U
ULLMAN, ALBERT EDWARD. “Line’s busy.” il *$1 (4½c) Stokes 817
Goldie is the telephone operator in a large hotel and she tells her story in slangy letters to her pal Myrtle. Events in which she takes a share from her switchboard reveal her as a girl “always there with the helping hand, no matter how much it’s been lacerated in the past.” In particular the love affairs of her patrons and co-workers interest her, and she straightens out several tangles, and finally, her own love story develops happily.
“A love story that is both clever and jolly is so rare nowadays that one seizes with avidity upon the romance of little Goldie.”
+ Boston Transcript p5 O 6 ’20 200w
“Mr Ullman deserves full credit for a lot of ‘good lines.’ The wit of Goldie’s letters is catchy and largely original—not current vaudeville wheezes warmed over. We wish there was more of it and less of the ‘good-old-ham-and-eggs,’ ‘man-from-home’ brand of philosophy.”
+ − N Y Times 25:27 Je 27 ’20 500w
UNCENSORED letters of a canteen girl. *$2 (3c) Holt 940.48
20–14006
These letters were “scratched down on odds and ends of writing paper, in a rare spare moment at the canteen; at night, at my billet, by candle-light, in the mornings, perched in front of Madame’s fire-place.... Why were they never sent? Simply because all letters mailed from France in those days, must of course pass under the eyes of the censor.” (Foreword) They contain everything that happened generously interspersed with the conversations of the doughboys. Contents: Company A; The doughboys; The front; The artillery; The engineers; The ordnance; The French; Pioneers, M. P.’s and others.
“Rather more tempting to the jaded war appetite than most personal narratives because of the fresh frankness which anonymity permits. Will be liked better later on.”
+ Booklist 17:150 Ja ’21 + Boston Transcript p4 O 23 ’20 220w
“So piquant and fine-humored are the observations and revelations that one regrets that the book is anonymous. The publishers’ claim, that this ‘gives the human side of soldiering as no book yet published has done,’ does not seem extravagant.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 Ag 27 ’20 270w
UNDERHILL, EVELYN (MRS STUART MOORE). Jacopone da Todi; poet and mystic—1228–1306; a spiritual biography. *$6 Dutton
20–4482
“Jacopone da Todi, that remarkable Italian mystical poet, was born soon after the death of St Francis of Assisi, about 1228 or 1230, while Dante was yet in the prime of his manhood. Living in the world until he was forty, a shrewd lawyer, a man of vivid temperament, of wide culture and refined tastes, he received at that age his first religious call. For the next ten years he wandered about as a missionary hermit and in 1278, being then about fifty, he became a Franciscan lay brother. Miss Underhill’s book is divided into two parts of about equal length. The first is devoted to Jacopone’s life, set in its proper historical environment. In the remaining part of the book Miss Underhill gives us a chronological selection from his mystical poems, so well known as the Laude, accompanied in the fellow page by an English translation (also into poetry) by Mrs Theodore Beck.”—Cath World
“Miss Underhill has a fine flow of language, a nice choice of adjectives, and a thorough, if somewhat undiscriminating, knowledge of the literature of her subject. Altogether her book is well done in its way, and it is not the slightest use wishing, as we do, that it had been done in another.” R. S.
+ − Ath p636 My 14 ’20 760w + Boston Transcript p7 Mr 13 ’20 1500w + Cath World 111:819 S ’20 620w
“The biographer’s comprehension of the worldly accomplishments of her subject and her equal insight into his spiritual attainments, is strikingly the counterpart of that two-sidedness which she emphasizes in the man himself. The bibliography apart from its immediate value as indicating the sources of the present work, will be of service to those interested in the whole subject of Christian mysticism.” Marianne Moore
+ Dial 70:82 Ja ’21 1650w
“When the romantic personality falls into the hands of the scholar there is necessarily something of glamour and delight lost. This is what has happened in this austerely spiritual biography of Evelyn Underhill.” L. C. Willcox
+ − N Y Times 25:169 Ap 11 ’20 1200w
“Friar Jacopone was a poet of extraordinary power, and the fire, ease, and accomplishment of his rather erotic mystic poems are astonishing.”
+ Spec 124:426 Mr 27 ’20 1450w
“The materials are rather flimsy for the construction of a biography. We cannot agree with Miss Underhill that Jacopone was a great poet. Intense religious feeling, vividly and forcibly expressed, does not of itself constitute poetry, and beyond such expression Jacopone does not often rise.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p229 Ap 15 ’20 4100w
UNDERHILL, RUTH MURRAY. White moth. *$2 Moffat
20–20002
“Miss Underhill has converted the old fable of the ant and the grasshopper into a very modern romance which she calls ‘The white moth.’ Hilda Plaistead is the earnest plodder, Guy Nearing the gay and irresponsible hero, and the setting is the town of Cato. The two have a childhood engagement, become widely separated, and in the final chapter again discover that they were always meant for each other, but it is only after Guy has learned the folly of being jack of all trades and master of none.”—N Y Evening Post
“We can scarcely claim for Miss Underhill’s story either originality of substance or of treatment. What she does accomplish is an exceedingly readable and very human story, which possesses certain scenes of quiet and insistent realism.”
+ − Boston Transcript p6 F 5 ’21 250w
“High school days are described as well as in Booth Tarkington’s ‘Seventeen.’ The characters are all well drawn. However, the true merit of the book is in taking some new aspects of life, such as the business rivalry between man and woman or the problems of factory management and using them to construct a good old-fashioned romance which holds the attention from start to finish.”
+ N Y Evening Post p10 O 30 ’20 140w
“It is a real romance and has a charming atmosphere.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p9 D 12 ’20 70w
UNSEEN doctor. *$1.75 (5c) Holt 134
20–15457
The book is one of the Psychic series and describes the cure of a case of illness of fifteen years’ standing in the course of a year and eight months by an invisible spirit doctor. It contains a preface by J. Arthur Hill, testimonials by several personal friends of the patient and a report by the physician long in charge of the case in the flesh. The contents are: A chance paragraph; A chain of coincidences; The first interview; A further surprise; The invisible hand; Experiences and experiments; Fellow-lodgers; Royal progress; Learning to walk; “My little girl”; Six months later; Comments and criticisms; Appendix and index. The book was published in England as “One thing I know, or, The power of the unseen.”
“‘The unseen doctor’ is as respectable a book of psychic experiences as has come to the public. There is no doubt that it is a record of real experiences. But, respectable as the book is, it still leaves open the eternal question, ‘Why should spirit doctors cling to the earth, and why have they no concerns of their own?’”
+ − N Y Times p16 N 14 ’20 320w
“As a ‘psychic’ tale the book is futile and foolish, indeed, rather fertile in folly.”
− Review 3:393 O 27 ’20 230w
“There is nothing fantastic in the story, and it is told with such convincing truth that the reader seems to have no choice save to accept it on its face value.” Lilian Whiting
+ Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 23 ’21 330w
UNTERMEYER, LOUIS, ed. Modern American poetry. *$1.40 Harcourt 811.08
20–1516
“In his anthology, ‘Modern American poetry’ Louis Untermeyer has selected 132 poems by 80 authors, arranged them effectively, with brief notices for each writer and handy indices. Old favorites are here; ‘Little boy blue’ rubs shoulders with ‘The purple cow,’ and ‘When the frost is on the punkin’ with ‘A stein song.’ Franklin P. Adams, Oliver Herford, and Carolyn Wells are represented.”—Springf’d Republican
“All the best recent things are here.” H: A. Lappin
+ Bookm 51:212 Ap ’20 70w
“This verse is remarkable for vigor and energy, form being sacrificed for content. An interesting feature is the group of seven poems on Lincoln by seven different poets.”
+ Cleveland p41 Ap ’20 60w
“Though it too often misses the authentic current, is too often led away into stagnant marshes, it is perhaps as good a map as we yet possess. The editor is a better conversationalist than guide.”
+ − Dial 68:667 My ’20 60w Dial 69:664 D ’20 60w
“It is a comprehensive and unusually satisfying collection.”
+ Ind 104:64 O 9 ’20 130w
Reviewed by R. P. Utter
Nation 110:237 F 21 ’20 420w
“The present reviewer’s quarrel with Louis Untermeyer’s ‘Modern American poetry’ is not so much because of its selections and omissions—both often very wise ones—as because of Untermeyer’s attitude of mind in his introduction. It is the typical attitude of the poets of our present little ‘renaissance,’ and perhaps one should hardly quarrel with it, but smile at it. You would suppose poetry that was honest, fresh, contemporary, had never been written before.” W. P. Eaton
− + N Y Call p10 Ja 18 ’20 1000w
“If there be any critic in the country who ought not to make a schoolbook, that critic is Louis Untermeyer. He is much too brilliantly individual and his likes and dislikes are too pronounced. It is a book of verse that young people probably will like, if they like verse at all. Many of the selections included are humorous.... A good professor would make a better anthology for use in schools.” Marguerite Wilkinson
− + N Y Times 25:140 Mr 28 ’20 480w + School R 28:630 O ’20 160w
“The criticism may be raised that Mr Untermeyer has been too generous to the ultra-moderns. But the selections of Carl Sandburg, John Gould Fletcher and Alfred Kreymborg are chosen with discrimination, and serve to accomplish the editor’s purpose.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p6 Ja 26 ’20 300w + Survey 43:554 F 7 ’20 150w
“This book is a delightful one to read; it has a distinct individuality, and if Mr Untermeyer, in avoiding the beaten track, does not always publish the finest work of his poets, he recovers many a line that has been undeservedly forgotten.” E: B. Reed
+ Yale R n s 10:199 O ’20 390w
UNTERMEYER, LOUIS, ed. Modern British poetry. *$2 Harcourt 821.08
20–13991
A companion volume to Mr Untermeyer’s ‘Modern American poetry.’ Over seventy-five poets are represented, ranging from Thomas Hardy, born in 1840, to Robert Graves, born in 1895. Among the others are Alice Meynell, William Watson, Francis Thompson, A. E. Housman, Ernest Dowson, Hilaire Belloc, Walter de la Mare, G. K. Chesterton, W. W. Gibson, John Masefield, Ralph Hodgson, Harold Monro, John Drinkwater, Siegfried Sassoon, Francis Ledwidge, Irene Rutherford McLeod, Richard Aldington, Robert Nichols and Charles H. Sorley. In an introduction the editor discusses the new influences and tendencies.
Booklist 17:23 O ’20 Dial 69:664 D ’20 60w
“A few months ago saw the birth of Mr Untermeyer’s book of ‘Modern American poetry,’ a work remarkable as showing the wide variety of theme and treatment which is at least one characteristic trait of American poetry today. Now Mr Untermeyer, for some obscure reason, essays the same feat with ‘Modern British poetry.’ And the result is conspicuously a failure.” J: G. Fletcher
− Freeman 2:116 O 13 ’20 1100w + Nation 111:278 S 4 ’20 50w
“The disproportionate amount of space allotted to the various poets gives a false emphasis: Mr Hardy, Mr Bridges and Mr Russell have each less than three pages, while Mr Chesterton has nine and Mr Kipling and Mr Noyes (Mr Noyes!) twelve each. The anthologist is tolerant of many schools; but his eye is more on the present than on the immediate past.” S. C. C.
− + New Repub 24:49 S 8 ’20 800w
“Aside from the small flecks the book presents itself as an admirable attempt and one that, through its delightful snapshots of the poets prefixed to each writer’s work, should inveigle readers into a closer scrutiny of British verse.”
+ − N Y Times p16 N 7 ’20 490w
“The editor’s taste is sensitive, and his curious bitterness towards the Victorians, which is the main drawback to his liberality, does not greatly affect the catholicity of the work.”
+ Review 3:321 O 13 ’20 280w + School R 28:630 O ’20 160w
UNTERMEYER, LOUIS. New Adam. *$1.75 Harcourt 811
20–16871
As an introduction to this book of poems Mr Untermeyer reprints “A note on the poetry of love” from the New Republic. He comments on the artificiality of the love poetry of the preceding age and notes that in our day there is a tendency to return “to the upright vigor, the wide and healthy curiosity” of our earlier ancestors, the Elizabethans. Among the poems of the book are: The new Adam, Hands, Asleep, Summer storm, A marriage, Wrangle, Equals, Supplication, The eternal masculine, Windy days, The embarrassed amorist, Words for a jig, Disillusion, The prodigal.
“There is nothing about love or woman in this collection, except it be in the verses called ‘The wise woman,’ that is new in love poetry, and there is many a mood and theme that has been both artistically and emotionally better expressed by any number of poets in the past ‘two centuries.’” W: S. Braithwaite
− + Boston Transcript p4 D 31 ’20 1000w
Reviewed by Babette Deutsch
Dial 70:89 Ja ’21 380w
“There is in this recent work of Mr Untermeyer’s a note that is singular in American poetry. It shows a writer who has become curious about the soul.” H. S. Gorman
+ Freeman 2:332 D 15 ’20 320w
“Mr Untermeyer is casual, as he promised, and flippant, and frank, and dutifully vulgar; but seldom is his effect other than that of an agile pen tracing a facile passion.”
− Nation 112:86 Ja 19 ’21 160w
“Neither the rhapsodic nor the mocking quality, however, gives the substance of Untermeyer’s work. The roots of his power lie deeper. Upright vigor, wide and healthy curiosity describe his own work excellently.” Babette Deutsch
+ N Y Evening Post p5 N 6 ’20 860w
“One of Mr Untermeyer’s most marked traits is a delightful whimsicality. It crops up again and again throughout the volume, for, strangely enough, this book, which purports to be so revealing, is really extremely reticent. But a dissatisfaction obtrudes itself. Why, oh why, has Mr Untermeyer, master of so many differing forms, chosen to follow Heine in his tight little rhythms and mathematically cut stanzas? In Mr Untermeyer’s case, the effect is not exactly what I imagine he hopes.” Amy Lowell
+ − N Y Times p8 O 10 ’20 3500w Springf’d Republican p8 Jl 10 ’20 70w
USHER, ABBOTT PAYSON. Introduction to the industrial history of England. il *$2.50 Houghton 330.942
20–5634
The book is a narrative of all the historical facts in the industrial development from the earliest beginnings to the present time, which presumably explains the word introduction in the title. The ground covered is shown in the contents: Forms of industrial organization; The rise of the crafts in antiquity; Crafts and craft gilds in medieval France; The population of England: 1086–1700; Village and manor; The traders and the towns; The development of gilds in England; The woolen industries: 1450–1750; The enclosure movement and land reform; The industrial revolution; The East India company and the vested interests; The new cotton industry; The reorganization of the metal trades; The rise of the modern factory system; The rise of collective bargaining; The protection of health and welfare by the state; The development of the railway; The government and the railways; Combinations and monopolies; Incomes, wages, and social unrest; Selected references; Index, maps, figures, and graphs.
“His exposition is generally clear. The balance of general statement and of particular fact is in most chapters good. The author is usually a trustworthy guide. The most serious weakness of the work, when it is appraised as a manual for college undergraduates, lies in its plan rather than in its execution. I think, however, that few teachers who examine the book will dissent from the conclusion that it would be greatly improved if a large part, almost one third of the whole, were cut out, and if the space saved were used for the consideration of the topics now omitted.” Clive Day
+ − Am Econ R 10:572 S ’20 1050w
“The facts are presented with scholarly care, but the style is not too technical.”
+ Booklist 16:224 Ap ’20 + Boston Transcript p6 Jl 31 ’20 490w
“Marked by scholarliness and originality.”
+ Cleveland p90 O ’20 10w
“English industrialism, is, primarily, a consequence of certain philosophic ideas, but the author fails to comprehend this major fact, not from any lack of knowledge of the complexities of economic organization, but rather, one surmises because such intricacies are too much for him. He has not seen the wood for the trees, and he fears generalizations—except the one implied throughout the book, that there are no generalizations possible.” R. W.
− + Freeman 2:141 O 20 ’20 980w
“The book shows throughout the discriminatory use of the latest available results of research and much painstaking original work. The controversial treatment, the careful qualification in discussion, as well as occasional heaviness in style, make the book unsuited for an undergraduate text.”
+ − J Pol Econ 28:520 Je ’20 500w + − New Repub 23:341 Ag 18 ’20 1650w
“It is encyclopædic in its character and is much more full in dealing with the mechanical aspects and the mechanical development of industry than with the history of the men, women, and children who have been engaged in the industries of England. In this respect it is a disappointing book.”
+ − Outlook 126:67 S 8 ’20 170w
“It is no small task to formulate a general text-book covering so enormous a field and involving many disputatious matters. Professor Usher has, however, accomplished this with skill. Some of his chapters are inadequate. In his discussion of land reform and the inclosure movement, for example, the plight of the evicted peasant farmers seems to be poorly understood. A similar criticism of a narrowness of sympathy, or at any rate of an inadequacy of understanding, might be directed against the final chapter. Professor Usher has a very thin knowledge of the British labor situation today.” W. L. C.
+ − Survey 45:288 N 20 ’20 300w
USHER, ROLAND GREENE. Story of the great war. il *$2.50 Macmillan 940.3
19–19080
“Professor Usher begins his story with the assassination of the Archduke of Austria; but he shows beyond doubt that the war really began months before this event. The German attitude in 1914 is described; the reports of spies concerning the French and the Russian preparedness and the British reluctance to enter into war. With these preliminaries, which include the first five chapters of his book, Professor Usher begins his narrative with the story of the campaign on Paris and the wonderful strategy displayed by General Joffre, followed by the aggressiveness of Foch.... He traces the work of Hindenburg; the entrance of the British and the Italians into the struggle; the submarine campaign and the incident of the Lusitania; ... the German offensive of 1918; the entrance of America into the war; Chateau-Thierry and the surprising fighting qualities of the American soldier; St Mihiel, the crumbling of the German line; and the final crash and fall.”—Boston Transcript
“Many of the illustrations, taken from newspapers published in the most acute moments of the war, are full of extreme feeling. The book, therefore, does not tend to form cool and restrained views of the world war. Probably the author did not wish to form such views. Its strong point is in its large amount of information presented clearly and directly.”
+ − Am Hist R 26:136 O ’20 300w
“It is distinctive for the clearness of statement, an interpretation rather than a catalogue of events. May be read with interest by upper grade pupils or grown-ups. Good illustrations and maps.”
+ Booklist 16:165 F ’20
“Professor Usher’s story is told with wonderful vigor, great picturesqueness and with a rare comprehension of causes and of effects. His final brief discussion of the query, ‘Who won the war?’ is illuminating and beyond doubt thoroughly correct in its findings.” E. J. C.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ja 17 ’20 550w
“It was to be expected that what was written under the stress of war should partake largely of the character of propaganda, but the war is now a matter of history and we have a right to expect that historical students will try to assume a more judicial attitude toward the events of the past few years. The chief objection to Mr Usher’s work is that its viewpoint is that of 1917.” L. M. L.
− + Mississippi Valley Hist R 7:76 Je ’20 330w
“It is a serious handicap to American history that much of it is now written to meet the needs of the immature mind, that is, for the college audience. Professor Usher has composed a ‘story of the war’ in which the bright boy will find just what he wants, but in which the thoughtful man can grasp little to satisfy him.” Preserved Smith
− + Nation 110:302 Mr 6 ’20 220w
“This history is terse, clear, and well proportioned. It will serve satisfactorily as a ready reference book and for schools, and will help in reading the more elaborate histories that will later appear.”
+ Outlook 124:161 Ja 28 ’20 40w
“The volume is attractively illustrated.”
+ R of Rs 61:220 F ’20 100w + School R 28:315 Ap ’20 380w The Times [London] Lit Sup p242 Ap 15 ’20 30w