookm 51:585 Jl ’20 180w
“The story rambles on—always fluent and in well-chosen terms, with colorful pictures of various localities in Europe obviously made by one who knows them personally, but singularly deficient in suspense, dramatic action, humor, or any other of the qualities which make for real interest in an up-to-date work of fiction.”
− + N Y Times 25:309 Je 13 ’20 700w The Times [London] Lit Sup p698 N 27 ’19 140w
LESCOHIER, DON DIVANCE. Labor market. (Social science text-books) *$2.25 Macmillan 331
19–19765
“The purpose of this volume is to show the necessity for a national organization to control the problem of employment. In the course of his discussion the author presents much information concerning conditions of the labor market in this country and offers many suggestions to officials of employment offices, university students and teachers, legislators and the general public.”—R of Rs
“The book is an authoritative and constructive study of an important question; and its essential merit lies in the fact that it is based on experience. The general aspects of the question, however, are not neglected and the bibliography and references show that the subject has been studied as a whole.” G: M. Janes
+ Am Econ R 10:605 S ’20 940w
“The subject is covered very fully and is presented in a popular style. Will be valuable to labor managers, students of economics, and progressive business executives.”
+ Booklist 16:223 Ap ’20
“Of interest to all students of practical economic questions.”
+ Cleveland p54 My ’20 40w
“A workmanlike book ... that fills a gap in economic literature.”
+ Dial 68:541 Ap ’20 40w
“It is neither novel nor exciting. It is a sober and well-balanced study of the way in which the sale of labor in the employment market is organized. If Mr Lescohier’s book has a fault, it is his inclination to regard the general background of the present industrial system as permanent. But as a survey of machinery Mr Lescohier’s book is of real value.” H. J. Laski
+ − Nation 110:594 My 1 ’20 320w R of Rs 61:447 Ap ’20 60w
“In this volume Professor Lescohier has rendered a singularly opportune public service. It is enormously important to have available at this time such a clear discussion of the nature of the labor market and of the significance for the country of the sundry labor and immigration policies proposed.”
+ Survey 44:318 My 29 ’20 400w The Times [London] Lit Sup p241 Ap 15 ’20 60w
LESLIE, NOEL. Three plays: Waste; The war fly; For king and country. *$1.50 Four seas co. 822
20–7067
There is tragedy in all of these realistic one-act plays. In Waste we have a dying consumptive girl whose last hours see a grief and poverty-stricken mother, a drunken father, and her lover turning from her to her younger sister. In the War-fly two strangers meet in a hotel restaurant and the one entertains the other with a gruesome fancy about flies as the devil’s emmisaries. In For King and country an aged village couple have one son returned from the war blind and while they are discussing the future of the other son and his war bride this other is brought home mad.
“Each and all of his three plays reveal him as a playwright with ideas, and as one whose own acting has enabled him to see dramatic values and to cause them to live in plays of his own. There is the reality of life in them as well as a feeling for the theatre that makes them actable. They hit the centre of the target.” A. A. W.
+ Boston Transcript p4 Ap 21 ’20 450w
“Of Mr Noel’s three one-act plays the second, The war-fly, is quite dark in drift and meaning and so one suspects that neither matters greatly. His first and third plays, on the contrary, Waste and For king and country, are drenched with significance because they strain after no symbolism and are philosophical because they are true.”
+ − Nation 110:693 My 22 ’20 180w
“The three plays contained in Noel Leslie’s book are rather exasperating. In each one of them the author handles an excellent theme, makes fair headway with it and then does not quite realize the possibilities of his plots.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p9 My 8 ’20 140w
“The plays are set with an actor’s solicitude, and each begins with a promise which is overcast by partial disappointment.”
+ − Review 2:464 My 1 ’20 100w
“They really are workmanlike in structure, are well written, and display some grasp of character and ability to devise dramatic situations. In ‘The war fly,’ the author shows that he can devise a tragic fantasy of some original power.”
+ − Theatre Arts Magazine 4:259 Jl ’20 180w
LEVEL, MAURICE. Tales of mystery and horror. il *$2 (3½c) McBride
20–18255
These stories are translated from the French by Alys Eyre Macklin. Henry B. Irving provides an introduction in which he says: “Reminding one of Edgar Allan Poe more than any other, M. Level employs the method of O. Henry in the service of the horrible.” The stories, which are all brief—have the titles: The debt collector; The kennel; Who? Illusion; In the light of the red lamp; A mistake; Extenuating circumstances; The confession; The test; Poussette; The father; For nothing; In the wheat; The beggar; Under chloroform; The man who lay asleep; Fascination; The bastard; That scoundrel Miron; The taint; The kiss; A maniac; The 10.50 express; Blue eyes; The empty house; The last kiss.
“He has Poe’s predilection for supernatural and gruesome themes, something of de Maupassant’s technique of compression, a flair for the ‘irony of fate’ formula, which was so characteristic of O. Henry’s plot, and a kinship with Burke’s nostalgie de la boue. But there the likeness ends, he has none of the qualities mentioned in a degree sufficient to raise him to the level of the men he suggests.”
+ − N Y Times p24 Ag 29 ’20 740w
“In spite of their subject-matter, the stories neither shock me morally, chill my blood with their horror, nor affect me with their pathos. A skillful machinist, not an artist, seems to have been at work.” E. L. Pearson
− + Review 3:249 S 22 ’20 480w
LEVERAGE, HENRY. Shepherd of the sea. il *$1.75 (2½c) Doubleday
20–26194
This is a story of the icy North, of ice-floes, of shipwreck, of starvation and mutiny at a whaling station, of an overland trip in a dog-sled, deprivation and hunger and narrow escape from freezing. A missionary sea-captain who is out to fight the whiskey traffic with the Eskimos and to carry the word of God to them, picks up Buck Traherne when his motor-boat had capsized in the Strait. Traherne is just out of college at Seattle and a tenderfoot. The life on ship-board puts strength into him and he becomes, with the shepherd, the mainstay of the castaway crew on Herschel Island. Moona—half Eskimo and half Scotch—the shepherd’s ward, loves him and after the rescue has come, and the arctic flowers have once more lifted their heads, the charm she has knitted into Traherne’s muffler shows its potency.
+ − Booklist 16:204 Mr ’20
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
Bookm 51:80 Mr ’20 260w
“Memories of ‘Captains courageous’ seem to filter through the beginnings of Mr Leverage’s tale. Nevertheless, the plot would pass very well by itself if the author had the style and strength to render it into a forcible and plausible narrative. Unfortunately, he has not.” G. M. H.
− + Boston Transcript p6 Ja 28 ’20 550w
“The tale contains an abundance of adventure, and the author seems to know the country and the life whereof he writes, but the book is marred by a style so very jerky that it soon gets upon the reader’s nerves.”
− + N Y Times 25:39 Ja 25 ’20 380w
LEVERAGE, HENRY. Where dead men walk. *$1.75 Moffat
20–1210
“A story of the underworld, Mr Leverage’s new novel, ‘Where dead men walk,’ recounts the adventures of one Vilos Holbrook. He had lived a lazy, comfortable life until his uncle, Colonel Bishop, who had control of the modest fortune left him by his father, was swindled out of it while himself endeavoring to swindle a supposedly dying man. Only a few hours before he learned of the loss of his fortune, curiosity had induced him to attend the disreputable ‘Three students’ ball,’ where he had seen Gypsy Cragen dance, and later talked with her. When he presently discovered that she had been one of the gang of swindlers who had gotten the better of his uncle, he protected her, and later joined the little organization of thieves to which the Gypsy and her father, formerly a noted safeblower, belonged. This he preferred to earning an honest living as an electrical engineer. Also he took first to whisky, and then, under the Gypsy’s tutelage, to opium, which he found at the end of that path over the roof described as the one ‘where dead men walk.’”—N Y Times
“Stories of the underworld invariably possess a certain fascination. Mr Leverage has written a fair sample of this type of novel.”
+ − Boston Transcript p4 Je 2 ’20 240w
“The story is entertaining in its way and contains one really clever situation. But the style is unpleasantly staccato, and the construction leaves a good deal to be desired.”
+ − N Y Times 25:76 F 8 ’20 300w Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 25 ’20 80w
LEVERHULME, WILLIAM HESKETH LEVER, 1st baron. Six-hour shift and industrial efficiency. *$3.50 (4c) Holt 331
20–11378
The book is the American edition of the author’s “Six-hour day,” abridged and rearranged by Frank Tannenbaum, with an introduction by Henry R. Seager. Lord Leverhulme’s remedies for the defects of modern industry are based on actual experience and are summed up in the word co-partnership. He looks upon the employer as the senior partner in an industry and the employees as the junior partners, with the confidence that under such wisely planned leadership complete cooperation will gradually result. Contents: The problem of industrial efficiency; The six-hour shift; Harmonizing capital and labor; Co-partnership; Co-partnership and business management; Co-partnership and efficiency; Co-operative aspect of business; Health and housing; Shop committees and shop efficiency; Industrial administration; The workers’ interest in productivity; Principles of reconstruction; Socialism, or equality vs. equity. There is an index.
Booklist 16:357 Jl ’20 Lit D p106 S 4 ’20 1600w R of Rs 62:110 Jl ’20 70w Springf’d Republican p8 Je 15 ’20 150w
LEVINE, ISAAC DON. Letters from the Kaiser to the Czar. $3 Stokes 327
20–15556
These letters, “copied from government archives in Moscow, unpublished before 1920,” are “the private letters from the Kaiser to the Czar found in a chest after the Czar’s execution and now in possession of the Soviet government.” In his introduction the author reprints comments on the letters from various English papers and from Professor Walter Goetz. As the letters were written in English they are printed as written. Four of the letters are given in facsimile.
Booklist 17:113 D ’20
Reviewed by A. C. Freeman
N Y Call p7 Ja 9 ’21 580w
“While not as important as the telegrams which were published in 1917, these letters from the Kaiser to the Czar are extremely interesting as historical documents completing the picture. They reveal the author far better than any biographer could reveal him.” Herman Bernstein
+ N Y Times p18 O 10 ’20 2550w
“They are only half satisfactory as correspondence because there are no letters of reply from the Czar to the Kaiser. Regrettably incomplete as the present volume is, no book, we think, could present a greater revelation of the Kaiser’s character. Such a book should have had an index.”
+ − Outlook 127:110 Ja 19 ’21 400w R of Rs 62:445 O ’20 140w
“Mr Grant’s excellent introduction explains everything that needs explanation, and ample footnotes clear up the personal and other allusions which might perplex readers who are not close students of foreign politics.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p867 D 23 ’20 900w
LEVINGER, MRS ELMA EHRLICH.[[2]] New land. $1.25 Bloch
20–10306
“This little collection of stories written for children, of ‘Jews who had a part in the making of our country,’ belongs in part to historical biography with a large fictional element and in part to pure fiction with a historical setting.”—Survey
“The particular ideal of the author of ‘The new land’ to be sure, is not Christian but patriotic virtue, but her method of approach is sadly reminiscent of the Sunday school library of old time. Nevertheless the tales are all carefully and enthusiastically told and often rise to intrinsic human interest.” C. K. S.
+ − Freeman 2:69 S 29 ’20 140w
“The stories are well written; they have a collective ‘moral,’ of course, but this does not obtrude itself, nor is it narrowly nationalistic.” B. L.
+ Survey 45:468 D 25 ’20 120w
LEVISON, ERIC.[[2]] Hidden eyes. *$1.75 Bobbs
20–16929
“Mysterious bank robberies at Jacksonville, Fla., furnish the plot of ‘Hidden eyes.’ The most complicated locks and burglar-proof bank vaults are opened without delay by a most adroit and elusive thief. Robbery after robbery occurs and the detective force is well-nigh demoralized. The detective chief, however, has a latent suspicion of a young chemist named Thornton, who is an expert in steel and safe locks. Thornton is taken in the very act of a midnight foray. But this is far from clearing the mystery. That duty is accomplished by a local doctor who dabbles in psychoanalysis and auto-suggestion.”—Springf’d Republican
+ Boston Transcript p4 Ja 19 ’21 360w + N Y Times p20 D 12 ’20 370w
“The dénouement is quite unexpected and furnishes the biggest thrill of all.”
+ Springf’d Republican p7a D 26 ’20 120w
LEVY, S. I.[[2]] Modern explosives. il $1 (3½c) Pitman 662.2
The contents of this volume of Pitman’s common commodities and industries are: Modern explosives and their raw materials; The chemistry of explosives manufacture; The acids section of an explosives factory; The manufacture of propellant explosives; Preparation of the high explosives; Explosives in war and peace; Chemistry and national welfare. Index and illustrations.
“Although avoiding technical details, the author has given a reasonable and well-balanced treatment of his subject in the space at his disposal. One or two slips may be noted. The final chapter, on ‘Chemistry and national welfare,’ although not directly connected with the subject, is very apposite at the present time.”
+ − Nature 106:340 N 11 ’20 180w
LEWER, H. WILLIAM. China collector; a guide to the porcelain of the English factories. (Collector’s ser.) il *$2.50 (4½c) Dodd 738
“This book has been written to enable the enthusiastic collector of china, even after he has passed through his apprenticeship, and acquired a certain amount of experience, to form a correct judgment of that branch of ceramics embraced under the designation of old English porcelain.” (Foreword) The book has a prefatory note by Frank Stevens explaining the illustrations of which there are thirty-two and the marks. The distinctive features of each factory are treated under the titles of history, paste, glaze, decoration, production, characteristics, noted artists, chronology, and marks. The factories discussed are: Bow; Bristol; Caughley; Chelsea; Chelsea-Derby; Coalport; Derby; Longton Hall; Lowestoft: Nautgarw; New Hall; Pinxton; Plymouth; Rockingham; Spode; Swansea; Worcester. There is a chronograph, a bibliography, a tabular index of factories, an index of names and a general index.
LEWIS, SINCLAIR. Main street. *$2 (1c) Harcourt
20–18934
In telling the story of Main street, Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, the author has tried to tell the story of all America. His Main street “is the continuation of Main streets everywhere.” It is a story of dull mediocrity, complacent and satisfied with itself. Carol Milford, one year out of college, marries Dr Will Kennicott and goes with him to his home town, Gopher Prairie, in the wheat belt. Carol hates Main street at sight and in the six or eight years of her life that are chronicled does not hate it less, altho in the end she comes to see it with larger eyes and to endure it. One after the other she attempts reform measures, including a little theater venture, but her efforts meet defeat. She has her fling of defiance, and spends one of the war years in Washington, but comes back again, still rebellious. “I may not have fought the good fight,” says Carol, “but I have kept the faith.”
“One of the few really good American novels of today.”
+ Booklist 17:117 D ’20
“The book is too long, rather tedious. But it has a humanity, a popular note which will appeal to thousands.” S. M. R.
+ − Bookm 52:372 D ’20 100w
“The total impression one derives is that neither Jane Austen nor George Eliot depicted the provincial England of the past with more vividness than that with which Mr Lewis portrays the present-day American small town.” S. A. Coblentz
+ Bookm 52:357 Ja ’21 800w
“He knows the American small town for what it is, history in that respect being the supreme achievement in American fiction. But when he creates a protest against it, an attack upon its vicious existence, through the symbol of Carol Kennicott he comes nearer to the function of a treatise than the process of art. Kennicott is masterly drawn.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ − Boston Transcript p4 D 11 ’20 1700w
“The atmosphere of the sordid smug little burg is well done.”
+ Cleveland p105 D ’20 40w + Dial 70:106 Ja ’21 80w
“At times, Mr Lewis makes one feel that he has treated his people as mere incidents in an environment, that he has pictured them, not without malice, like Dickensian gargoyles. But there are scenes in his book as sensitively felt as some in Mr Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Winesburg, Ohio.’ These exceptional passages of his book are an earnest of the restraint and mastery which one will have the right to expect of his later work.” H. J. Seligmann
+ − Freeman 2:237 N 17 ’20 750w
“His dialogue, which he uses very freely, is brilliant. The exactness of this dialogue is a literary achievement of a very high order. Mr Lewis has given literary permanence to the speech of his time and section. But the dialogue in ‘Main street’ is anything but literature in the sense of Verlaine; it is living talk. ‘Main street’ would add to the power and distinction of the contemporary literature of any country.”
+ Nation 111:536 N 10 ’20 820w
“‘Main street’ is pioneer work. Some formulae it does help to perpetuate. Some garishness and crudity it does unpleasantly employ in its anxiety to be effective and pat. But while the novelistic hen does not necessarily lay better if surrounded by strong artificial light, the light in ‘Main street’ is on the whole natural, honest and oh so amazingly illuminating.” F. H.
+ − New Republic 25:20 D 1 ’20 1500w
“‘Main street’ is a book to possess and treasure. What the critics have overlooked is just this: that Carol’s idealism was at least as superficial and worthless as the faults of Main street. Carol is more than a blind would-be leader of the blind; she is a butterfly aspirant for the leadership of the apsychosaurus.” Clement Wood
+ − N Y Call p5 Ja 9 ’21 300w
“Dealing with material that is rarely subtle, Mr Lewis can be subtle enough himself. Besides his gift for character and situation, he has also a knack at satire and caustic epigram, with so enormous an acquaintance with the foibles and folklore of the Middle West that he has literally set a new standard for novels dealing with the section.” Carl Van Doren
+ N Y Evening Post p3 N 20 ’20 2000w
“A remarkable book. A novel, yes, but so unusual as not to fall easily into a class. There is practically no plot, yet the book is absorbing. It is so much like life itself, so extraordinarily real. These people are actual folk, and there was never better dialogue written than their revealing talk.”
+ N Y Times p18 N 14 ’20 1600w
“Gopher Prairie is untypical in human sympathy, in generous instincts, in kindness of heart. Its people are not merely heavy in mind, ludicrously dead to art and literature and world movements; they are selfish, grasping, slanderloving, ignoble. Carol herself is a shallow sort of reformer. This is the strongest criticism to be made on ‘Main street.’” R. D. Townsend
+ − Outlook 127:31 Ja 5 ’21 400w
Reviewed by M. A. Hopkins
+ Pub W 98:1889 D 18 ’20 200w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
+ Review 3:447 N 10 ’20 690w
“It is full of the realism of fact, colored by rather laborious and overclever satire. But it has no sustained action, whether as realism or as satire. It is a bulky collection of scenes, types, caricatures, humorous episodes, and facetious turns of phrase; a mine of comedy from which the ore has not been lifted.” H. W. Boynton
− + Review 3:623 D 22 ’20 280w
“Mr Lewis has fashioned one of the year’s most notable volumes of fiction.”
+ Springf’d Republican p7a D 26 ’20 850w
“He is particularly adept in reproducing the vernacular. Whether the picture as a whole and his judgments on it are equally true may be a matter for disagreement. But as a sincere attempt to deal honestly with middle-western life the novel is noteworthy.”
+ Wis Lib Bul 16:238 D ’20 90w
LEWISOHN, LUDWIG, ed. Modern book of criticisms; ed. with an introd. (Modern lib. of the world’s best books) *85c Boni & Liveright 801
20–11399
“An anthology of passages (of about six pages or less each in length) from modern authors dealing with the principles of literature, art, and criticism, divided into four parts according to the nations represented by the authors drawn upon—for France, Anatole France, Lemaître, Remy de Gourmont; for Germany, Hebbel, Dilthey, Volkelt, R. M. Meyer, Hofmannsthal, Mueller-Freienfels, Alfred Kerr; for England, George Moore, G. B. Shaw, Arthur Symons, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, W. L. George, T. MacDonagh, J. C. Powys; for America, Huneker, Spingarn, Mencken, Lewisohn, F. Hackett, Van Wyck Brooks, and Randolph Bourne.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“Mr Lewisohn’s group of critics are restless impressionists, almost destitute of doctrine.” S. P. Sherman
− Bookm 52:111 O ’20 880w
“Connoisseurs of critical personality as such will miss Mr More and Mr Sherman in this volume, inasmuch as they are men of a particularly vivid and dramatic force. The critics whom Mr Lewisohn does put in his collection speak for the most part superbly.” C. and M. V. D.
+ − Nation 111:219 Ag 21 ’20 1250w
“He has done his task in commendable fashion.” H. S. Gorman
+ N Y Times p8 Ag 1 ’20 240w
“A book which begins with selections from Anatole France and Jules Lemaitre is bound to be useful, for the critical writings of these men are less accessible than one could wish. Furthermore, Mr Lewisohn has made a number of translations of his own from German writers. It is this foreign background which gives the book its chief value.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 My 20 ’20 240w The Times [London] Lit Sup p175 Mr 11 ’20 100w
LEYDS, WILLEM JOHANNES. Transvaal surrounded. *$8 Dutton 968
(Eng ed 20–23043)
“In continuation of this author’s monumental work on the annexation of the Transvaal, this volume was completed and prepared for publication in June, 1914, just previous to the opening of the great world war. At that critical time its publication did not seem prudent and its appearance was delayed. In the preceding volume the relations of the Boers and the British government were reviewed from the first settlements in South Africa to the London convention of 1884.... With the events which followed this volume is concerned and especially with the British policy, which was systematically followed by each succeeding cabinet, of gradually surrounding this struggling republic by a barrier of British territory, which effectually deprived it of all opportunity of outward expansion. An appendix reproduces a large number of original documents of great value to the student of this period, who desires to make a close and exhaustive study of this really little understood feature in English-African history.”—Boston Transcript
+ Boston Transcript p6 S 1 ’20 600w
“Dr Leyds is far too sweeping in his charges, due in large measure to his hatred of everything British and to his inexperience of native affairs. The book is one to be read and studied by all who desire to see both sides of a bad patch in our colonial history.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p147 Mr 4 ’20 2200w
L’HOPITAL, WINEFRIDE DE. Westminster cathedral and its architect; with an introd. by W. R. Lethaby. 2v il *$12 (5c) Dodd 726
(Eng ed 20–13853)
These volumes are a memorial to a great architect by his daughter. Volume 1 is devoted to the building of the cathedral and volume 2 to the making of the architect. Together the books contain 160 illustrations and numerous architectural plans. Partial contents of volume 1: The laying of the foundation-stone; Birth of the cathedral idea; The choosing of the architect and the style, 1892–1894; The plan; The structure—building progress—materials—constructional problems; Description and details of exterior; Description and details of interior; The adaptation and development of Byzantine architecture as exemplified in the cathedral; The mosaics; Appendices. Volume 2 contains the architect’s life history and the story of his architectural training and career and an index.
“Though her literary style is frequently clumsy and never particularly good, she had the necessary facts at her disposal and upon the whole has used them well. A more skilled biographer would have given us more of Bentley.”
+ − Cath World 111:821 S ’20 500w
“On the technical and intellectual side, the work might have been composed by an architect having no relation to Bentley, and this it is which gives a special attraction to these 700 pages. There is but one trace of feeling that might perhaps be deprecated: a certain sensitiveness lest, in arranging for the interior completion of the cathedral, the present or future authorities may be lacking in loyalty to the ideals of the architect.”
+ − Sat R 129:211 F 28 ’20 1100w
“The fact that so large and so admirable a book on a modern architect has appeared in this country is a matter for congratulation to the author, the publishers, and the architectural profession. Undoubtedly it was needed. One can justifiably criticize the arrangement, for it leads to a certain amount of repetition.”
+ − Spec 124:461 Ap 3 ’20 700w
“The account of the cathedral in this book is very full and interesting, and illustrated with plans both final and preliminary.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p739 D 11 ’19 2300w
LINCOLN, ELLIOTT CURTIS. Rhymes of a homesteader. il *$1.50 Houghton 811
20–5608
Many of these poems are in dialect, among them The varmint, Angela, An evening with Browning, The phonograph, The game of games and The old-timer remarks. Others, such as The sunflower road, Montana night, Hills, Wheel tracks, Wild geese, and A song of the wire fence, are descriptive of the wild beauty of the northwest country. Some of the poems have appeared in Contemporary Verse, Adventure, Overland and Sunset.
“Lack the poetic beauty of Piper on the same subject, but will have many readers.”
+ Booklist 17:62 N ’20
“Elliott C. Lincoln deals with two types of verse, descriptive and dialect-narrative, with rather more discrimination than Robert Service, but by no means as much vigor. The descriptive verse is melodious, if often conventional.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 11 ’20 180w
“The sociologist often can learn more about America and the American people from this homespun verse without literary distinction than from the smooth rhymes that flow in and around the poetry reviews. Eugene Field was the outstanding master of the homelier craft. A successor of his, perhaps superior in wealth and charm of diction, more direct, more sensitive, is Elliott C. Lincoln.”
+ Survey 44:351 Je 5 ’20 170w
LINCOLN, JOSEPH CROSBY (JOE LINCOLN, pseud.). Portygee. il *$2 (2c) Appleton
20–6287
Portygee is the old Cape Cod term for foreigner expressive of both contempt and suspicion. It is applied with all its hidden meaning to Albert Miguel Carlos Speranza, when he comes to live with his grandparents, old sea captain Zelotes Snow and his wife, after the death of his father, a Spanish opera singer. The latter had eloped with the captain’s only daughter, who had died unforgiven by the old man. Albert, aged seventeen, fresh from a fashionable New York school, has much to live down and to live up to in South Harniss: his inclination to write poetry and his dislike for business, in the first place; and his grandfather’s expectations of him in the second. Little by little and with struggles on both sides, that endear the two leading characters to the reader, both win out. Albert comes to occupy first place in the old man’s heart and is no longer a Portygee, while he gains his own ends, becomes an author, a war hero, and marries the best girl in town.
Booklist 16:313 Je ’20
“The reader of ‘The Portygee’ will find within its pages a somewhat conventional story, but he will find also, as in everything Mr Lincoln has written, a sure understanding of the people of Cape Cod, and an entertaining chronicle of its life and scenes.”
+ Boston Transcript p10 Ap 24 ’20 1500w
“Another inimitable Cape Cod story.”
+ Cleveland p71 Ag ’20 40w
“He can tell a very good story, as he does in ‘The Portygee,’ his psychology, tho somewhat obvious, is true, but his thoroly ‘wholesome’ humor lacks the faintest alleviation of subtlety. Cape Cod deserves a better interpreter.”
+ − Ind 103:186 Ag 14 ’20 100w
“‘The Portygee’ is a pleasant, amusing little story, which Mr Lincoln’s admirers will no doubt greatly enjoy.”
+ N Y Times 25:219 My 2 ’20 480w
“There is hearty fun in the book, and there is also sound philosophy and fine Americanism.”
+ Outlook 125:281 Je 9 ’20 140w
“This book brings back the smell of the moors, the salt sea, and the thick encompassing fogs.” Katharine Oliver
+ Pub W 97:1287 Ap 17 ’20 240w The Times [London] Lit Sup p653 O 7 ’20 60w
“A pleasant tale, which will be enjoyed by all lovers of Lincoln.”
+ Wis Lib Bul 16:126 Je ’20 80w
LINCOLN, NATALIE SUMNER. Red seal. il *$1.75 (3c) Appleton
20–4266
A burglar forces his way into a fashionable Washington home, is caught and taken to court where the McIntyre twins, whose house he had entered, appear against him. His sudden death in the courtroom demands an inquest and an autopsy, which reveal the fact that Jimmie Turnbull, cashier of the Metropolis Trust Company, while masquerading as a burglar, was killed by poison. His engagement to Helen McIntyre complicates the situation. Harry Kent, lover of the twin sister Barbara, takes up the case. Missing securities and a mysterious envelope sealed with a red B further complicate matters. The characters all suspect one another and the reader suspects everyone in turn. Eventually Harry Kent solves the mystery, and the miserable shoulders of the clever forger take the guilt of all phases of the perplexing crime.
+ Booklist 16:245 Ap ’20
“There is nothing unusually clever in the structure of the story. By concealing essential facts, by raising a new question with every incident, and by answering none, the author puzzles rather than creates suspense. The story is indeed so confusing as to be in danger of being tiresome.” G. H. C.
− + Boston Transcript p6 Ap 28 ’20 300w
“‘The red seal’ has the great merit of being really mysterious. The author has managed very cleverly in the way she contrives to conceal all clues that might lead one to discover the true culprit, holding them back until the very end. The tale moves swiftly and holds the reader’s interest.”
+ N Y Times 25:164 Ap 11 ’20 360w
“As in so many cinema plots, everyone seems to be ready to believe anything about anybody, to act in the most compromising manner for apparently inadequate motives, and to prevaricate with voluble insincerity at all times and in all places. With such allies at her disposal, Miss Lincoln makes so formidable a defence of her mystery that only the most experienced reader will penetrate it before the time appointed for unveiling.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p554 Ag 26 ’20 220w
LIND, WALLACE LUDWIG.[[2]] Internal-combustion engines. il $2.20 Ginn 621.43
20–6497
The author has treated of internal combustion engines, their principles and application to automobile, aircraft, and marine purposes. “The endeavor has been to arrange and present the subject matter in such a manner as to bring it well within the comprehension of the average student. For more advanced students, who have a knowledge of thermodynamics, the writer has presented in Chapter III the theoretical considerations of the various cycles which are applicable to internal-combustion engines.” (Preface) There are 120 illustrations, a trouble chart and an index.
“For its purpose the book is very well suited: the theoretical work is sufficiently elementary, and the sections describing practice, although apparently slight, are just such as young cadets can grasp and appreciate.”
+ Nature 106:210 O 14 ’20 180w
LINDEN, HERMAN VANDER.[[2]] Belgium, the making of a nation; tr. by Sybil Jane. (Histories of the nations ser.) *$3.75 Oxford 949.3
(Eng ed 20–9824)
“This volume is a translation of Professor H. vander Linden’s ‘Vue générale de l’histoire de Belgique’ with the addition of three chapters dealing with the history of the modern kingdom since 1831, written specially for this English edition. The original title tells us that the reader must not expect to find in this work more than a historical sketch. The writer makes no higher claim for it.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“Monographs are valuable if their scope be limited, but any small volume covering centuries has the defects of its qualities. In this instance the reader might have gained had the author limited himself to a consideration of modern Belgium. The later chapters are richer in individuality and indicate what the author can do in character-sketches.”
+ − Am Hist R 26:355 Ja ’21 420w Ath p76 Jl 16 ’20 640w + − Eng Hist R 35:629 O ’20 120w
“The best portions of this book are the numerous sections dealing with the social and economical conditions and progress of the Belgic provinces at various epochs of their chequered history. The strictly historical narrative does not deserve the same unqualified praise.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p344 Je 3 ’20 1650w
LINDERMAN, FRANK BIRD. On a passing frontier. *$1.75 Scribner
20–10052
“These glimpses of past or passing phases of life in Montana get a sure grip on the reader, in spite of their sombre quality. Bad men, bad language, and bad whisky figure prominently in the sketches, but most of the experiences ring true.” (Outlook) “His characters run the usual gamut of western tales, and each possesses a picturesque individuality, correctly shaded.” (Boston Transcript)
“These sketches of the Little Rockies will rank well in the front class of fiction.”
+ Boston Transcript p6 Jl 3 ’20 160w
“The stuff of good literature, though not in any final form, appears in ‘On a passing frontier,’ short stories without too much art, but also without too much decoration, which bring the Little Rockies very near home.”
+ Nation 111:164 Ag 7 ’20 40w + Outlook 125:431 Je 30 ’20 70w
LINDSAY, MAUD MCKNIGHT. Bobby and the big road. il *$1.50 (9c) Lothrop
20–26565
Bobby has always lived in the city but when he is five years old his father and mother take him to live in a little brown house by the side of a country road. The story tells of his little adventures while making friends with the birds and animals and flowers. He makes other friends too and goes to the circus and spends a happy Christmas. The story is suitable for children who have just learned to read.
+ Booklist 16:353 Jl ’20 + Cleveland p108 D ’20 30w
“It is meant for little folks like Bobby, but the book has a charm for grown-up readers, too.”
+ Springf’d Republican p9a O 29 ’20 140w
LINDSAY, NICHOLAS VACHEL. Golden whales of California; and other rhymes in the American language. *$1.75 Macmillan 811
20–2832
In addition to the title piece this volume contains poems on Bryan, John L. Sullivan and Roosevelt; also The Daniel jazz, Rameses II, Kalamazoo, My fathers came from Kentucky, The empire of China is crumbling down, and others.
Booklist 16:234 Ap ’20
“Mr Lindsay’s verse makes a blatantly self-conscious attempt to be primitive. His is a mannered striving to be ‘natural’—and the studio savagery of his method would doubtless alarm a genuinely primitive people, as it entertains a jaded coterie of the over-refined.” R. M. Weaver
− + Bookm 51:453 Je ’20 650w
“With this volume Mr Lindsay certainly regains all he seems to have lost in his previous collection, and he now settles permanently in the very forefront of the half a dozen contemporary poets whose fame will last beyond the generation in which they were born.” W. S. B.
+ Boston Transcript p10 Ap 17 ’20 1500w Cleveland p52 My ’20 100w
“Two impulses dominate Lindsay’s latest volume; two tendencies that are almost opposed in mood and mechanics. Sometimes the Jerusalem theme is uppermost; sometimes the jazz orchestration drowns everything else. Frequently, in the more successful pieces, there is a racy, ragtime blend of both. But a half-ethical, half-aesthetic indecision, an inability to choose between what most delights Lindsay and what his hearers prefer is the outstanding effect—and defect—of his new collection.” L: Untermeyer
+ − Dial 68:789 Je ’20 1200w
“There is an impression abroad that ‘The golden whales’ falls a little below ‘General William Booth,’ ‘The Congo,’ and ‘The Santa Fe trail.’ It does do that; yet it stands well up among Mr Lindsay’s better poems, which is to say, among the better poems of contemporary America.” M. V. D.
+ Nation 110:856 Je 26 ’20 350w
“In this volume it is poems like Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan and Kalamazoo and The golden whales and The comet of prophecy and My lady is compared to a young tree and The statue of old Andrew Jackson and the Roosevelt poems and the Alexander Campbell poems which show the increasing self-possession of a singer who really lives with wonder and abides with dreams. The fascination of Lindsay is that this wonder and these dreams are drawn from common American life.” F. H.
+ − New Repub 21:321 F 11 ’20 1300w
“‘The golden whales’ is a book thoroughly alive, thoroughly jolly and thoroughly fit for chanting in typical Vachelese. His idiom, as well as his whimsical exaggeration, roars on every page.” Clement Wood
+ N Y Call p10 My 23 ’20 400w
“The book, taken by and large, might be a parody on Mr Lindsay, all the Mr Lindsays.... And yet one knows very well what has happened. The superstition has got him, the group-consciousness has sucked him down. Mr Lindsay has listened too readily to his kind public, his critical faculty, never strong, has been smoked and blurred by incense.” Amy Lowell
− + N Y Times 25:251 My 16 ’20 2850w
“In this writer there have always been two elements: the poet, and what I shall unceremoniously, but not disrespectfully, call the urchin.... The poet and the urchin lived apart: they could not find each other. They have found each other, in my judgment, in the ‘Golden whales,’ and their meeting is the signal for Mr Lindsay’s emergence into the upper air of song.” O. W. Firkins
+ Review 2:518 My 15 ’20 700w
“Many persons have become needlessly alarmed and excited over Mr Lindsay’s importance as a poet. He is original, very original, both in form and in substance, and he is exhilarating—if it be only the exhilaration induced by the jingling tambourine.... The new book shows Mr Lindsay performing at top speed—facile, self-confident, clever, sometimes brilliant, his viewpoints as healthy and entertaining as ever.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p6 Mr 1 ’20 480w
“Mr Lindsay’s ‘The golden whales of California’ is a disappointment. In this volume, the exuberance of spirit seems artificial, a mannerism; we weary of what the poet calls the ‘jazz bird’s screech’ and ‘monkey-shines and didoes.’” E: B. Reed
− + Yale R n s 10:203 O ’20 150w
LINDSEY, BENJAMIN BARR, and O’HIGGINS, HARVEY JERROLD. Doughboy’s religion, and other aspects of our day. *$1.25 (8c) Harper 940.478
20–1683
In his introduction Harvey J. O’Higgins, giving an appreciation and brief survey of Judge Lindsey’s career, says that it is as an advocate of a moral alliance that he speaks in the book—“for although the actual writing of the book has been a work of collaboration, the message is his message and the spirit of its utterance is, as nearly as possible, his.” This is the message: “The Christian religion is not a religion of individual salvation and selfish virtue. It is a religion of love and self-sacrifice and humility.” It is a religion of doing rather than of church-going and the American junker will have to accept it if the lessons of the war are to be fruitful ones. The four essays of the book are: The doughboy’s religion; The junker faith; Horses’ rights for women; A league of understanding.
Booklist 16:237 Ap ’20
“There has been so much nonsense about the religion of the American soldier written and spoken by members of the Y. M. C. A. that it is refreshing to hear the subject treated intelligently by a real man. It is not strange that the famous judge of the juvenile court should be the man to understand the doughboy as others have failed to understand him.” G. H. C.
+ Boston Transcript p6 F 4 ’20 600w
“The publication, at this date, seems to be an afterthought. However, the book will have some interest, since it presents the thoughts of a man so well-known as Judge Lindsey.”
+ − Cath World 111:540 Jl ’20 140w
“These essays are thought-provoking and written with Judge Lindsey’s usual fiery sincerity.”
+ Cleveland p42 Ap ’20 120w
“Judge Lindsey spares no one in his discussion and is judicious in his summary of the case.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 F 10 ’20 450w
LIPPMANN, WALTER. Liberty and the news. *$1 (7c) Harcourt 323
20–4814
Two essays, on What modern liberty means and Liberty and the news, are here reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, prefaced by a brief introductory essay on Journalism and the higher law. In the latter the author says, “Everywhere today men are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. Increasingly they are baffled because the facts are not available; and they are wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise. For in an exact sense the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism.” The aim of the two main essays is “to describe the character of the problem, and to indicate headings under which it may be found useful to look for remedies.”
Booklist 16:263 My ’20
“Mr Lippmann’s contribution is neither a panegyric nor a tirade. He has approached a perplexing problem in dispassionate, sane and judicial fashion and with a beneficent purpose.” H: L. West
+ Bookm 52:116 O ’20 950w Ind 102:370 Je 12 ’20 160w Int J Ethics 31:115 O ’20 90w
Reviewed by H. J. Laski
Nation 110:594 My 1 ’20 480w
“Mr Walter Lippmann is one of the editors of the New Republic, and consequently may be presumed to know all about liberty; but he has never been a newspaper man and, while he knows a good deal about news, most of what he knows is not true.”
− N Y Times 25:129 Mr 21 ’20 3200w
“The programme which the author proffers is a worthy one. Would that it could be attained! Progress toward its attainment will, however, require considerable soul-searching and inner reformation on the part of responsible persons connected with the handling of the news; and this is likely to require rather large drafts on the bank of time.” W. J. Ghent
+ Review 2:571 My 29 ’20 1250w
“However much one may disagree with some of Mr Lippmann’s statements and views, there is no doubt that he renders a public service by directing his critical mind to the press and its influence. It is courageous thinking of this kind that will help the public to become more exacting in its demand on the press.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a Mr 21 ’20 1300w
“A calm, impersonal and general survey.” J. G. McDonald
+ Survey 44:307 My 29 ’20 320w
LISLE, CLIFTON. Diamond rock. il *$1.75 (2c) Harcourt
20–16154
A boys’ story of the revolutionary war. The Quaker settlement in Chester county, Pennsylvania, had been very remote from the scene of war and had taken little interest in its progress, but with the battle of the Brandywine in the summer of 1777, it is brought close to them. On that very day Joe Lockhart, fishing along the creek, encounters an attractive stranger who teaches him how to catch trout with a worm. Later Joe and his chum, Amos Rambo, pick up a paper which shows the stranger to have been a spy. Joe carries the evidence to Washington’s headquarters and reports and is sent on a mission thru the British lines. He meets the stranger again and learns that he is a spy on the right side. Thereafter the two boys see something of all the stirring events that follow, including the Paoli massacre.
LITCHFIELD, PAUL WEEKS. Industrial republic. *$1 (8c) Houghton 331.1
20–10139
The booklet is a study in industrial economics by the vice-president and factory manager of the Goodyear Tire and rubber company. Government and management, says the author, are synonymous terms, the one being applied to the political, the other to the industrial world and the war has focussed attention on the faults of both. After a brief outline of the evolution of capital and the wage system and its present antagonism the author points out the necessity of giving labor the control of the management of an industry while safe-guarding the interests of capital. In illustration he describes the Goodyear representation plan. Contents: Expansion of political democracy; The labor-capital opposition—genesis and growth; Present status of the labor-capital opposition; Clues to the solution; Rights involve duties; The industrial republic; Industrial citizenship; The Goodyear representation plan.
Booklist 17:54 N ’20
“The book should prove of real interest to social workers and to business men. It maintains a consistent point of view throughout and develops logically to its conclusion.” Alexander Fleisher
+ Survey 44:638 Ag 16 ’20 140w
LITERARY digest history of the world war; comp. by Francis W. Halsey. 10v il with subscription to Literary digest *$12 Funk 940.3
20–646
“This work covers the titanic struggle as it was fought on land, by sea, in the air, on all fronts in all parts of the world, by the thirty nations involved in the conflict. The first six volumes deal chiefly with the outbreak of the war and its causes, and the long and bitter struggle on the western front, including America’s entrance and participation, and carrying the story down to the signing of the armistice, the occupation of the Rhine valley, and the meeting of the peace conference in Paris. The seventh is devoted to Russia’s share in the war, the revolution, the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and the rule of the Bolsheviki. In the eighth is to be found the story of the war in the Balkans, Turkey, and Palestine, while the ninth deals with Italy’s war effort and the story of the submarine warfare. The tenth contains the history of sea battles and of commerce raiding, an adequate description of the work of the Peace conference, sketches of fifty military and political leaders, a chronology that fills forty pages, and an index to the whole work. The volumes are all copiously illustrated.”—N Y Times
“The internal political events in the various countries are nearly altogether neglected, except of course the revolutions in Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. In this method of treatment there can be only a feeble attempt to evaluate the significance of the various factors entering into the huge conflict. The account lacks, too, as is natural, the simple direct style of Usher’s ‘Story of the great war.’ Nevertheless it is a comprehensive piece of work well done and extremely well suited to the clientele to whom it is directed.” G: F. Zook
+ − Am Hist R 25:720 Jl ’20 670w
Reviewed by W. C. Abbott
Bookm 51:115 Mr ’20 80w N Y Evening Post p13 D 31 ’20 100w
“Mr Halsey approached his task with a true perspective and justly saw and accurately described the part taken by each nation involved in its due relation to the whole conflict and the final victory.”
+ N Y Times 25:172 Ap 11 ’20 1250w
“The present work is certainly full of fine material and will itself be constantly and permanently valuable for reference and study.”
+ Outlook 123:515 D 17 ’19 200w
“In common justice to the author, we must give him praise for his skill in so reducing, condensing, and digesting the immense mass of material at his command as to produce a continuous and even narrative.”
+ Review 3:424 N 3 ’20 320w + Springf’d Republican p6 N 15 ’20 60w Springf’d Republican p6 D 4 ’20 150w (Review of v 10)
LIVERMORE, GEORGE GRISWOLD.[[2]] Take it from Dad. il *$2 Macmillan 817
20–21986
Letters from a father to his son in preparatory school, letters full of friendly advice and good counsel with a mixture of homely anecdote from the father’s experience. There are amusing illustrations by Bert Salg.
“A new kind of boys’ book—and a good kind, too.”
+ Outlook 127:110 Ja 19 ’21 60w
“It is not difficult to imagine that fathers with boys of eighteen will find Mr Soule an altogether enjoyable companion.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 Ja 4 ’21 240w
LIVERMORE, THOMAS LEONARD. Days and events, 1860–1866. il *$6 (3c) Houghton 973.7
20–5734
This posthumous book, published by the author’s family and recording Colonel Livermore’s experiences in the Civil war, was begun immediately after the conclusion of the war, while its events were still fresh in his mind. Henry M. Rogers in his introduction gives a brief sketch of the author’s life.
“Colonel Livermore has been known for a long time by his work on ‘Numbers and losses in the Civil war,’ which has been one of the most valuable contributions to our military history. The work now before us is of an entirely different character and reflects the ability of the author from a new and no less interesting angle.” Eben Swift
+ Am Hist R 25:734 Jl ’20 600w
“The volume ought to take its place as a real ‘source book’ for commentators on the history of that conflict. There is much of entertainment in the narrative, which is frank to a degree and often vigorous, fresh, and significant in its criticisms.”
+ Outlook 124:431 Mr 10 ’20 100w
LIVINGSTON, ROBERT. Land of the great out-of-doors. il *$1.75 (9c) Houghton
20–17525
When they are about five and six years old, Penrose and Penelope, known as Pen and Penny, are taken to the country to live on a farm. This little story tells of their daily life, beginning in the spring time and continuing to Christmas. In some of the chapters Pen tells of his doings, in others Penny gives her view of things. The colored pictures are by Maurice Day.
+ Ind 104:380 D 11 ’20 40w
“The impersonator frequently forgets, in his desire to have the valuable information imparted, that he is under contract to use the speech of childhood. However, the stories will undoubtedly find favor with the little folk, and their atmosphere is fresh and wholesome.” M. H. B. Mussey
+ − Nation 111:sup672 D 8 ’20 80w
“It will prove excellent to read aloud, or to give to children who are just beginning to read for themselves.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p4 D 5 ’20 120w + Springf’d Republican p8 N 18 ’20 80w
LOCK, H. O.[[2]] Conquerors of Palestine through forty centuries. *$3 Dutton 956.9
20–4566
“The history begins with the ancient Egyptians, relates the campaigns and conquests of the Jews, the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, the picturesque warriors of the Crusades, the French, and then the British. The intervening history is briefly sketched, to make a connected narrative. The book has an introduction by Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, commander-in-chief of the British forces in Palestine.”—Springf’d Republican
“Major Lock has produced a readable sketch of a large subject. The map attached to the book is ingeniously contrived to illustrate the many periods of history on which Major Lock touches.”
+ Spec 122:86 Ja 17 ’20 100w Springf’d Republican p8 N 6 ’20 60w
LOCKE, GLADYS EDSON. Ronald o’ the moors. il *$1.75 (2½c) Four seas co.
20–94
This historical novel is staged on the Dartmoor bogs in the reign of George II. Dartmoor was a hot-bed of Jacobite sympathy, and Sir Roger Hetherington had been sent down from the court of St James to guard Penraven Castle, the center of Jacobite activity, and to capture wild Ronald o’ the moors, a highwayman and night rider who made Hanoverians his particular prey. Sir Roger was far from welcome at Penraven Castle, indeed he soon realized that he was in the midst of bitter enemies. What made the success of his undertaking even more doubtful, however, was the fact that he at once lost his heart to Lady Edris Penraven, the mistress of the castle he was sent to spy upon, and that Ronald seemed to be as elusive as the will o’ the wisps that flitted over the moor. Altogether Sir Roger’s plans did not work out just as he had shaped them, but the end of the story, altho it leaves him exiled in France, yet brings him happiness as well, since he shares Lady Edris’s fate.
“The book is about on a par with the average of its class, fiction of which the authors seem to be under the impression that vital interest is imparted by a liberal supply of oaths and expletives, and the use of archaic language whether appropriate to the period or otherwise.”
− + Cath World 111:408 Je ’20 140w
LOCKE, WILLIAM JOHN. House of Baltazar. *$1.90 (2c) Lane
20–26105
The hero is a man of great intellectual power, dynamic physical energy and sudden quixotic impulses. After he has spent eighteen years of voluntary exile in China—self imposed because he fears to compromise the girl he loves—and two years of hermitlike seclusion on the moor with a fascinating and erudite young Chinese student, a German bomb from a zeppelin shocks him into a dazed knowledge of the European war. Wide awake, action hungry, he scorns his former achievements as a mathematical genius and brilliant Chinese scholar, plunges into political activities, gets “hitched on to” the war, and becomes the man of the hour. The old distasteful personal ties are broken through his wife’s death and the lapse of the years. New ones are forged and he learns that he has a fine son of whom he had not even dreamed. Life in London has become sweet and full and he desires no change. But once more the quixotic impulse asserts itself—a sacrifice becomes necessary for the sake of his officer son’s career, and he is off to China again.
“A typically interesting Locke story. The book ends rather weakly.”
+ − Booklist 16:204 Mr ’20
“Mr Locke has written many stories better than ‘The house of Baltazar,’ but there are few of them in which his neglected opportunities were greater. The truth is that he, like many other novelists, is obsessed by the necessity of making the war and its far-reaching effects a part of his fiction.” E. F. E.
+ − Boston Transcript p6 Ja 21 ’20 1260w + Dial 68:537 Ap ’20 20w + Ind 103:54 Jl 10 ’20 110w
“But, after all, it is Baltazar himself who is the book, and he is always a joy.”
+ − N Y Times 25:38 Ja 25 ’20 1150w + Outlook 124:430 Mr 10 ’20 200w
“A captious reader might complain that Mr Locke has tried to do too many things at once, that a single novel simply has not sufficient space to include the big issues of feminism, profiteering, labour unrest and the thousand and one elements of contemporary social upheaval. But Mr Locke’s readers are not inclined to be captious.” F. T. Cooper
+ − Pub W 97:173 Ja 17 ’20 550w
“The writing is pleasant and workmanlike, and the way in which the elder woman of the story is led to reknit her broken romance is exceedingly well imagined.”
+ − Sat R 129:477 My 22 ’20 130w
“Mr Locke has given us an ingenious and amusing story, but gratitude for this gift cannot prevent even an indolent reviewer from protesting mildly against the strain he has imposed on our credulity.”
+ − Spec 124:462 Ap 3 ’20 550w
“Baltazar is very likeable in his forceful domineering strength, and Marcelle is a charming foil to his powerful personality. The lighter element is supplied by the Chinaman.”
+ Springf’d Republican p13a F 22 ’20 650w
“Mr W. J. Locke goes on his way regardless of the limits between the probable and the improbable. John Baltazar stretches the credulity of the reader to the utmost from the moment that he enters on the scene.”
− + The Times [London] Lit Sup p139 F 26 ’20 550w
LOCKEY, JOSEPH BYRNE. Pan-Americanism: its beginnings. *$5 Macmillan 327
20–7662
The author’s preface points out that Pan-Americanism has passed through three periods, the first, characterized by a tendency toward solidarity, the second, by an opposite tendency toward separation and distrust, the third marked by a revival of the earlier trend. This book is devoted to the first of these periods, extending to about 1830 and embracing the years of revolution and the formation of new states. The eleven chapters are devoted to: Meaning of Pan-Americanism; Formation of new states; Failure of monarchical plots; United States and Hispanic American independence; International complications; Hispanic America and the Monroe doctrine; Early projects of continental union; The Panama congress; British influence; Attitude of the United States; Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. There is a bibliography of nineteen pages, followed by an index. The work was completed as an “academic task” at Columbia university under the direction of Professor John Bassett Moore.
“A thorough and authoritative study.”
+ Booklist 17:148 Ja ’21
“With the substance of the book little fault can be found. It is timely and valuable. The arrangement and style are likely, however, to elicit some adverse criticism. The style abounds in colloquialisms, redundant words, and inexact expressions. But these slight imperfections do not seriously detract from or obscure the thought of an otherwise excellent work.” W: R. Manning
+ − N Y Evening Post p4 O 30 ’20 870w R of Rs 62:223 Ag ’20 60w Spec 125:471 O 9 ’20 1600w
“Interesting and scholarly study.”
+ Springf’d Republican p6 Jl 16 ’20 330w The Times [London] Lit Sup p475 Jl 22 ’20 70w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p670 O 14 ’20 40w
LOCKINGTON, W. J. Soul of Ireland; with an introd. by G. K. Chesterton. *$1.75 Macmillan 941.5
20–824
“The gist of this [book is] that ‘Ireland is a proof, that the whole world may see, of the joy of life and sanity of outlook that spring from the Catholic church, the church of the tabernacle’: aliter that ‘the Irishman fearlessly stands before the whole world and unhesitatingly proclaims that his greatest pride and his greatest glory is the heritage that was given him by St Patrick—our Holy Catholic faith.’”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
Ath p1387 D 19 ’19 40w Booklist 16:240 Ap ’20
“Father Lockington employs a bombastic style unfortunately characteristic of a class of books about Ireland, books against which nearly all the younger Irish writers have revolted. It is surprising to find an author of Mr Chesterton’s literary standing writing an introduction to ‘The soul of Ireland’: readers who care for literature will be wise to go no further.” N. J. O’C.
− Boston Transcript p6 F 25 ’20 180w
“Long, sickly, sentimental rhapsody, in the rococo style.” Preserved Smith
− Nation 110:556 Ap 24 ’20 150w
“It is written in a lofty, almost poetic, style, and a deep religious fervor pervades it throughout.”
+ N Y Times 25:225 My 2 ’20 500w
“Even those who stand outside the sacred circle for which he writes and who can not share the glowing devoutness of his symbolism must be moved by the enthusiastic tenderness with which this Jesuit priest idealizes the land of his ministry.” H. L. Stewart
+ Review 2:284 Mr 20 ’20 150w The Times [London] Lit Sup p679 N 20 ’19 70w
LODGE, RUPERT CLENDON. Introduction to modern logic. $2 (1c) Perine bk. co., 1413 University av., S. E., Minneapolis, Minn. 160
20–5668
An introductory text book prepared by an assistant professor of philosophy in the University of Minnesota. “By ‘modern’ logic is understood that body of logical theories and methods which is usually associated with the names of Lotze, Sigwart, Bradley, Bosanquet, Wundt, Erdmann and Dewey.... The traditional or Aristotelian logic, which has played so great a part in the past history of thought, is entirely omitted from consideration, as are also symbolic logic and the various attempts at inventing a logical calculus. For all such omissions, as well as for what is included, the sole justification is the nature of an introductory treatise.” (Preface) The book is in three parts: Judgment; Inference; and Scientific method. Each chapter is followed by references and exercises and there is an index to authorities referred to in the text as well as a general index.
“In this purpose to develop comprehensively the constructive theory of ‘modern logic,’ the author has admirably succeeded. The presentation marches. Compactness, explicitness, the constant use of illustration, and clarity in development are its outstanding features.” C. I. Lewis
+ − J Philos 17:498 Ag 26 ’20 1200w
LOEB, MRS SOPHIE IRENE (SIMON). Everyman’s child. il *$2 Century 362.7
20–17501
The author is the president of the New York city Board of child welfare and has personally studied the child welfare work done in various European countries and in the United States. The book describes the urgency of state laws to protect the children of the poor and what has already been done in that direction through the Widow’s pension law. Among the contents are: The cry of the children; What is being accomplished; Homes instead of institutions for the children of Uncle Sam; Importance of home life to children; How children keep out of children’s court; How the other half dies; The unwanted child; Boarded-out children. There are illustrations and an appendix.
+ Booklist 17:94 D ’20
“Miss Loeb’s book is written with care and out of her manifold experience; but it is written also in enthusiasm. The book represents the most progressive thoughts on these problems and is worthy of a careful reading.”
+ Boston Transcript p6 D 4 ’20 290w Wis Lib Bul 16:233 D ’20 40w
LOFTING, HUGH. Story of Dr Dolittle; being the history of his peculiar life at home and astonishing adventures in foreign parts. il *$2.25 Stokes
20–18925
A very jolly nonsense story. Dr Dolittle loves animals and fills his house with queer pets, to the dismay of many of his patients. His sister warns him that if he keeps on none of the best people will have him for a doctor. But he loves animals better than he does the best people and the result is that his practice all falls off. So he gives up being a people’s doctor to become an animal doctor. He learns their language, Polynesia his parrot acting as his teacher. When the opportunity comes to go to Africa to cure the monkeys of a strange disease he is ready for it, and there he has most curious and interesting adventures. The illustrations are by the author.
“The most delightful nonsense story of the year.” A. C. Moore
+ Bookm 52:260 N ’20 360w
“An invigorating, fascinating tale, its quaintness enhanced by the droll illustrations.”
+ Dial 69:548 N ’20 60w
“It is a pleasant surprise to open a volume whose illustrations appeal because of their inherent nonsense, and to find the author, who is as well the illustrator, maintaining a delightful sense of proportion in his imagination.”
+ Lit D p89 D 4 ’20 200w
“This is the best ‘animal’ story we remember to have come across in a long time, imbued with a real love and understanding of animals and with a humor which is fresh and quaint.”
+ N Y Evening Post p19 D 4 ’20 240w
“Is as fascinating as it is queer.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p9 D 12 ’20 250w
LOMAX, JOHN AVERY, comp. Songs of the cattle trail and cow camp; with a foreword by William Lyon Phelps. *$1.75 Macmillan 811.08
19–18742
“Those who enjoyed the rough but hearty lyrics in ‘Cowboy songs, and other frontier ballads’ will wish to read these later collections by the same author, now working under a Harvard fellowship. The later volume has no music scores, and many of the poems can definitely be assigned to authors, among them, Charles Badger Clark, jr. and Herbert H. Knibbs.”—Booklist
Booklist 16:195 Mr ’20
“Some of these pieces are clearly as spurious as are the seventeenth century lyrics of Strephon and Colin. Others are more true to life.”
+ − Nation 110:306 Mr 6 ’20 280w
“Whatever may be the literary poverty of the verse in Mr Lomax’s book, the poems are true to type. Many of the ‘Songs of the cattle trail’ are worth little, perhaps, in themselves. Collected, they form both a picture and a plea: a picture of a vitally individual and highly-colored life that is rapidly fading into the monotone of a mechanical civilization; a plea for a deeper, finer art-interpretation of that life.” Natalie Curtis
+ Nation 111:591 N 24 ’20 2200w
“It is a pleasure to read verse that is unpretentiously natural, in which something happens, and in which nature is allowed to seem as robust and hearty as she really is. Professor Lomax has done well by his country in presenting these rough songs of adventure in the West.” Marguerite Wilkinson
+ N Y Times 25:140 Mr 28 ’20 550w
“The volume is essentially a book of the soil, truly interpretative of an element of our national life which has practically faded away.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 Mr 26 ’20 500w
“This new collection of songs written by and for cowboys is more interpretive of the American spirit than the third-rate material from Greenwich village with which most of our literary periodicals fill their pages. Somewhat surprising, perhaps, to those whose idea of its life is taken from films and fiction, is the chastity of thought and diction in this folk-literature of the Far West. Its realism, and often its humor, is altogether delightful.” B. L.
+ Survey 43:555 F 7 ’20 200w The Times [London] Lit Sup p638 S 30 ’20 60w
LOMBARDI, CYNTHIA. Cry of youth. *$2 (1½c) Appleton
20–5773
Margaret Randolph, an American girl alone in Rome, meets Fra Felice Estori, a young Franciscan monk. He is as beautiful as a youthful god and quite ignorant of the ways of the world, for almost all his life has been spent within monastery walls. Margaret is also a devout Catholic and she knows their meetings are unwise but the two are drawn irresistibly together until both are faced with the fact of their love and the necessity for separation. The young monk, altho he has not taken his final vows, is to be sent to South America on a mission. With breaking hearts they part. But an artist friend who takes an interest in the two tricks them into coming to his lonely mountain castle and leaves them there alone. The outcome is that they resolve never to part and Fra Felice becomes lost to the world. Then follows the strange story of their lonely life, the birth and death of their child, separation, misunderstanding and final reunion, with the ancient title of Prince Estori restored to its rightful owner.
The Times [London] Lit Sup p538 Ag 19 ’20 270w
LONDON, JACK.[[2]] Brown Wolf, and other Jack London stories; as chosen by Franklin K. Mathiews. il *$1.75 (2c) Macmillan
21–380
These stories have been collected into one volume by the chief scout librarian of the Boy scouts of America, in the hope that they will serve to exercise both the boy’s mind and conscience by teaching him to see and feel life and nature as Jack London saw and felt it, and thereby to develop the emotional muscles of the spirit that open up new windows to the imagination and add some line or color to life’s ideals. The stories are: Brown Wolf; That spot; Trust; All gold canyon; The story of Keesh; Nam-Bok the unveracious; Yellow handkerchief; Make westing; The heathen; The hobo and the fairy; “Just meat”; A nose for the king.
LONDON, JACK.[[2]] Hearts of three. *$2.50 Macmillan
20–17822
“A posthumous story by Jack London, in which descendants of the famous pirate, Sir Henry Morgan, engage in a rival hunt for his treasure buried somewhere in the South Sea islands.” (Outlook) “‘Hearts of three’ is not an original work; it is the translation of a scenario by Mr Charles Goddard, who, as Jack London himself informs us was responsible for ‘The perils of Pauline,’ ‘The exploits of Elaine,’ and similar alliterative masterpieces. The result of this collaboration, as might be supposed, is a novel with a wealth of action, piled up without discrimination.” (Freeman)
“It has occasional moments of good writing when Jack London, the novelist, snatches the pen away—impatiently and not without considerable vexation, one likes to imagine—from the scenario-writer.” L. B.
− + Freeman 2:285 D 1 ’20 170w N Y Times p24 D 26 ’20 300w
“The idea of the tale is bold and its execution is spirited.”
+ Outlook 126:470 N 10 ’20 40w
LONES, THOMAS EAST. Zinc and its alloys. (Pitman’s common commodities and industries) il $1 Pitman 669.5
GS20–328
The preface points out important changes in the zinc industry due to the war. The chapters then take up: Zinc: its history, properties, and uses; Zinc ores and other sources of zinc; Dressing zinc ores; Calcining and roasting zinc ores; Zinc smelting; Hydrometallurgical processes; Alloys of zinc. The book is illustrated with twenty-three figures and is indexed.
“The book possesses the virtues of being up to date and reasonable in price.”
+ Engineer 129:301 Mr 19 ’20 100w
“An excellent example of what such books ought to be. It is a pity that the author did not keep clear altogether of chemical equations, which he might easily have done in a purely popular treatise, as he has been somewhat unfortunate in their use. In a future edition the author might with advantage devote a little space to the galvanising of iron.”
+ − Nature 105:193 Ap 15 ’20 350w + N Y P L New Tech Bks p34 Ap ’20 100w + Pratt p18 O ’20 20w
LONG, WILLIAM JOSEPH. Wood-folk comedies; the play of wild-animal life on a natural stage. il *$3 (4c) Harper 590.4
20–18326
It is the author’s contention that animal life is from beginning to end a gladsome comedy; that there is absolutely no such thing as a struggle for existence in nature; that the woods when they are white with snow are quite as cheery as the woods of spring or summer; and that the wood-folk are invincibly cheerful. On this basis the tales are written and great is the fun thereof. Contents: Morning on Moosehead; The birds’ table; Fox comedy; Players in sable; Wolves and wolf tales; Ears for hearing; Health and a day; Night life of the wilderness; Stories from the trail; Two ends of a bear story; When beaver meets otter; A night bewitched; The trail of the loup-garou; From a beaver lodge; Comedians all. There are eight illustrations in color.
+ Booklist 17:100 D ’20
“Very readable.”
+ Spec 125:822 D 18 ’20 30w
“Mr Long is least satisfying when he is forcing the note of sentimental optimism (‘animal life is from beginning to end a gladsome comedy’), and best worth reading when he tells a plain tale of animals’ habits or adventures in the landscapes which he describes so well.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p833 D 9 ’20 150w
LONGSTRETH, THOMAS MORRIS. Mac of Placid. *$1.90 (1½c) Century
20–14293
Mr Longstreth, who has written a book on the Adirondacks, as well as one on the Catskills, here makes his appearance as a novelist. His hero, Anson MacIntyre, is born in the “wolf winter” of 1869 and he tells his own story up thru the eighties. His beginnings are not promising, but two things unite to make a man of him, his deep love for his native woods and his love for Hallie Brewster. These two forces and one other, his friendship with R. L. S. For no less person than Stevenson appears as a character in the story. The two skate together on Saranac lake and become intimate companions. Mac’s romantic devotion to Hallie and his rivalry with Ed Touch appeal to the fiction writer’s imagination and he takes a hand in the wooing. Other real people, the Bakers and Dr Trudeau, are mentioned in the story.
“Lovers of Stevenson, the man, must add ‘Mac of Placid’ to the volumes of Stevensonia which have been accumulating so rapidly in the past decade.... The fundamental difficulty with Mr Longstreth’s book is that his characters, no matter how real to him, even though they may be actually alive, often fail to live.”
+ − N Y Times p25 Ag 29 ’20 780w
Reviewed by Joseph Mosher
+ Pub W 98:659 S 18 ’20 270w
“The portrayal of Stevenson is vivid. Not the least interesting detail of the work is the colorful description of the Adirondack country and the rigorous joys of a winter there.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a S 26 ’20 240w
LOONEY, J. THOMAS. “Shakespeare” identified. *$5 Stokes 822.3
20–7795
A book written to prove that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford. The author states that his interest in the problem was awakened after years of study of “The merchant of Venice,” thru which he gained “a peculiar sense of intimacy with the mind and disposition of its author.” Convinced that this author had nothing in common with William Shakespeare of Stratford he set about finding the contemporary who best met the requirements. His search led him to Edward de Vere. The one play which does not fit into his scheme is “The tempest.” The book has a frontispiece portrait and an index.
“The effort of Mr Looney to solve this conflict is a little unfortunate in some respects, though most interesting in many others. A schoolmaster by profession, he is inclined to speak like one. Mr Looney thinks he has proved his theory. Of course, he has not. But he has opened most promising vistas, and it is to be hoped that his leads will be followed up.” Edwin Björkman
+ − Bookm 51:677 Ag ’20 3350w
“Mr Looney’s dominant fault is that his work is wholly inferential. However much we may be convinced that De Vere, had he been a genius, might have written such plays as Shakespeare’s, there is no tangible fact to connect them with him.” Joseph Krutch
− Nation 111:248 Ag 28 ’20 580w
“The argument connecting Oxford with the Shakespearean plays has the abundance of strained literary and personal analogies, and the amazing absence of common sense which characterize most Baconian endeavors.” J: Corbin
− N Y Times 25:18 Je 27 ’20 1600w
“The volume appears to have all the paraphernalia of scholarship but little of its critical spirit.”
− Outlook 125:615 Ag 4 ’20 220w R of Rs 62:112 Jl ’20 90w − Sat R 129:308 Mr 27 ’20 800w
“That we cannot agree with his conclusions we attribute partly to some grave defects which seem to us to exist in his reasoning, and partly to some general considerations which he appears to have overlooked.”
− Spec 124:425 Mr 27 ’20 1500w
“Mr Looney’s honesty enables us to see, a little more clearly than was evident from the essays of previous adventurers of the same kind, how this zeal for attributing the plays and poems of Shakespeare to some titled contemporary originates and grows.... Unencumbered by any inconvenient knowledge at first hand of what he is writing about, Mr Looney proceeds to build up his case very easily. Almost any man’s life could be illustrated from Shakespeare’s plays, and Mr Looney makes them illustrate the life of the Earl of Oxford.”
− The Times [London] Lit Sup p149 Mr 4 ’20 1550w
LORD, ARTHUR. Plymouth and the Pilgrims. *$1.50 Houghton 974.4
20–19250
This book comprises the Colver lectures for 1920 given at Brown university. The three lectures are entitled: Plymouth before the Pilgrims; The Pilgrims before Plymouth, and Plymouth and the Pilgrims. The first discusses “some of the political, geographical, and legal conditions which determined the settlement at Plymouth”; the second considers “some of the economic, social, and religious influences which directed and shaped the Pilgrim migration from England and Holland to the New World.” The third lecture takes up those incidents of special interest in Pilgrim history which may be useful in considering present problems and may “perhaps serve to illustrate in what particulars the lives and examples of the Pilgrims have contributed in shaping the American policy.” Mr Lord is president of the Pilgrim society and chairman of the Pilgrim tercentenary commission.
“Mr Lord throughout displays the depth of his legal attainments.” E. J. C.
+ Boston Transcript p4 N 27 ’20 460w
“Altogether, the book moves swiftly and is well documented. Perhaps, however, his sympathy with the movement inclines him to an overestimate of the Pilgrim attitude toward freedom of worship.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p11 N 20 ’20 180w R of Rs 63:111 Ja ’21 50w
“An outline of the essential facts the American citizen must know if he is to celebrate intelligently the landing of the Mayflower.”
+ Survey 45:329 N 27 ’20 200w
LORD, KATHARINE. Little playbook. *$1.50 Duffield 812
20–9126
The plays have frequently been produced by the author and others and are intended for the needs of schools, clubs, settlements and playgrounds. Pantomime and dancing play a large part in them and music is desirable, but they do not require elaborate staging or costumes. In the introduction the author gives advice and suggestions for their production in order to insure the greatest amount of self-expression on the part of the children. The plays are: The greatest gift (a Christmas play); Katjens’ garden; June magic (a little play for the garden); The minister’s dream (a Thanksgiving fantasy); The day Will Shakspere went to Kenilworth (a pageant play); The Yuletide rose (a Christmas miracle play). Directions for the scenery and costumes are given at the end of each play.
“All of the plays are written in an amusing and simple manner and should prove a delight for children.” H. S. Gorman
+ N Y Times 25:22 Jl 18 ’20 200w
LOREBURN, ROBERT THRESHIRE REID. 1st earl. How the war came. *$3 (3c) Knopf 940.311
(Eng ed 19–15817)
The book is a plea for open diplomacy under all conditions. Although the author puts the immediate responsibility for the war on the shoulders of the military power of Germany, he shows that the indirect but more fundamental cause is to be found in the clandestine transactions in the foreign affairs of all countries. He throws much light on the historical antecedents of the war in continental Europe, and exposes the unprecedented schemes of conquest all over the world undertaken by England and her allies even during the war itself. Contents: Introductory; Storm centre in the Balkans; Storm centre in Alsace-Lorraine; Great Britain is drawn into a French alliance; Attitude of Great powers in 1914; How the continent came to war; How Great Britain came into the war; Sir Edward Grey’s speech on 3rd August 1914; Belgium; Was it inevitable? Remedies; Appendix (Sir E. Grey’s speech on 3rd August 1914); Map of the Balkans.
Ath p932 S 19 ’19 200w
“Whatever be one’s personal views upon this thesis, it is impossible not to admit and to admire the ability with which the book is written. And it has something more than mere ability.” L. W.
+ Ath p999 O 10 ’19 500w + Booklist 16:308 Je ’20
“Lord Loreburn’s pages, an analysis as dispassionate as may be of the whole miserably intricate business of the telegrams of July, 1914, destroy whatever remains of the unphilosophic hope that all the evil was compact and corruptingly on one side.” Sganarelle
+ Dial 68:799 Je ’20 150w
“Such an application of commonsense, honesty, and plain speaking should go far towards allaying the virulence of war hatreds and deflating national conceits.”
+ − Nation 109:826 D 27 ’19 1750w
“If the book is to be regarded merely as a historical essay, still it is one of the neatest and clearest ever written. Those who do not believe that the work of peacemaking was completed once for all at Versailles will place a far higher value on Earl Loreburn’s book.” Alvin Johnson
+ New Repub 21:272 Ja 28 ’20 1850w
“Lord Loreburn has done the present and succeeding generations a real service by disentangling and rearranging, with all the skill of his profession, the capital events. Everybody should read the book, though everybody will not agree with the conclusions of its learned author.”
+ Sat R 128:270 S 20 ’19 850w − Spec 123:410 S 27 ’19 240w
“One may dissent from his reading of the facts, but it is impossible not to respect the admirable forensic temper with which they are presented.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p503 S 18 ’19 550w
LORENTZ, HENDRIK ANTOON. Einstein theory of relativity. *$1 Brentano’s 530.1
20–5628
“‘The Einstein theory of relativity’ has an introduction of twenty-four pages reprinted from various sources, followed by a small forty-page article by Lorentz, translated from a Dutch paper. Lorentz, it may be added, is one of the greatest of living physicists and came perilously near anticipating Einstein’s work of fifteen years ago. The article is devoted almost entirely to the gravitational aspect of relativity.”—Freeman
Booklist 17:18 O ’20 Cleveland p78 Ag ’20 20w + − Freeman 1:423 Jl 14 ’20 90w N Y P L New Tech Bks p37 Ap ’20 30w
LORIA, ACHILLE. Karl Marx; authorised tr. from the Italian. *$1.50 (6c) Seltzer 335
21–881
A sketch of Marx’s life and an exposition and criticism of his doctrines compose Professor Loria’s monograph. The long foreword by the translators, Eden and Cedar Paul, is an analysis and criticism of Loria and of Loria’s attitude toward Marx.
“A brilliant appraisal of the life and works of the ‘Father of modern socialism.’ Contains an excellent foreword by Eden and Cedar Paul.”
+ Socialist R 10:29 Ja ’21 70w The Times [London] Lit Sup p189 Mr 18 ’20 80w
LORIMER, NORMA OCTAVIA. With other eyes. *$1.90 Brentano’s
20–8363
“Much of this pleasant story is alluringly set in the ‘Island valley of Avalon.’ The heroine is of Acadie, and is fittingly named Evangeline. She and her widowed mother have come from Nova Scotia, and settle at Glastonbury, where the mother marries an amiable old doctor, and the daughter falls in love with his son. But while Evangeline is on a visit to a Welsh manor belonging to her friend, a young clergyman arrives on the scene. Later after losing a foot at the front, he comes to an understanding with Evangeline. The story incidentally gives some sort of answer to the problem whether women ought to be ‘saddled for life’ with men whom they no longer love or respect, merely because they have ‘given themselves to their country.’”—Ath
Ath p31 Ja 2 ’20 100w
“The story proceeds along lines that remain unhackneyed, even when the book becomes, virtually, a war novel. It is a grave, thoughtful piece of work that does the author credit. Its principal defect rises from an error in judgment, which seeks to divide interest and space almost equally with a secondary story.”
+ − Cath World 111:828 S ’20 280w
“The novel contains some gracefully written descriptions of Glastonbury and of Wales.”
+ N Y Times 25:27 Je 27 ’20 420w
“We recommend it as much above the average of the ordinary novel.”
+ Sat R 129:41 Ja 10 ’20 90w The Times [London] Lit Sup p782 D 25 ’19 120w
LOVETT, WILLIAM. Life and struggles of William Lovett in his pursuit of bread, knowledge, and freedom; with some short account of the different associations he belonged to and of the opinions he entertained. 2v ea *$1.50 (1½c) Knopf
20–26886
The books belong to the series of Economic reprints and come with an introduction by R. H. Tawney who says of them that they are more than an autobiography inasmuch as Lovett “was the spokesman of the political labour movement which started with the formation of the London Working men’s association and which developed into Chartism.”
+ Ath p784 Je 11 ’20 70w + Booklist 17:84 N ’20 Boston Transcript p7 Jl 24 ’20 480w
“Not a wholly reliable historical document.” R: Roberts
+ − Freeman 2:187 N 3 ’20 850w The Times [London] Lit Sup p195 Mr 25 ’20 1000w
LOW, BARBARA. Psycho-analysis; a brief account of the Freudian theory. *$1.50 (4c) Harcourt 130
20–9413
The author of this brief introduction to psycho-analysis is a member of the British psycho-analytical society, and Ernest Jones, president of the society, writes an introduction for the book. In part he says, “That the deductions made from psycho-analytical investigations are both novel and not easily acceptable, Miss Low makes plain in her book, and she has not adopted the easier way of concealing these attributes of them. She has chosen the loftier aim of attempting to present all aspects of the psycho-analytical theory fairly and straightforwardly, and yet to bring them within reach of those who have made no previous study of the subject.” The chapters take up: The scope and significance of psycho-analysis; Mental life—unconscious and conscious; Repressions; The rôle of the dream; Treatment by psycho-analysis; Probable social and educational results. A list of reference books is given in an appendix.
“The ‘popular’ style of this book defeats, to some extent, the author’s purpose. We should have liked the exposition to be more clear-cut and reserved. As it is, the reader will have some difficulty in grasping the root ideas of the Freudian theory, although, if he is patient, he will find a good deal of information in this book.”
+ − Ath p589 Ap 30 ’20 80w
“Worth while in defining the science, but too condensed for serious study.”
+ − Booklist 17:59 N ’20 + Nation 111:694 D 15 ’20 20w
“About the first work on psycho-analysis that can be recommended for general reading is Barbara Low’s ‘Psycho-analysis.’ Of course, Miss Low exaggerates the field to which psycho-analysis is applicable, as she does its therapeutic value.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p9a Jl 4 ’20 280w
LOW, BENJAMIN ROBBINS CURTIS.[[2]] Broken music. *$2 Dutton 811
20–20973
“From the four volumes of poems which he had published at intervals during the last ten years or so Mr Low has selected his best work to make this collection of his art. These four volumes, ‘The sailor who sailed,’ ‘A wand and strings,’ ‘The house that was’ and ‘The pursuit of happiness,’ have been much admired and praised by the most discerning critics here and abroad, in spite of which they have had a very moderate circulation.”—Boston Transcript
“There are many of us who would not willingly suppress or forget a good deal of the work in the four volumes of Mr Low’s that he has seen fit not to include in this representative collection, but what he has gathered here makes a very fine spiritual attraction that will win him an increasingly wide circle of new admirers. I think when you get at the core of Mr Low’s art you will find above everything else beautiful thought; and beautiful thought is scarcely to be found without a very intense and passionate emotional foundation.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ Boston Transcript p11 D 8 ’20 1400w
“After a careful reading we remain of our old opinion that the leading poem, ‘The vigil-at-arms,’ is Mr Low’s best effort. Elsewhere Mr Low’s work lacks freshness and individuality.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p22 D 4 ’20 130w
LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL. Function of the poet; and other essays. *$5 (10c) Houghton 814
20–26550
The essays and reviews in this volume have here for the first time been collected into book form and are edited with a preface by Albert Mordell. According to this preface they sustain Lowell’s reputation as one of our great American critics and are in nowise inferior in literary merit to the volumes collected by himself. The essays on poetry and belles-lettres in the volume are: The function of the poet; Humor, wit, fun, and satire; The five indispensable authors (Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, Shakespeare); The imagination: Critical fragments. Among the reviews of contemporary writers are: Henry James: James’s tales and sketches; Poetry and nationality; W. D. Howells: Venetian life; Edgar A. Poe; Thackeray; Roundabout papers; and the three last essays are: Forster’s life of Swift; Plutarch’s morals; A plea for freedom from speech and figures of speech-makers.
“Especially interesting will be his criticisms of contemporaries—Henry James, Longfellow, Whittier, Howells, Poe and Thackeray.”
+ Booklist 16:337 Jl ’20
“They are pleasant, scholarly, informal; they polish off literary subjects gracefully, even if not dazzlingly.”
+ − Dial 69:321 S ’20 80w
“Mr Mordell has brought together a surprising number of uncollected essays and reviews by Lowell. What is even more surprising in a collection of this kind is that it reveals its author at his best. If Lowell has little to offer a generation which, like ours, expects from literature the very bread of life, he has virtues our contemporary criticism singularly lacks. He has the judgment we gladly dispense with and the verbal felicity we despise, for the lack of which the future will despise and dispense with most of us.”
+ − Freeman 1:357 Je 23 ’20 1050w
“Throughout the book, as generally in Lowell, are paragraphs, sometimes pages, notable for their beauty, vision, wit, and eminently quotable.”
+ Nation 111:191 Ag 14 ’20 470w
Reviewed by Brander Matthews
+ N Y Times 25:319 Je 20 ’20 2450w
“Lowell’s abstract reasoning on literature is highly abstract and highly succinct, and its promises for the eye or the palate are not always redeemed in the intellectual stomach. The reviews of contemporaries are very urbane, very judicious, rather measured, rather distant, a little formal.”
+ − Review 3:111 Ag 4 ’20 300w
“The mingled wisdom and humor of Lowell are apparent everywhere.”
+ Springf’d Republican p6 S 27 ’20 840w
LOWIE, ROBERT HARRY. Primitive society. *$3 Boni & Liveright 572
20–7731
“Beginning with the custom of marriage. Dr Lowie studies it through the practice of polygamy, with its side-shoots of polygyny, polyandry, sexual communism, to the family, with its various units, to the kinship usages. The Sib organization, with its history and ramifications, is analyzed and illustrated, the first half of the study of primitive society on its individual side ending at the stage of The position of woman. Then in turn such questions are studied as Property, Associations, Theory of associations, Rank, Government, and Justice.”—Boston Transcript
“The reviewer, a teacher of sociology, is one of a large group who are grateful to Dr Lowie for his service in writing this book.”
+ Ann Am Acad 93:225 Ja ’21 w
“Useful for its expansion of data commonly found only in briefer outlines.”
+ Booklist 16:303 Je ’20 + Boston Transcript p4 My 19 ’20 380w
“‘Primitive society’ is a worth-while book. It is interestingly written and valuable and readable, even for an amateur anthropologist or sociologist. Its factual solidity makes it of permanent worth in any library.”
+ Cath World 111:684 Ag ’20 330w
“Dr Lowie’s book may be recommended as the most informative, lucid, and keenly critical introduction to the study of primitive social organizations that the reviewer is aware of. It deserves the most careful study. Fortunately for the non-professional reader, ‘Primitive society’ is an eminently readable book. The style is crisp and rapid.” E: Sapir
+ Dial 69:528 N ’20 2500w
“It would be indeed surprising if ‘Primitive society’ did not win for itself the position of an indispensable guide in a difficult domain.”
+ Freeman 1:377 Je 30 ’20 1550w
“All in all, Mr Lowie’s book will do much to render more life-like and substantial our current conceptions of a primitive community.” E: Sapir
+ Nation 111:46 Jl 10 ’20 1550w
“Principles or viewpoints are handled with equal skill, the didactic or dogmatic is avoided, indeed, let me say, with extraordinary skill. Dr Lowie is critical of old categories, but not, like many a critic, merely to make way for new, he never handicaps himself with classification. Obviously ‘Primitive society’ will be a welcome book—at least to those who want to know how things are before asking why they are.” E. C. Parsons
+ New Repub 24:245 N 3 ’20 1550w
“He has produced a work that will serve as a comprehensive textbook for the student, and that is written in a manner interesting enough to engage the attention of the general reader. His material has been correlated and arranged with skill, and he cites his authorities with a marked care.”
+ N Y Times p12 O 31 ’20 1100w
“Dr Lowie reviews the rich material of social organization with a new insight: he discards simple solutions, too much dominated by the active social ties as we know them, and by the desire to read evolutionary conclusions into historical data.” Joseph Jastrow
+ Review 3:652 D 29 ’20 740w
LOWIS, CECIL CHAMPAIN. Four blind mice. *$1.75 (1½c) Lane
20–19509
The story is of two married couples in the English colony of Rangoon. Douglas Selbridge is an overworked official and Delia, consequently, a neglected and bored wife. Major Brattlethwaite and his wife are living apart and the latter is nothing but a rumor. The major seeks the company and solace of Delia until matters become strained between herself and her husband. When the absent Mrs Brattlethwaite suddenly appears upon the scene to vanish again immediately, at the same time that the body of a murdered woman is discovered in the jungle, a crisis is reached. A fortunate solution of the mystery not only saves an innocent man from the gallows, but straightens out the domestic relations of the two couples satisfactorily.
“From the point of the murder the story maintains a high level of interest, and reaches a satisfactory conclusion. The domestic and boarding-house scenes have engaging touches of novelty, which suggest a feminine hand.”
+ Ath p212 Ag 13 ’20 270w
“The native scenes are more interesting than the troubles of the white folks, the descriptions of the rains, the heat, and native life being well above the average in vividness and picturesque quality.”
+ N Y Evening Post p18 D 4 ’20 70w Spec 124:244 Ag 21 ’20 30w The Times [London] Lit Sup p426 Jl 1 ’20 130w
LOWNDES, MRS MARIE ADELAIDE (BELLOC). Lonely house. *$1.90 (1½c) Doran
20–10307
Lily Fairfield is a young English girl who has been ordered a change of scene for her health, and therefore has come to visit some distant connections by marriage at their home, “La Solitude,” near Monte Carlo. She finds “La Solitude” to be a lonely isolated house, and leads a rather quiet life, altho shortly it is enlivened by the return of Beppo, the son of the Count and Countess Polda, whose paying-guest she is. As she is something of an heiress, she soon realizes that it is the hope of Beppo’s parents that he will marry her. Indeed the desire for money seems to bulk very large in their lives. But a young Scotsman, Angus Stuart, has already filled the place in her heart that Beppo hopes to occupy, altho she is rather slow to realize the fact. “La Solitude” becomes even more unbearable to her than before after two robberies resulting in murder have been committed nearby, but it is not until an attack is made on Angus Stuart that the real criminals are discovered, and Lily realizes what danger she has been in and how she has escaped it.
Ath p559 Ap 23 ’20 80w Ath p702 My 28 ’20 420w
“A melodramatic though not unconvincing mystery story.”
+ Booklist 17:158 Ja ’21
“The background and atmosphere of these players is wherein Mrs Lowndes has excelled herself. It is all too unfortunate that so able a writer should seek to satisfy shallow desire for excitement rather than to gratify literary taste: of the latter Mrs Lowndes would be very capable should she wish to produce, not a best-seller, dependent upon its author’s noteworthy name, but work of real merit.”
+ − Cath World 112:111 O ’20 300w
“It is an eery tale, with plenty of atmosphere, one that will keep its readers hanging on the turn of the pages.”
+ Lit D p89 O 9 ’20 2350w
“The tale is well written and cleverly developed, incident following incident in a way which keeps the reader’s interest always on the alert, and makes convincing a plot which, though highly melodramatic, is by no means improbable.”
+ N Y Times p27 S 12 ’20 300w The Times [London] Lit Sup p255 Ap 22 ’20 770w
LUCAS, EDWARD VERRALL. Adventures and enthusiasms. il *$2 Doran 824
20–26998
The book contains a collection of short sketches on a variety of subjects such as episodes from life, reminiscences of people and places, reflections and whimsical thoughts. The style is leisurely and full of quiet humor. Some of the sketches are: The perfect guest; A morning call; Possessions; Drake and his game; Davy Jones; Thoughts at the ferry; Telephonics; Thackeray’s school fellow; The newness of the old; On finding things. Fourteen of the sketches bear the common heading: In and about London.
+ Booklist 17:105 D ’20
“Mr Lucas would be the first to admit that he challenges comparison with Lamb, and that the advantage is Lamb’s.” N. F. Gerould
+ − Bookm 52:265 N ’20 320w
“His work is invariably diverting, delicate, sparkling, adapted to the subtlest appreciations.” Margaret Ashmun
+ Bookm 52:347 D ’20 80w Boston Transcript p7 S 1 ’20 780w + Cath World 112:263 N ’20 350w
“The title under which Mr E. V. Lucas harnesses his latest collection of essays, ‘Adventures and enthusiasms,’ suggests an intensity which is seldom substantiated in the text. These sketches move at a jogging pace, guided by a slack rein, and rarely touched by the whip of fancy.” L. B.
+ − Freeman 2:22 S 15 ’20 520w
“He writes of all sorts of ordinary, everyday things like aunts and telephones and punctuality, with pleasant leisureliness, with whimsicality and with deep enjoyment.”
+ Ind 103:441 D 25 ’20 100w
“Both the adventures and the enthusiasms are mild. Mr Lucas’s taste is generally impeccable and sane.”
+ − Nation 112:90 Ja 19 ’21 170w
“Mr Lucas’s stories verge upon essays and his essays hover upon the edge of narrative, real or fictitious. They are not easy to classify—and that is another way of saying they make the pleasantest kind of book in the world.” E. L. Pearson
+ N Y Evening Post p7 S 25 ’20 800w
“‘Adventures and enthusiasms’ impresses you with its feeling of leisure, of the fullness of time, of the charm of idleness. Life runs full here but not in the impetuous desperate rush of spring, with the sounds of torrents and winds.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p18 S 26 ’20 800w
“Of all his volumes of essays none is better than his latest.”
+ Review 3:389 O 27 ’20 270w
LUCAS, EDWARD VERRALL. Verena in the midst; a kind of story. *$1.90 Doran
20–17824
In this novel in letters, Verena, a maiden lady of some wealth, is the central figure. She has met with an accident to her spine and is obliged to be bed-ridden for months. All the letters are to, from and about her and they all are revealing as to the characters of the writers. The various relatives come to her for counsel and advice and make her the recipient of their confidences. The most frequent interchange of letters is between Verena and an old friend, Richard Haven, the friend that “never disappoints.” His daily message of good cheer, his ever ready counsel, and his daily contribution of poetry, for the sleepless invalid to memorize, are the best parts of the book.
“‘Verena in the midst’ is not to be taken seriously. With the exception of the nephew Roy, who is quite amazingly made known to us, there has been, on the part of the author, no serious attempt at revelation.” K. M.
+ − Ath p332 S 10 ’20 680w + Booklist 17:117 D ’20
“It implies no forgetfulness of Mr Lucas’s more solid achievements to say that he is perhaps the chief of those English writers who are doing the little things supremely well. And his fecundity in finding these little things to do is hardly less than his facility in treating them.” Stanley Went
+ N Y Evening Post p3 N 6 ’20 1100w + N Y Times p10 O 17 ’20 400w
“This book is full of humorous twists and surprises and odd bits and ideas and pleasant letters and anecdotes and—I am afraid I shall have to use the poor, over-worked word—whimsicalities.” E. L. Pearson
+ Review 3:345 O 20 ’20 100w
“Mr Lucas has surpassed himself. And yet, as is often the case, the idea is so simple that almost anyone might have thought of it.... Almost anyone could have thought of the idea, but is there anyone but Mr Lucas who could have carried it out with so near an approach to perfection?”
+ Sat R 130:240 S 18 ’20 750w
“Most of the characterization is very good. To accuse Mr Lucas of slightness of tenuity would be to invite the retort that that was the idea. It is after all a book with which from many writers we should be content.”
+ − Spec 125:439 O 2 ’20 350w
“Apart from the kindly humor which is their main ingredient, Mr E. V. Lucas’s little nibbles at the novel are in themselves amusing to the critic. The form of fiction appeals to him provided that he can use it on his own terms. He can think of the most delightful sets of people and give them appropriate names; he can write all their letters for them and, at a pinch, carry on their conversation; but always on the condition that they keep still and remain strictly true to type. Unfortunately, in real novels as in real life, it is difficult to keep people still.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p567 S 2 ’20 800w
“In Mr Lucas’ familiar style. It is the sort of thing he does with great deftness.”
+ Wis Lib Bul 16:238 D ’20 60w
LUCKIESH, M. Artificial light: its influence upon civilization. (Century books of useful science) il *$2.50 (2½c) Century 628.9
20–11163
The aim of this book is “to show that artificial light has become intricately interwoven with human activities and that it has been a powerful influence upon the progress of civilization.” (Preface) The early chapters deal with primitive forms of lighting, covering such subjects as: The art of making fire; Primitive light-sources; The ceremonial use of light; Oil-lamps of the nineteenth century, and Early gas-lighting. Among the chapters devoted to modern lighting are: The science of light-production; Lighting the streets; Lighthouses; Artificial light in warfare; Signaling; Light and safety; Light and health; Spectacular lighting; Lighting the home; Lighting—a fine art? Reading references come at the close. The author, who is director of applied science, Neia Research laboratory, has written also “Color and its applications,” “The lighting art,” etc.
+ Booklist 17:18 O ’20
“Written in a simple yet finished style it gives the general reader a comprehensive and engaging account of illumination.”
+ N Y P L New Tech Bks p68 Jl ’20 150w
“The story is told in a surprisingly interesting way. Altogether the book may be regarded as a model for such monographs.”
+ Outlook 125:507 Jl 14 ’20 80w + Review 3:393 O 27 ’20 250w
“An interesting treatment of a fascinating subject.”
+ Wis Lib Bul 16:234 D ’20 120w
LUCKIESH, M. Lighting the home, il *$2 Century 644.3
20–17579
The book considers the problem of artificial lighting both from a utilitarian and an aesthetic point of view. “Light,” says the author, “is the most powerful medium we have for creating or accentuating the mood of a room.... Attention to apparently insignificant details of lighting equipment does much toward converting a house into a home.” Among the contents are: Light as an expressive medium; Safeguarding vision; The functions of fixtures; Various rooms; Novelties in lighting; Colored light. There are illustrations and an index.
“Could be used in high school libraries.”
+ Booklist 17:144 Ja ’21 + Boston Transcript p8 N 20 ’20 230w
LUCY, SIR HENRY WILLIAM (TOBY, M. P., pseud.).[[2]] Diary of a journalist. $6 Dutton
“Politicians, statesmen, authors, actors, painters, princes, journalists, social leaders, and men and women in many other professional walks of life throng the pages of Sir Henry Lucy’s volume. It covers a long period of years from 1885 almost to the present day, and it is rich in the personality encountered by a newspaper writer and editor who has come into daily contact with the events and the people of his time. In his previous volume entitled ‘Sixty years in the wilderness,’ Sir Henry Lucy has told a consecutive story of his career, in this latest volume he supplements it with material which resulting from ‘the habit dominant through many years of daily noting interesting events coming within personal observation’ yields ‘a collection personally, politically and historically interesting.’”—Boston Transcript
“Except for a few jokes, we find very little of interest in this record. In his phrases we sometimes recognize the flavour of the official biography. In particular he has one trick very characteristic of those works. It is to make statements about his hero, with the air of suggesting an exceptional virtue, which hold good of practically everybody in the world.”
− + Ath p551 O 22 ’20 330w
“An entertaining book of personal reminiscence.” E. F. Edgett
+ Boston Transcript p4 D 31 ’20 1050w
“‘Recollections of a journalist’ would perhaps be a more suitable title, and certainly Sir Henry Lucy’s recollections are singularly rich and varied.”
+ N Y Evening Post p10 Ja 29 ’21 420w + N Y Times p6 Ja 9 ’21 1450w + − Springf’d Republican p6 D 25 ’20 180w (Reprinted from The Times [London] Lit Sup p664 O 14 ’20)
“The worst that one can say about Sir Henry Lucy’s diary is that no one would ever have suspected it of being a diary if the author had not so labelled it. It has obviously been revised in the light of subsequent events. Why has the book no index? It is just the sort of book that especially needs one.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p664 O 14 ’20 750w
LUDENDORFF, ERICH VON.[[2]] General staff and its problems: the secret history of the relations between the High Command and the German Imperial government as revealed by official documents; tr. by F. Appleby Holt. 2v *$15 Dutton 940.343
20–22469
“The statements in Ludendorff’s first volume were so bold that there arose a demand for the source on which he based many of his sensational assertions. This demand the former Quartermaster-General of the German armies now seeks to meet in a second volume.” (N Y Times) “Among the documents included are the report of the conference between Bethmann-Hollweg, Hindenburg and Ludendorff at Pless, when the unrestricted submarine campaign was finally decided upon, and the violent letters exchanged between the chancellor, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the foreign office revealing the internal difficulties of Germany in 1916. The matter of American participation, as the German authorities viewed and discussed it, is gone into thoroughly.” (Springf’d Republican)
Reviewed by Simeon Strunsky
N Y Evening Post p1 Ja 29 ’21 2900w
Reviewed by T. R. Ybarra
N Y Times p3 D 5 ’20 1850w R of Rs 53:222 F ’21 120w Springf’d Republican p8 D 18 ’20 150w
LUDENDORFF, ERICH VON. Ludendorff’s own story, August 1914–November 1918. il 2v *$7.50 (3c) Harper 940.343
20–4133
“The great war from the siege of Liege to the signing of the armistice as viewed from the grand headquarters of the German army.” (Subtitle) What the author calls the first commandment for a German “unselfish submission and the sinking of the ego in national discipline” characterizes this grim account of one who, with an eye single, was bent on the winning of the war. Volume 1 falls into two parts: the author’s career as chief of the general staff on the eastern front; and from his appointment as first quartermaster-general. Volume 2 begins with the entente offensive in the first half of 1917, the Russian revolution and America’s entry into the war and ends with the armistice and the end of Ludendorff’s military career. The books contain many maps and each has a loose map in a cover pocket. Volume 2 has an index.
“He gives a wealth of interesting comment and ex parte statement of motives, intentions, and expectations, which he does not prove. His treatment of the administrative and political sides of the war is the best part of the work. His accounts of battles are in many cases unsatisfactory. As a whole the translation is good.” J: Bigelow
+ − Am Hist R 25:503 Ap ’20 1200w
“Of interest, not only for the record of military events by one of the most prominent military leaders, but also for the light it throws on the mental attitude and processes of the author.”
+ Am Pol Sci R 14:359 My ’20 170w
“The one great military book which the war has so far produced is the strange record of General Ludendorff.”
+ Ath p1286 D 5 ’19 1550w Booklist 16:275 My ’20
Reviewed by W. C. Abbott
Bookm 51:286 My ’20 950w Dial 68:539 Ap ’20 100w Lit D p109 Ap 17 ’20 2550w + − Nation 110:sup481 Ap 10 ’20 1350w
Reviewed by M. F. Egan
N Y Times 25:1 Mr 7 ’20 3200w
Reviewed by M. H. Anderson
Pub W 97:608 F 21 ’20 300w + R of Rs 61:335 Mr ’20 120w
“Ludendorff may be read with profit by those interested in the handling of troops in contact with the enemy.... He exhibits the best and the worst qualities of the old-fashioned amongst regular soldiers. He knows his work as a handler of fighting men, but outside the realms of factors he is a simple and bewildered soul. And, let it be repeated, as a strategist, he is almost infinitely naive.”
+ − Sat R 128:417 N 1 ’19 2300w
“General Ludendorff has written a very able and interesting book on the war. It is not a good military history, though the summary accounts of the earlier Russian campaigns are instructive. The numerous plans and diagrams by the author are valuable also in their way. But the book throws a flood of light on the hopes and fears of the great general staff, and on the relations between the German army leaders and the politicians in Berlin. To an English reader, of course, this typical Prussian author must be unsympathetic.”
+ − Spec 123:505 O 18 ’19 2100w
“Ludendorff’s war memoirs are the most solid contribution to the strategical history of the war that has yet appeared. To the military student the most valuable portion is that dealing with the Russian campaign of 1914 and 1915; but in spite of the great military eminence of the writer, this is a book for the plain citizen rather than the soldier, for quite half of it is politics.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p557 O 16 ’19 1850w
LUEHRMANN, ADELE. Triple mystery. *$1.75 Dodd
20–7518
“Here Adele Luehrmann has evolved a situation where three men of prominence of the same nationality and presumably of similar interests, all die with sudden and unexplained mystery within a few days of each other. The first effort seems to be to throw suspicion upon Olive Thrace, who has reason to be anxious to be rid of Zarady, the great concert master. The second death brings in the element of the girl with the squirrel cap. The actual solution of the triple mystery is a surprise.”—Boston Transcript
Booklist 16:349 Jl ’20 Boston Transcript p6 Jl 3 ’20 220w + Cleveland p72 Ag ’20 40w
“The author has not succeeded at any point in really intriguing the reader. The characters are obviously puppets to string the story on: sheep fattened for slaughter. The dénouement is lacking in ingenuity.”
− N Y Times 25:320 Je 20 ’20 220w
LUMHOLTZ, KARL SOFUS. Through central Borneo; an account of two years’ travel in the land of the head-hunters between the years 1913 and 1917. 2v il *$7.50 Scribner 919.11
20–16918
“Reaching the island which has been the object of his journey, Mr Lumholtz first gives us a comprehensive idea of its climate and the biological conditions which there exist, its natural resources, its population, history, government and racial problems. Presently he plunges into the jungle and shows us first its wonderful vegetation, and next its strange people. He takes us up the vast rivers, noting the habits of the people by the way. To his narrative the author adds a considerable number of folklore stories drawn directly from the natives, stories doubtless handed down orally for many generations. The author embellishes his volumes with profuse illustrations, many of them from photographs taken by himself.”—Boston Transcript
“A happy combination of scientific study with journalistic ease of style and choice of interesting material.”
+ Booklist 17:111 D ’20 + Bookm 52:367 D ’20 110w + Boston Transcript p6 O 16 ’20 650w
“Because he went into such an unknown region his book has the atmosphere of Hakluyt or Purchas. The photographs which illustrate the book are excellent.” J. F. Gould
+ N Y Evening Post p8 Ja 8 ’21 960w
“The author’s style is one of extreme simplicity, and his material is presented in a form that should prove attractive to scientist and layman alike.” B. R. Redman
+ N Y Times p9 O 31 ’20 1150w
“Mr Lumholtz knows how to write entertainingly as well as how to observe with scientific accuracy.”
+ Outlook 126:334 O 20 ’20 60w
LUTHER, MARK LEE. Presenting Jane McRae. il *$1.75 (1½c) Little
20–10734
When Jane McRae is first presented she is acting as waitress in her step-father’s hotel in a small “up-state” New York town. Here she comes in contact with Stuart Pendleton, a young civil engineer, and with Arthur Gault, a movie singer. With Stuart she falls in love, but refuses to marry him when she learns of his previous entanglement with another woman. Leaving unbearable conditions at home, she goes to New York to support herself. At the end of her resources, she again meets Arthur Gault, who is now a moving picture director. He gets her a small part in his picture and finally persuades her to marry him. She becomes more and more successful as an actress, but is not happy. She realizes that her marriage to Arthur was a mistake, but does not see the way out. But when the war comes and frees her from him, the manner of his death leaves her still with an unanswerable question. “It did not occur to her that she was free.”
“To tell the truth all this business of Jane and the engineer, from beginning to end, is unreal and commonplace. Jane herself is least credible and desirable whenever that young man is brought on the scene. Except his good looks and his fine phrases, there is nothing or next to nothing ‘to him.’ What ‘makes’ the book is its study of Jane in relation to the movie man.” H. W. Boynton
+ − Bookm 52:70 S ’20 650w
“On the whole, it is a quick-moving and interesting tale.”
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ag 7 ’20 180w
“Very long and not very interesting. Some of the motion-picture parts of the book are not unentertaining, while of the characters Arthur Gault is by all odds the best, at times becoming a real human being.”
+ − N Y Times 25:31 Jl 18 ’20 300w
“An agreeable little comedy of life not without serious import also.”
+ Outlook 125:615 Ag 4 ’20 50w
LUTZ, EDWIN GEORGE. Animated cartoons. il *$2.50 Scribner 778
20–3350
“E. G. Lutz answers many an unspoken question about the movies by telling very explicitly how an artist gets motion into his drawings. After two chapters of history upon their origin and development he goes into a description of the successive steps in the production of various kinds of screen pictures in action. It all seems very simple after being carefully explained in both text and illustrations.”—Springf’d Republican
Ath p408 S 24 ’20 100w Booklist 16:232 Ap ’20 + N Y P L New Tech Bks p39 Ap ’20 70w Outlook 124:431 Mr 10 ’20 50w
“The book is interesting as catering to the universal desire to see the wheels go round.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 Mr 25 ’20 240w The Times [London] Lit Sup p603 S 16 ’20 90w
LUTZ, GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (MRS FLAVIUS J. LUTZ). Cloudy Jewel. il *$1.90 (2c) Lippincott
20–20648
Julia Cloud, at her mother’s death, is free to choose between living the life of a drudge in her selfish sister’s household, or struggling along alone on insufficient finances. She is trying to make her decision when her niece and nephew from California put in an unexpected appearance, and they have a delightful suggestion for her future. They are coming east to college and propose taking her along to make a home for them and be a real mother to them, for though well-to-do, they are orphans. This plan they carry out and she plays her part wholly to their satisfaction. She feels a keen responsibility for their welfare and at first their lack of any religious ideals grieves her deeply. But they become interested in the Christian Endeavor society in a little church and gradually come to be leaders in it as well as in college life. There they make friendships which finally grow into deeper relations, and the story ends in two romances.
“It may be safely prophesied that Mrs Lutz, if she continues to spin more novels of the type of ‘Cloudy Jewel’ will doubtless lure into her fold a large proportion of the followers of Harold Bell Wright. Within the pages of ‘Cloudy Jewel’ one may find the telling and sure-fire ingredients of an American best seller.”
+ − N Y Times p26 D 19 ’20 300w
“Mrs Lutz will beguile many hours for those who do not wish to be aroused or excited by what they read, and her books will have a wholesome influence wherever they are read.” K. O.
+ Pub W 98:1194 O 16 ’20 270w
LUTZ, GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (MRS FLAVIUS J. LUTZ). Exit Betty. il *$1.75 (2c) Lippincott
20–13974
When Betty Stanhope met her bridegroom in the crowded church where the ceremony was to take place, to her horror she found he was not the man she had promised to marry. A timely fainting spell permitted her to escape from the church, and it was fortunate for her that she ran across Jane Carson just outside. Jane took the excited girl to her room where Betty told enough of the story to convince Jane that she was the victim of the cupidity of her scheming stepmother. Jane sent her to her mother in the country where Betty successfully eluded pursuit, until by Jane’s keenness, aided by her friend Jimmie and Jimmie’s employer, Warren Reyburn, Betty slipped forever from the clutches of those who had tried to rob her of her inheritance. Incidentally a double romance developed for her and Jane.
“Melodrama of the crudest kind and religious sentiment equally crude are blended in a whole which, curiously enough, pleases rather than repels.”
+ − Ath p763 D 3 ’20 40w
“Of course it is a very old plot, this of the cruel step mother, but Mrs Lutz manages to centre our interest entirely in Betty and to arouse our sympathies to the point where we do not greatly care that some of her plot elements are distinctly hackneyed.”
+ − Boston Transcript p6 Ag 7 ’20 420w
LYNCH, FREDERICK HENRY.[[2]] Personal recollections of Andrew Carnegie. il $1.50 Revell
“‘Personal recollections of Andrew Carnegie’ furnishes an intimate picture of the late ironmaster and philanthropist, in which many phases of his character are depicted. In the course of much close association, Dr Lynch, as a member of the executive committee of the New York Peace society, enjoyed opportunities of learning what the canny Scotsman thought concerning many other things than iron and libraries.”—Springf’d Republican
Boston Transcript p6 Ja 8 ’21 250w + Ind 103:440 D 25 ’20 360w Springf’d Republican p8 N 6 ’20 70w
LYND, ROBERT. Ireland a nation. *$2 (3c) Dodd 941.5
20–1230
In this thorough sifting of the Irish problem, the author, an Englishman, does not spare England. Of her habit of not taking Ireland seriously he says that if it is persisted in “it will bring ruin not only on Ireland but upon England and on our European civilization generally. If Ireland is not ... given her freedom equally with every other nation in Europe, another great world-war is as certain as the rising of tomorrow’s sun.... Every nation on the earth that desires to do wrong to another takes fresh heart when it thinks of the example of England in Ireland.” Contents: Why it is important to realize that Ireland is a nation; The historical thread; Sinn Fein; The insurrection of 1916; Ulster: the facts of the case; The hesitating sort of Liberal and Irish self-determination; One man’s views on Dominion home rule; The Irish soldier; Ireland’s record in the war; The soldiers’ sacrifice; The English in Ireland: a scene; Another scene: the drums of Ulster; The witness of the poets; A note on Irish literature; Voices of the new Ireland (from various writers); Common-sense about the little nations; Epilogue.
“Interestingly written though somewhat lacking in unity.”
+ − Booklist 16:237 Ap ’20
“It is devoid of all appearances of sentimentality, yet the very calmness with which the argument is followed gives a force to the book which passion itself could hardly sustain.”
+ Cath World 112:259 N ’20 500w + Cleveland p76 Ag ’20 50w
Reviewed by Preserved Smith
+ Nation 110:768 Je 5 ’20 550w
“‘Ireland a nation’ stands above and apart from the vast majority of books on the subject. It owes this distinction not only to its author’s brilliant handling of a complicated theme, to his sense of selection, and to his gift of distilling the essence of long-drawn-out controversies into a witty phrase, but primarily to the fact that he lifts the issue to a new and higher plane. Where other writers take it for granted that the dispute is one between two nations. Mr Lynd confronts the rulers of Great Britain with their pledges not to Ireland but to the civilized world, and insists that an Irish settlement is to England’s allies, no less than her enemies, the ‘acid test’ of whether these pledges are more than mere empty words.”
+ Nation [London] 27:50 Ap 10 ’20 1250w N Y Times 25:192 Ap 18 ’20 100w N Y Times p1 Ag 1 ’20 750w
“He is well informed and presents his views with clearness and force, as befits an editor of the London Daily News. But his book will fail through over-statement to carry conviction to his opponents.”
+ − Outlook 124:431 Mr 10 ’20 100w
“If his pages have at times the intractable vehemence which belong to his nationality, they are no less lit up with the wit and sparkle that seldom desert a man of his race.” H. L. Stewart
+ − Review 2:461 My 1 ’20 600w R of Rs 61:446 Ap ’20 120w + Springf’d Republican p8 Mr 30 ’20 280w
LYNDE, FRANCIS. Girl, a horse and a dog. il *$2 (2½c) Scribner
20–14290
When Jaspar Dudley’s will was read, instead of the fortune which his grandson Stanford Broughton expected, he received only a vague legacy which at first he chose to disregard entirely. For it read something as follows: “Your portion ... was worth, at its latest valuation, something like $440,000.... When you find it, you will be able to identify it by the presence of a girl with brown hair and blue eyes and small mole on her left shoulder, a piebald horse ... and a dog with a split face—half black and half white.” With just this information and certain indefinite geographical data, “Stannie” finally starts on the trail of his inheritance. He has less trouble in locating it than might be expected. But then his troubles begin, for he finds it to be a flooded mine, which is nevertheless highly desirable to a certain mining engineer. He determines to pump it out, and ascertain its value. His attempts to do this, and the efforts of his rival to thwart him, and gain possession himself, make the story, with, of course, some rivalry for the blue-eyed girl as well.
“Rather well told and interesting to readers of western stories.”
+ Booklist 17:71 N ’20
“Plenty of dash in this story, and genuinely interesting from beginning to end.”
+ Cath World 112:554 Ja ’21 110w
“‘The girl, a horse and a dog’ is a book built frankly for amusement purposes, but it is more substantial than the usual run of adventure stories. Mr Lynde possesses the power to develop character in a consistent manner, to afford the reader glimpses of types which live, and to do this without halting the steady flow of a narrative that steadily rises in its interest.”
+ N Y Times p24 Ag 29 ’20 650w
“A lively tale.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a S 12 ’20 270w Wis Lib Bul 16:194 N ’20 60w
LYNDE, FRANCIS. Wreckers. il *$1.75 Scribner
20–5584
“Graham Norcross, whose private stenographer and confidential clerk, Jimmie Dodds, tells the tale of their adventures, was anything but anxious to become general manager of the much-abused Pioneer short line. That unfortunate railroad had for some time been nothing but an instrument for a little group of Wall street speculators to make money with; they juggled its stock about, stinted it in equipment and everything else, and abused it generally. Now, squeezed dry, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. And to make bad matters worse, at its headquarters in Portal City every wellpaid post was filled by some cousin or nephew or brother-in-law of the stock speculators who controlled the road. This was a part of the proposition which faced Graham Norcross when he started out to make the Pioneer short line an honest and a paying concern. By the scheme finally carried out, it was arranged that one section of ‘the country—and the employes—had a railroad of their own,’ a railroad whose stock was controlled by the people most interested in its welfare.”—N Y Times
“A railroad story which will interest men and boys.”
+ Booklist 16:282 My ’20 + N Y Times 25:153 Ap 4 ’20 700w
“The story maintains the author’s reputation as a teller of entertaining tales.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 18 ’20 140w
LYNN, MARGARET. Free soil. *$2.50 (2c) Macmillan
20–20945
A story of the fight for free soil in Kansas in the fifties. Among the New England recruits to the free soil population are John and Ellen Truman, who give up ease and security and take their two young children into the new and strange land. With them goes Ellen’s cousin Harvey Sayre, young and high-spirited and ripe for adventure. Later another cousin, Phoebe Murray, comes for a visit, and refusing to be sent back to safety, remains to play her part with the other women. Even before reaching Kansas the Trumans have a taste of the tense relations between North and South and they are in the heart of the struggle from the moment of their arrival. Another struggle no less interesting is revealed within the ranks of the free-soilers, between the advocates of violence and those who stand for peaceful methods. The figure of John Brown as he moves through these pages differs somewhat from popular legend. The love story of Phoebe and Lewis Hardie, the high courage of the women, and the author’s very evident love for the prairies lighten the somberness of the story.
“Miss Lynn has not only made her story interesting and her characters alive; she has pictured the country itself as few writers have pictured it. ‘Free soil’ is a noble book, a living book, a book to read and to remember. In its blending of fiction and history it is a notable achievement.”
+ N Y Times p24 D 19 ’20 550w
“As fiction pure and simple the novel has no great art, but it has historical reality and wide human sympathy. As a sketch of western living conditions in early days the book is also satisfying.” E. C. Willcox
+ − Outlook 127:109 Ja 19 ’21 140w
LYTLE, JOHN HORACE.[[2]] Story of Jack. il $1.50 Pettibone-McLean co., Dayton, O.
20–10081
“The scene of the title story is laid in the Klondike land in the Klondike days. Jack is a real dog, and a great one, who will win straight to the heart of every reader.” (Cath World) “The tragic adventure of Jack is followed by other stories, each directed to a particular foible of the dog-lover—the pioneer dog who spends his life by racing with a message of an Indian uprising, the unwelcome mongrel who rescues a child from drowning and is welcome ever after, the spaniel who is taught to point golf balls and so saves his master in a desperate match, and so on.” (Review)
“These are stories of live people and live dogs told in a live way.”
+ Cath World 111:838 S ’20 100w
“They are capital tales, all of them; and if the limits of canine intelligence are overstepped, what harm is done?”
+ Review 3:626 D 22 ’20 190w