W
WADSLEY, OLIVE. Belonging. *$1.75 (2c) Dodd
20–15700
The heroine is a beautiful English girl married to a French count. She does not love him but is devotedly loyal during his long and hopeless illness. Two men love her, Charles Carton, who had been the object of her girlish devotion, and Julian Guise. Following her husband’s death she becomes engaged to Julian. Jealousy between the two men leads to a struggle and Carton is killed. Julian, who is severely injured, is taken away by his father and kept in ignorance of what follows. The guilt is placed on Sara and she suffers a year’s imprisonment. When she meets Julian after her release he is terribly changed but a second meeting brings explanations and reconciliation.
“Taking well-worn material, Miss Wadsley has used it so skillfully and with so firm, yet delicate, a literary touch that it comes near to being a masterpiece in its way. If the subject enjoyed a higher moral tone this commendation could be given without qualification.”
+ − N Y Times p24 S 26 ’20 540w Spec 124:22 Jl 3 ’20 40w
“We cannot say that in the matter of construction this story is very successful.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p241 Ap 15 ’20 140w
WALDMAN, LOUIS. Albany: the crisis in government; with an introd. by Seymour Stedman. il *$1.75 Boni & Liveright 335
20–12624
“This is the story of the suspension, trial and expulsion from the New York State legislature of the five Socialist assemblymen. It was written by one of the expelled members. It is an ex parte report of the case, to which an introduction is supplied by one of the attorneys for the defense.”—R of Rs
Am Pol Sci R 14:737 N ’20 80w + Booklist 17:150 Ja ’21
“The illustrations scattered through the volume might well have been omitted, partly because they are copies of cartoons and partly because they are poorly done. The introduction by Seymour Stedman is lucid and interesting.”
+ − Boston Transcript p6 Jl 24 ’20 170w Nation 111:278 S 4 ’20 120w
“Written by one of the victims of the injustice, the book is of course extremely partisan. Yet if one may judge from a generous reading of the newspaper accounts of the trial, it is fairly representative. The proofreading is poor, and there are further evidences of undue haste in preparation and printing. But for all that it is a book well worth anybody’s reading and reflection.” W. J. Ghent
+ − Review 3:89 Jl 28 ’20 1600w
“The line of cleavage in public opinion as to the merits of this case is not likely to be materially modified by the publication of this book. It is, however, an interesting and readable account of a famous episode.”
+ R of Rs 62:109 Jl ’20 100w
“Mr Waldman’s book is convincingly written and his argument forceful. The author tells his story in a fair and straightforward manner.” L. D. Lasker
+ Survey 45:103 O 16 ’20 440w
WALEY, ARTHUR, tr. Japanese poetry, the Uta. *$3.25 Oxford 895
20–14302
“The poems here translated are from the Manyo Shu anthology (Ten-thousand leaves collection), compiled by Otomo no Yakamochi, who died in 785, and are considered as the beginnings of Japanese poetry as an art. ‘The translations in this book,’ says Mr Waley, ‘are chiefly intended to facilitate the study of the Japanese text; for Japanese poetry can only be rightly enjoyed in the original. The original texts of the poems accompany the translations, and notes on grammar are given to facilitate the student who wishes to master the originals.”—Boston Transcript
“Mr Waley comes not halfway, but all the way to meet an intelligent ignorance. He is instructive without severity; he is learned, but affable. His translations have, we think, every indispensable quality of good literal translation—especially a kind of negative rhythmical and tone value, and distinction of vocabulary without a trace of preciousness or squeamishness.” F. W. S.
+ Ath p12 Ja 2 ’20 950w + Booklist 16:339 Jl ’20 Boston Transcript p7 O 9 ’20 380w
“It is decidedly difficult to find anything in the literature of the West which recalls these brief lyrics, which confine within seventeen or at most within thirty-one syllables the passion of a life or the shadowing imminence of death.” Babette Deutsch
+ Dial 70:204 F ’21 800w
“The volume shows the scholarly care and literary taste which were the charms of Mr Waley’s previous translations, and nobody could wish for a better introduction to Japanese poetry; but the poems do not give the same thrill as those little decorative masterpieces—the Chinese translations. Some of them seem to be too purely decorative.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p646 N 13 ’19 820w
WALISZEWSKI, KAZIMIERZ. Poland the unknown; tr. from the French. *$2.25 Doran 943.8
(Eng ed 20–6295)
It is the contention of the author that the characteristics of the Polish people and of their national ideals has always been quite distinct from those of western Europe and that, as a vanquished nation, she has for nearly a century and a half presented not her own face but a mask to the world. That her exceptional virtues rather than her failings have been the chief cause of her undoing and that of all the nations that participated in the latter, Prussia has been the arch-criminal, is the object of the book to show. Contents: The enigma of a nation’s fate; The Polish paradox; Ideas and principles; Organs of government; Anarchy; The crisis; The catastrophe; Beyond the grave; Resurrection; Conclusion.
“M. Waliszewski’s book is largely a vigorous and effective polemic against the misrepresentations of Polish history so long and systematically inspired by Berlin and St Petersburg. Unfortunately, his own views as to the causes of Poland’s downfall are nowhere very concisely summed up. The author may be criticized for great carelessness in the matter of names and dates.” R. H. L.
+ − Am Hist R 26:316 Ja ’21 750w Ath p1243 N 21 ’19 100w
“It is written in a somewhat ebullient manner which, although it makes agreeable reading, is not altogether favourable to processes of reasoned argument. We do not wish to suggest that M. Waliszewski is consciously prejudiced, but he is perhaps too closely affected by the conditions he describes to judge them dispassionately.” P. S.
+ − Ath p1396 D 26 ’19 520w
“M. Waliszewski is an excellent sales-agent who knows his literary and historical wares and knows, also, how to spread them before his customers with tact and grace; but for all that, his work will hardly serve as a reliable guide for future historians of the Polish question—if only because, having spent most of his life in Paris, be writes with a decidedly French accent.” H. W. van Loon
− + Freeman 2:237 N 17 ’20 620w
“Unfortunately for his main purpose, he has felt called upon to develop his thesis in a detail which makes the book rather difficult reading for anyone not intimately acquainted with Polish history.” M. A. Chickering
+ − Survey 45:514 Ja 1 ’21 190w The Times [London] Lit Sup p615 O 30 ’19 70w
“Being written as a corrective it tends to give a somewhat one-sided view if taken only in itself without reference to the mass of literature which it seeks to controvert. Even so it is of very considerable interest, especially in regard to the history of the nineteenth century.
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p659 N 20 ’19 170w
WALKER, ABBIE (PHILLIPS) (MRS FRED ALLAN WALKER). Sandman’s rainy day stories. il *75c (2c) Harper
These rainy day stories are quite properly fairy tales, with such titles as Princess Cantilla, The tree of swords, The silver horseshoes, The blue castle, Nardo and the princess, The enchanted boat, The gingerbread rock, and so on. The book belongs to the Sandman series and is illustrated by Rhoda C. Chase.
+ Ind 104:396 D 11 ’20 50w
WALKER, ABBIE (PHILLIPS) (MRS FRED ALLAN WALKER). Sandman’s stories of Drusilla doll. il *75c (2c) Harper
A book of stories for very little people. Drusilla is an unbreakable doll, and it is very lucky for her that she is, for her adventures are many and dreadful and only an unbreakable could have survived them. The book belongs to a series of Sandman’s stories and is illustrated by Rhoda C. Chase.
WALKER, HENRY CRAGIN. Jimmy Bunn stories. il *$1.75 (8c) Century
A book of animal stories for little folks. As in the older folk lore of many lands the rabbit and the wolf are pitted against one another, and the nimble wits of Jimmy Bunn, here as always, are more than a match for the craft of his adversary. The black and white illustrations are by Hope-Innes.
“Fortunately this is not one of that new type of children’s books attempting to compete with the moving pictures. Its language is simple; its faint moralizing successfully camouflaged.”
+ N Y Evening Post p25 O 23 ’20 100w
WALKER, SYDNEY FERRIS. Electric mining machinery. il $5 Pitman 622
20–9652
A British work by a member of the Institution of electrical engineers, who is also author of “Electricity in mining,” “Electricity in houses and workshops,” and other works. The author says, “I have endeavoured to explain every little point that, from my own experience, I think may trouble mining men.” The book is illustrated with 132 figures and is indexed.
WALLACE, DILLON. Ragged inlet guards; a story of adventure in Labrador. il *$1.50 (2½c) Revell
20–2262
Four boys on a Labrador coast were left as the mainstay of their families went when their fathers and big brothers went to the war. They constituted themselves the Ragged inlet guards, and did men’s work. Their home life, their hunting experiences and adventures are described in the book and the climax of the story is their capture of a German wireless station which brought them a medal each from King George.
Booklist 16:316 Je ’20
“Stirring book of adventure. Librarians will find it in great demand among their younger patrons.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Mr 21 ’20 200w
WALLACE, EDGAR. Four just men. *$1.75 (2c) Small
20–15957
The “Four just men” are a conscientious little band who are not satisfied with justice as it is meted out by law, and therefore take certain cases of wrong-doing into their own hands. The first case that this book records is that of Sir Philip Ramon, English Secretary of foreign affairs. He intends to introduce an aliens’ extradition bill in Parliament which if put thru will exile from England one Garcia, and virtually hand him over to the “corrupt and vengeful government” which is persecuting him. The Four just men are determined this shall not happen and are even willing to resort to taking Sir Ramon’s life that the bill may not go thru. He is warned of his danger and the police take unprecedented precautions but their protection proves inadequate and the Four just men have another success to add to their list. The second case the story takes up has to do with the “Red hundred,” an anarchistic body whom the Four just men work against. One of their number almost meets his Waterloo in this adventure, but finally makes his escape thru the cleverness of the rest of the band.
“Readers of crime and mystery tales will find this book entirely satisfying. The dénouement is startling.”
+ N Y Times p24 S 26 ’20 300w
“The action is absorbing.”
+ Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 2 ’21 160w
WALLACE, EDGAR. Green rust. *$1.60 Small
20–4011
“‘The green rust’ is the story of Oliva Cresswell, the granddaughter and heiress of a millionaire, but ignorant of the fact, and of a conspiracy to destroy the wheat crop of the world by a new mildew—the green rust—of a most virulent and aggressive type. The dangers she runs from those engaged in the conspiracy, who are anxious to obtain control of her money to finance an enormous wheat speculation, and the protection she receives from the most unlikely persons, make up a story full of excitement.”—Sat R
“His hero is disappointing because his judgment is so often bad, his resource meagre and his foresight dull. Its character drawing is sufficiently sharp for its purpose.”
+ − Boston Transcript p9 My 8 ’20 320w
“The whole narrative is breathless, sometimes even confusing, in its rapid melodrama, but it has a grip that never loosens. It is essentially a story of ‘action.’ The characterization does not yield novelty in any instance.”
+ − N Y Times 25:22 Je 27 ’20 580w Sat R 128:392 O 25 ’19 100w The Times [London] Lit Sup p502 S 18 ’19 140w
WALLACE, EDNA KINGSLEY.[[2]] Stars in the pool; a prose poem for lovers. *$2 Dutton
20–20966
“The tale is about King Telwyn’s daughter, Roseheart. Here came, sent by his father, King Lokus, to learn from the wise King Telwyn ‘somewhat of life and living in the great world,’ the young Prince Flame. And Flame ‘looking upon the Princess Roseheart, drew one great breath, and loved her with the love of a man’s heart. And Roseheart, when she looked into the eyes of Flame, and his heart therein, knew him for her lord, and loved him.’ Flame met the Old gray woman of Shadows who told him that she ‘was Sorrow, and the Way of destiny, and the Shadow of things.’ And Flame had to experience these things on a quest which was prefigured to him in a vision. On his wanderings he met with many natural and spiritual adventures, coming back in the end when he had searched and found the truth beyond self, to wed the Princess Roseheart and realize the meaning of love.”—Boston Transcript
“An exquisite tale that has the shimmering grace and spiritual charm of the romantic spirit of chivalry.”
+ Boston Transcript p2 D 4 ’20 330w
“‘The stars in the pool’ tells in dainty fashion a story which is part fairy tale, part allegory.”
+ N Y Times p28 Ja 2 ’21 540w
WALLAS, GRAHAM. Life of Francis Place, 1771–1854. 3d ed *$3.50 Knopf
A20–157
“The American edition of Graham Wallas’ life of Francis Place is chiefly a reprint of the original edition printed in 1898. The career of Francis Place spanned the beginnings and the early development of the industrial revolution. Born in 1771, he was a young man when the fires of the French revolution illuminated the world. He was a trade unionist when unions were outlawed by Parliament as conspiracies. He engaged in bitter industrial struggles and paid those terrible penalties which are exacted only of working men who are loyal to their fellows. He became a liberal, and after he had made a fortune he was an influence in the politics of the kingdom. To his efforts are attributable some of the important beginnings of social legislation.”—Survey
Ath p118 Mr ’19 30w Booklist 16:168 F ’20
“Mr Wallas’s biography of Francis Place is a valuable contribution to the economic, the social and the political history of England.” E. F. E.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ja 10 ’20 1750w
“It is almost idle to praise it now, for it has taken its place among the accepted masterpieces of English political biography. It is difficult to overestimate the significance that attaches to his portrait.” H. J. Laski
+ Dial 68:614 My ’20 2900w
Reviewed by R: Roberts
+ Nation 110:371 Mr 20 ’20 1250w
“Good, timely reading.”
+ Outlook 124:291 F 18 ’20 80w
“His account of this fascinating pioneer of the British labor movement is a classic in biographical research.” W. L. C.
+ Survey 44:89 Ap 10 ’20 350w
WALLING, WILLIAM ENGLISH, ed. Sovietism; the A B C of Russian bolshevism—according to the bolshevists. *$2 Dutton 335
20–10515
“This is a summary of bolshevist utterances, made with a view to showing what the real aims of the bolshevist leaders are. The official documents and decrees, the speeches of Lenine and other leaders, the published opinions of Maxim Gorky, acclaimed as the greatest Bolshevist writer, are the chief sources from which Mr Walling has drawn in formulating this ‘A B C of Russian bolshevism.’ Mr Walling assumes that the public wants to know ‘what the bolsheviki actually stand for—according to a fair summary of their own acknowledged words and deeds.’”—R of Rs
“The book should do much as an antiseptic against the bolshevist poison.” A. W. Small
+ Am J Soc 26:250 S ’20 130w Am Pol Sci R 14:739 N ’20 60w
“Scattered material makes it better for reference than for straight reading. No index.”
+ − Booklist 17:56 N ’20
“His encyclopædic labours would be more convincing if it were not for his careless habit of misquotation and of quoting isolated sentences which when placed in their context convey a far different meaning.” Harold Kellock
− Freeman 1:620 S 8 ’20 300w
“Granted that all of his conclusions are supportable, Mr Walling’s method of establishing the case is far from satisfactory. What is needed at this time is less political opinion and more economic facts.” W. E. Atkins
− + J Pol Econ 28:710 O ’20 900w
“Nine-tenths of the book is made up of quotations taken chiefly from the hostile press. It is worthy of note that Mr Walling seems to have found one of the clues of bolshevist philosophy: he emphasizes the militarization of industry which took place in some parts of Russia and which is incompatible with the principle of industrial democracy. It is really a strong point, and one should begin with it; but unfortunately Mr Walling mentions it only accidentally and then again dives into the characteristic anti-bolshevist hysteria.” Gregory Zilboorg
− Nation 111:sup424 O 13 ’20 190w
“We do not know of any book from which the American reader can get a better photograph of Russian Bolshevism as portrayed and interpreted by the Bolshevists themselves.”
+ Outlook 126:111 S 15 ’20 220w
“The conclusions reached are irrefutable. Mr Walling is entirely fair in his selections and it is unnecessary for him to indulge in an argumentative attack.”
+ Review 3:270 S 29 ’20 1550w R of Rs 62:221 Ag ’20 90w The Times [London] Lit Sup p430 Jl 8 ’20 900w
WALPOLE, HUGH SEYMOUR. Captives. *$2 (1c) Doran
20–20321
Captives of their inheritance and environment are the two leading figures of this psychological novel. Maggie Cardinal’s youth had been loveless and her father’s, the miserly, sordid, unlovable vicar’s, religion repellent to her. His death, when Maggie was nineteen, was a liberation; now she would lead her own life. But she only escapes to more fanatical religion, in the house of her aunts, and her natural truthfulness and the absence of early training in conventional forms, make her both a religious and social rebel. Martin Warlock’s early fetters had been different. His intense love for his father, preacher of the Kingscote Brethren, had included the father’s religion. Long years of wandering over the earth had preserved the love but dimmed the religion. The love becomes Martin’s chain. It also becomes his conscience when Maggie’s trust confronts him with his past life. To save Maggie from himself he goes away. The story resolves itself into Maggie’s courageous struggles to remain true to her self and to her love for Martin in spite of her marriage to an unloved clergyman and of the demands of conventional society.
“We cannot, with the best will in the world, see in the result more than a task—faithfully and conscientiously performed to the best of the author’s power—but a ‘task accomplished,’ and not even successfully at that. For we feel that it is determination rather than inspiration, strength of will rather than the artist’s compulsion, which has produced ‘The captives.’” K. M.
− Ath p519 O 15 ’20 1150w
“One is especially interested in the environment, but feels a lack of the spontaneity of other Walpole novels.”
+ − Booklist 17:161 Ja ’21
“A long looked-for and worthy successor in the Walpole line. It is bigger in theme than its predecessors, more than ever a novel of life as opposed to the episodic novel.”
+ Bookm 52:369 D ’20 180w
“Its criticism of life in general, and specifically with the elements of life with which it deals, presents a many sided view so that we are able to understand clearly the weaknesses and strength of all the characters. As a chronicle of these times and as a portrayal of people we all may easily come into contact with, it is an eloquent example of the consummate art of a literary artist.” E. F. Edgett
+ Boston Transcript p4 N 13 ’20 1400w
“‘The captives’ makes Mr Walpole’s previous books look like agreeable fragments. For the wealth of substance here is not more notable than the display of architectonic power. ‘The captives’ scarcely ranks below ‘Clayhanger’ and not very greatly below ‘Of human bondage,’ and is, therefore, one of the foremost British novels of the period.”
+ Nation 111:735 D 22 ’20 1050w
“No reader will set ‘The captives’ down without the figure of Maggie Cardinal having been permanently limned upon his memory. The portrait is consistent throughout. The pictures of the band of religious fanatics, some of them charlatans, and of their sincere leader are particularly forceful. Mr Walpole’s method is that of the realist, but he has scarcely employed it to the best of its possibilities.”
+ − N Y Times p18 N 7 ’20 1000w
“In distinction of literary workmanship Mr Walpole is at his best in this story.” R. D. Townsend
+ Outlook 127:31 Ja 5 ’21 330w
“While the direct subject of the volume concerns the religious teachings of one narrow sect in England, which he designates as the Kingscote Brethren, the application of his theme is as wide as the two continents.” Calvin Winter
+ Pub W 98:1890 D 18 ’20 350w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
Review 3:384 O 27 ’20 200w
“The book is full of perturbed and uneasy striving, and is elemental both in its energy and the simplicity of its theme.”
+ Spec 125:473 O 9 ’20 640w
“The characters are essentially unlovely though undeniably strong. Despite all this, it is a story of rare power—sober, to be sure, but never morbid—and one that emphasizes the author’s advanced position in the ranks of contemporary novelists.”
+ Springf’d Republican p7a D 12 ’20 620w
“There is something wanting to make the æsthetic pleasure of reading this book as intense as it should be, which argues something wanting in the performance. It is not that one misses the mystery and excitement of ‘The dark forest,’ and ‘The secret city,’ but there is the unavoidable feeling that, after the keenest appreciation of so much artistic skill, it should be possible to put the book down with the exhilaration of having read a masterpiece; and it is not possible.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p633 S 30 ’20 900w
WALSH, JAMES JOSEPH. Medieval medicine. *$2.75 Macmillan 610.9
“This book, by an American medical authority, belongs to the series of Medical history manuals, edited by Dr John D. Comrie. It embraces the history of about 1,000 years, during which the achievements in medicine and surgery were quite as remarkable as the achievements of the middle ages in other spheres.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
+ Ath p463 Ap 2 ’20 110w
“The volume is fully within the comprehension of any educated reader, and is as entertaining as a novel.”
+ Cath World 112:112 O ’20 570w
“As to the learning and competence for his task, no question can be raised, but the method he elects to adopt is one which has brought much work on the history of science into not unjustified contempt.” C: Singer
− + Nature 105:127 Ap 1 ’20 950w + Spec 124:831 Je 19 ’20 1250w
“Severe compression has been necessary; but the process has not interfered with the lucidity or the interest of this instructive little book.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p142 F 26 ’20 70w
WALSH, JAMES JOSEPH.[[2]] Religion and health. *$2.25 (2c) Little 265.8
20–21211
The argumentation of the book turns on the influence of the mind on the body and attempts to show how a trusting faith in God tends to produce an equilibrated mind, which is the foundation of psychic health, and, by interaction, of physical health. The book is indexed and contains much sound advice as to the way of achieving both kinds of well-being. The contents are: Can we still believe? Prayer; Sacrifice; Charity; Fasting and abstinence; Holydays and holidays; Recreation and dissipation; Mortification; Excesses; Purity; Insanity; Nervous disease; Dreads; Suffering; Pain; Suicide and homicide; Longevity; The Bible and health; Health and religion.
WALSH, THOMAS. Don Folquet, and other poems. *$1.50 Lane 811
20–4773
The title poem has for its theme an episode of French history and tells how Don Folquet, a trader’s son, was first celebrated at the court of Toulouse as Prince of song, how he tired of court life and became a monk and later the Bishop of Toulouse and as such pronounced a ban on the city for its wickedness. Among the other poems are a Mother Goose sonnet series; Murillo paints “The assumption”; Catullus anent his Lesbia; The sigh for Deirdre; Ad limina.
Ath p833 D 17 ’20 160w
“Mr Walsh has composed a medieval and monastic narrative in effete, Tennysonian pentameters which singly are good but which in the aggregate are wearisome.” Mark Van Doren
− + Nation 111:sup415 O 13 ’20 40w
“To this reviewer ‘Don Folquet’ is less interesting than other things in the book. It is a poem for those who would forget reality. ‘The brownstone row,’ written in the kind of unrhymed cadence now in vogue, shows that Mr Walsh could do something with reality if romance charmed him less.”
+ − N Y Times p15 Ja 9 ’21 600w
“The execution falls short of the motive. Its merit is confined to grace, and the grace is confined to landscape.” O. W. Firkins
+ − Review 3:171 Ag 25 ’20 60w
WALSH, THOMAS, ed. Hispanic anthology. $5 Putnam 861.08
20–20332
“A collection of translations, ‘by northern Hispanophiles, of Spanish poems into English verse,’ offered as an affectionate tribute to the Spanish poet of today, whether he writes in the old world or the new. Dr Walsh, besides contributing a large portion of the versions, has garnered almost eight hundred pages of translations into something like a chronological unity, providing the selections with short prefatory notes and interspersing them with some twenty-nine portraits of ancient and modern Spanish poets.”—Freeman
“With the material at hand he has produced a creditable collection that should be at the elbow of every Hispanic student.”
+ Bookm 52:274 N ’20 190w
“Masefield’s rendering of Gustave Adolfo Becquer’s ‘They closed her eyes,’ is one of the most beautiful poems in the collection.”
+ Boston Transcript p4 Ja 5 ’21 250w
“Catholic readers will especially rejoice to possess, in this delightful form, some of the most impressive work of the great Spanish mystical poets, Fray Luis de Leon, St John of the Cross, and St Teresa.”
+ Cath World 112:542 Ja ’21 270w
“A valuable book not alone for its well-arranged collection of poems, but for the fine reproductions of famous portraits and for the biographical notes.”
+ − Dial 70:233 F ’21 100w
“The volume, despite its shortcomings, should be owned by every Hispanophile; it represents a pioneer-effort in a field agape with pitfalls, and, however much one may criticize the result as it now stands, Dr Walsh, by the mere fact of having initiated it and brought it forth, has earned the thanks of his fellow enthusiasts.” I: Goldberg
+ Freeman 2:214 N 10 ’20 720w
“Never has Spanish poetry been done so good or complete a turn in English as Mr Walsh now does it.” D. M.
+ Nation 111:784 D 29 ’20 600w
“Mr Walsh has not only edited this volume, providing it with valuable typographical and critical notes, but he has supplied it with the bulk of the translations, translations which show him possessed in an uncommon degree of one of the most valuable, as it is one of the most unselfish of literary gifts.” R: Le Gallienne
+ N Y Times p10 Ja 9 ’21 1800w
“The plan of his anthology is remarkable for its comprehensive inclusion of selections from the work of every significant figure in Hispanic poetry from the unknown author of the ‘Poema del Cid’ to the latest of Porto Rican modernistas, born in 1898. Equally important, and especially so from the point of view of the American reader unacquainted with the Spanish language, is the finely judicious selection which Mr Walsh has made in choosing not only the original Spanish poems most representative of their authors but the translations into English which constitute the anthology. For the most part these translations are of highly poetic quality.” L. R. Morris
+ Outlook 126:237 O 6 ’20 820w
WALSH, WILLIAM SEBASTIAN. Psychology of dreams. *$3 (2½c) Dodd 135
20–9817
The author views dreams from many points of view and is not pledged to any one theory. He presents the theories made popular by recent writers on psycho-analysis, but also sets forth the opinions of Freud’s critics. Contents: Historical sketch; The mind in sleep; The material of dreams; The instigators of dreams; The peculiarities of dreams; Dreams as wishes; The effects of dreams; Typical dreams; Prodromic dreams; Prophetic dreams; Nightmare; Night terrors; Somnambulism; Miscellany; The analysis of dreams; Day-dreams. There are two indexes, to proper names and to subjects. The author is a practicing physician and he has endeavored to make the work as practical as possible with a view “toward aiding sufferers from nervous affections, as well as toward promoting a better understanding of various normal and abnormal mental processes.”
“What he has written is a book of popular medicine rather than one of popular psychology. Upon psychology he does not appear to have any theories, and his very opinions are undecided. But when he writes about the ‘night terrors’ of children and the best means of mitigating them, he is full of common sense, and proves himself an admirable popular doctor.”
+ Ath p553 O 22 ’20 120w
“For all practical purposes, ‘The psychology of dreams’ is an adequate exposition of interesting data, carefully collected. The chapter on prodromic dreams is perhaps as interesting as any in the book.” C. K. H.
+ − Boston Transcript p6 Jl 17 ’20 320w
“The chapter dealing with daydreams is especially interesting and instructive and, like the other chapters, is written in so clear a manner that the beginner will have little difficulty in becoming acquainted with the dream mechanism and its meaning. On the whole it can be said that the work is an excellent medium for the student who wishes to become acquainted with the workings of the unconscious.” L. P. Clark
+ Mental Hygiene 4:983 O ’20 300w
Reviewed by R: Le Gallienne
+ N Y Times 25:4 Jl 11 ’20 2900w
“Not intended for professional reading, but distinctly popular in its appeal, this book will have lively interest for the general reader who likes to be entertained while he is being instructed. There are many sensible hygienic suggestions.”
+ Outlook 125:507 Jl 14 ’20 40w
“Dr Walsh might have made his point of view clearer, but he at least presents attractively a good deal of interesting material.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p9a Jl 4 ’20 210w The Times [London] Lit Sup p622 S 23 ’20 80w
WALSH, WILLIAM SEBASTIAN. Yours for sleep. *$2.50 Dutton 613.7
20–3569
“The title of Dr William S. Walsh’s book, ‘Yours for sleep,’ is somewhat misleading, as appears from the first sentence in his preface: ‘The object of this little volume is not only to help the sleepless to sleep, but also to instruct them on a few of the principles of right living, a disregard of which is most often the sole cause of their disorder.’ People who are not in the pink of condition will be interested in the author’s treatment of such subjects as indigestion, eye defects, diseases of the teeth and gums, value of exercise and fresh air, and general hygiene.”—N Y Times
“No one has written more helpfully or collected more valuable information for the sleepless than Dr William S. Walsh.”
+ N Y Times 25:21 Jl 25 ’20 220w + Outlook 124:563 Mr 31 ’20 40w
“It is a valuable contribution to the subject and amply repays perusal. The book is evidently the product of reflection, erudition and experience.” J. E. Kelly, M. D.
+ Survey 44:252 My 15 ’20 200w
WALSTON, SIR CHARLES (SIR CHARLES WALDSTEIN). Eugenics, civics and ethics; a lecture delivered to the summer school of eugenics, civics and ethics on August 8th, 1919, in the Arts school, Cambridge. *$1.60 Macmillan 171
“A strong plea is made in this lecture for the organisation and development of the study of ethics, or, as the author prefers to call it, ethology. The interdependence of eugenics and civics, and the foundation of both in ethics, are discussed, and warning is given against striving to produce the perfect physical specimen of man without due consideration of character and mental attributes. Towards the end of the lecture the progressive nature of ethical codes is made clear, and great stress is laid on the importance of the establishment of our ideal of the perfect man and the teaching of such practical ethics in both schools and homes.”—Nature
Nature 105:804 Ag 26 ’20 100w
“This lecture provides an excellent introduction to the author’s somewhat forbidding larger works.” B. L.
+ Survey 45:332 N 27 ’20 100w The Times [London] Lit Sup p539 Ag 19 ’20 100w
WALTERS, L. D’O., comp. Anthology of recent poetry. *$1.75 Dodd 821.08
20–20447
An anthology of modern British verse. Harold Monro, who writes the introduction, supplies the key to the collection when he says, “The best poetry is always about the earth itself and all the strange and lovely things that compose and inhabit it.” The first object, he says later, is to give pleasure. “Moreover, it is adapted to the tastes of almost any age, from ten to ninety, and may be read aloud by grandchild to grandparent as suitably as by grandparent to grandchild. It is an anthology of poems, not of names.” Among the poems and their authors are April, by William Watson; The lake isle of Innisfree, by W. B. Yeats; The donkey, by G. K. Chesterton; The south country, by Hilaire Belloc; The west wind, by John Masefield; Full moon, by Walter de la Mare; A dead harvest, by Alice Meynell; The great lover, by Rupert Brooke; Star-talk, by Robert Graves; Stupidity street, by Ralph Hodgson; The oxen, by Thomas Hardy.
+ Booklist 17:147 Ja ’21
“It is a good coat-pocket anthology.”
+ Ind 104:383 D 11 ’20 30w Nation 112:188 F 2 ’21 110w
“This collection includes some charming things by living hands of real distinction, and some others which make us regret young poets lost in the war. The anthologist has given us real pleasures, and we forego the reviewer’s privilege of grumbling about the inclusion of this or the exclusion of that.”
+ Sat R 130:398 N 13 ’20 190w
“The poems are few but well chosen from the standpoint of the seeker after clear language and well-defined images. There is little of that strained impressionism and hazy, finespun introspection which are the bane of modern verse.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 N 16 ’20 270w
WALTON, GEORGE LINCOLN. Oscar Montague—paranoiac. il *$1.50 (3c) Lippincott
19–15667
In this novel Dr Walton embodies the ideas prevalent in his non-fiction books, “Why worry,” “Those nerves,” and others. Ruth Fulton, chronic fusser, in a fit of pique, jilts her steady serious-minded fiancé and marries the town rake, who thinks most men are against him. Oscar, their son, grows up spoiled, idle, badly educated, boon companion of ruffians and loafers. He has the obsession that everyone is in a conspiracy against him, and secretly cherishes the illusion that one Nicky Bennett is trying to harm him. Accidentally meeting Nicky when in an evil mood he pulls out a revolver and shoots him; pleads insanity to escape the electric chair, but once inside the asylum finds that the law refuses to let him out. The daughter of Ruth and Gerrold is normal and lovable, and happily marries the son of her mother’s old sweetheart, after having by a bit of clever detective work “on her own,” saved the lad from being falsely convicted for the murder of her father.
“The characters are clearly drawn, and are thoroughly lifelike people, whose lives, without anything brilliant or startling, are full of quiet interest, humorous or pathetic.”
+ Ath p258 F 20 ’20 130w
“Amateurish is the only adjective to describe adequately this novel, with its wooden puppets in place of characters and its obviously mechanical situations. The book’s two redeeming features, are the occasional flashes of whimsical humor the author displays, and the disarmingly naïve manner in which he pokes fun at his own inexperience as a novelist.”
− + N Y Times 25:85 F 8 ’20 700w
“The only person of any interest in the book is the daughter, Helen, and the only episode of any interest is Helen’s discovery of the real culprit who had run over and killed her father. This has not much to do with Oscar Montague—paranoiac, who is quite a secondary character in a poor novel.”
− + The Times [London] Lit Sup p126 F 19 ’20 160w
WARD, HARRY FREDERICK. New social order. *$2.50 Macmillan 304
19–19067
“Prof. Harry F. Ward of Union theological seminary, in his new book, ‘The new social order,’ writes on social and industrial change both from economic and from ethical standpoints. His book considers in part 1 the underlying principles of the new order, in part 2, various programs, such as those proposed by the British labor party, the Russian soviets, the league of nations, various movements in the United States, and the churches.”—Springf’d Republican
“Dr Ward has been developing a very unusual fluency of speech, mental power, and moral insight that appear strikingly in this book. Although some of the chapters on the principles might well have been a little shorter and crisper, the style is always interesting, at times rising to natural and impressive eloquence; and the thought is throughout clear and weighty. This is one of the most important books for the citizen of this generation to read thoughtfully, and read at an early date.” C. J. Bushnell
+ Am J Soc 25:645 Mr ’20 1100w
Reviewed by C. G. Fenwick
Am Pol Sci R 14:341 My ’20 260w Booklist 16:190 Mr ’20
“Dr Ward has rendered a real service in bringing together in compact form so many expressions of the new spirit. He knows that they are signs rather than realities, but it is a poor skipper who cares not which way the veering flaw blows. Christians and pagans will do well to ponder them.” C: A. Beard
+ New Repub 23:208 Jl 14 ’20 950w R of Rs 61:336 Mr ’20 80w Springf’d Republican p6 F 3 ’20 80w
“In this latest of his several volumes Professor Ward makes his most notable contribution to the religious interpretation of the changing social order. Professor Ward’s discussion of the controverted points dealt with is frank and fearless, notwithstanding, perhaps the more because of, the criticism he has all along met from certain ecclesiastical and special interest groups.” Graham Taylor
+ Survey 44:121 Ap 17 ’20 850w The Times [London] Lit Sup p407 Je 24 ’20 150w
“The chapter on the Russian soviet constitution is far and away the ablest and clearest statement yet given to us upon that very important subject. Mr Ward is to be envied for his twofold gift of grasping details and of strong speculative thinking; and this combination makes his book a singularly valuable and safe guide for the student.” R. R.
+ World Tomorrow 3:157 My ’20 150w
WARD, JOHN. With the “Die-hards” in Siberia. *$2.50 (3c) Doran 957
20–7944
The author commanded a detachment of British troops sent to Siberia to support Kolchak. He blames his own government for its halfhearted support of the enterprise it had undertaken, and is especially bitter against the Americans and the Japanese. The book was written, he says, “for the private use of my sons in case I did not return.” Among the chapters are: From Hong Kong to Siberia; Bolshevik successes; Japanese methods and Allied Far-eastern policy; Administration; Omsk; Along the Urals; Russian labour; In European Russia; American policy and its results; Japanese policy and its results; General conclusions. There is an index.
“Colonel Ward is too innocent for a propagandist. We knew Colonel Ward had been no nearer to Moscow than had we in London, but we have received an impression that in far-away Siberia he fought desperately against the Red armies. Why did the coalition permit their friend to write a book and give the show away so completely? We find that Colonel Ward never met the disciplined armies of Trotsky, and, except for one engagement, the whole campaign was a series of affairs with Bolshevik bands.”
− Nation [London] 27:78 Ap 17 ’20 480w
“Colonel Ward’s book is bound to furnish material for controversy. His narrative is couched in a style that is the acme of plain speaking; he wastes no time in euphemisms or diplomatic circumlocution, but fearlessly handles facts as they come to him. From all internal evidence his book has the air of a straightforward, truthful narrative.”
+ N Y Times p26 S 26 ’20 1000w
“Colonel Ward’s narrative makes a vivid and fascinating picture of stirring events and gives throughout the impression of keen observation and sincerity.”
+ Review 3:532 D 1 ’20 1500w
“There is nothing small about this book. The countries he traversed, the observations he made, and the cause he worked for, all convey a sense of space and sanity, which no niggling pen could have produced. There is no delicate tracery of outlines here, no precious selection of words to convey an atmosphere and the genial author does not deal in suggestions and impressions, but relies almost entirely on forthright facts.”
+ Sat R 129:306 Mr 27 ’20 850w
“Colonel Ward’s account is very welcome because it is obviously honest and sincere.”
+ Spec 124:389 Mr 20 ’20 1300w The Times [London] Lit Sup p183 Mr 18 ’20 1150w
WARD, MARY AUGUSTA (ARNOLD) (MRS HUMPHRY WARD). Harvest. il *$2 (2½c) Dodd
20–6288
When Rachel Henderson took the Great End farm near Ipscombe to lead an independent life as a woman farmer, she had had a past in Canada. She had been married to a worthless man, had lost her child, had been divorced and—more than that—when fleeing from her husband’s cruelty, had succumbed to the sympathy and protection of Dick Tanner, a neighboring farmer, and had stayed with him for three days and nights. When, in the course of events at Great End farm, she becomes engaged to a young American captain, from a near-by camp, still guarding her secret, she faces a spiritual struggle. After all the confessions are made and the lover also has achieved a victory over his time honored prejudices, a bullet from the former, now hate-crazed husband, kills her in her lover’s arms.
“Mrs Ward cannot be judged by ‘Harvest,’ It is a plain mystery novel; it bears the impress of her desire to emerge from the library and to walk in the cornfields—in the new land which is war-time England. But she is unhappy in such surroundings and her serenity is gone.” K. M.
− + Ath p606 My 7 ’20 600w
“It would be an injustice to Mrs Ward to say that ‘Harvest’ is in any degree worthy of a novelist of her reputation, or indeed of many a novelist of lesser reputation. ‘Harvest,’ in common with its immediate predecessor, ‘Helena,’ and many of her later stories, might have been written by any one of a hundred English fiction writers of the hour. It is utterly conventional in form, and commonplace in plot and characterization.” E. F. E.
− Boston Transcript p4 My 5 ’20 1400w
“Written in that smoothly flowing style to which Mrs Ward’s readers have so long been accustomed, the book, while not indeed equal to her best, shows no falling off from the standard set by her recent work, but on the contrary rises somewhat above it. The novel contains some lovely pictures of the English country.” L. M. Field
+ N Y Times 25:152 Ap 4 ’20 1000w N Y Times 25:190 Ap 18 ’20 30w
“It is with peculiar pleasure that one recognizes in the late Mrs Humphry Ward’s posthumous novel, ‘Harvest,’ the qualities that have marked the very best of her fiction writing. This tale of rural England in war time is notable for the balance and unity of theme and development. It is almost astonishingly superior, for instance, to ‘Helena.’”
+ Outlook 125:280 Je 9 ’20 200w
“I for one should be unhappy if it were necessary for me to remember Mrs Ward by this book.” H. W. Boynton
− Review 2:680 Je 30 ’20 420w Spec 124:494 Ap 10 ’20 400w
“Mrs Ward does not make these women seem very real. She idealizes their ‘trim’ appearance in pseudo-masculine attire and at no time visualizes their lives and pursuits from their own standpoint. Sympathy, and an earnest effort at understanding, however, are always apparent.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a Ag 22 ’20 460w
WARNE, FRANK JULIAN. Workers at war. (Century New world ser.) *$3 Century 331
20–17812
From a dispassionate, conservative point of view the author reviews the present industrial situation with its resultant high cost of living. He accords high praise to the statesmanship of President Wilson in controlling the situation during the war and to the activities of the National war labor board. That the government now fails to realize the three essentials of industrial justice: a fair profit, a fair wage and a fair price is due to the present autocratic system of corporate organization of production. The remedy lies in the democratization of the corporation and in an American federation of consumers. A partial list of the contents is: The workers and the world war; The government as the employer; The Wilson administration’s labor policy; The National war labor board; The government, wages, and the cost of living; The vicious cycle and the labor union; Democracy in industry; The three parties to production; Industrial autocracy and the corporation.
Booklist 17:95 D ’20
Reviewed by G: Soule
+ Natlor 111:534 N 10 ’20 370w N Y Times p15 N 7 ’20 140w + Springf’d Republican p8 N 9 ’20 60w
“The book is valuable as a summary of governmental labor policies during the war, as a record of the achievements of labor and the effect of autocratic control on the wage earner and the consumer.” J. D. Hackett
+ Survey 45:287 N 20 ’20 280w
WARREN, ARTHUR. London days. *$2.50 (3c) Little
20–17401
This book of reminiscences begins in 1878, when the author, fresh from Boston, arrived in London at the age of eighteen. He made the choice because “history already made and rounded and woven into legend, the scenes among which men have lived and wrought through centuries, shaping the rich past on which we build the present” fascinated him more than the prospect of pioneering in the West. The period covers nineteen years of Journalism, nine of them as correspondent for the Boston Herald, and combines with memories and impressions of London those of celebrated personages. Contents: First glimpses of London; London in the late seventies; A Norman interlude; I take the plunge; Browning and Moscheles; Patti; John Stuart Blackie; Lord Kelvin; Tennyson; Gladstone; Whistler; Henry Drummond; Sir Henry Irving; Henry M. Stanley; George Meredith; Parnell; “Le brav’ général” (Boulanger); Index.
+ Booklist 17:154 Ja ’21
Reviewed by Margaret Ashmun
Bookm 52:346 D ’20 20w
“As journalism the writing is good; it does not assume to be more. Gossipy, wholesome, harmless, never profound, but lighted up here and there by almost poetic touches of admiration and of reverence, these reminiscences should well suit those who desire an easy introduction to the charm of biography.”
+ N Y Evening Post p9 O 30 ’20 300w
“Despite the fact that in many cases he insists on writing an old story as if it were still of vital interest, he has preserved some anecdotes that merited survival and he has drawn the portraits of several famous Britons with commendable skill.”
+ − N Y Times p4 O 24 ’20 1450w R of Rs 62:670 D ’20 60w
“His estimate not only of men, but of the social and literary forces of modern London, are trenchantly expressed.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 O 13 ’20 430w
“It is a book to evoke enthusiasm for his literary style as well as for the human interest that attaches to the people whose names are chapter headings here.”
+ Springf’d Republican p6 N 8 ’20 430w
WARREN, HOWARD CROSBY. Human psychology. il *$5 Houghton 150
19–16728
The author distinguishes between genetic and descriptive psychology: the one dealing with mental growth and mental progress from species to species; the other with mental life as it actually exists. The interest of the book centers mainly on the latter, the static view of psychology. At the end of each chapter is a list of collateral reading and some practical exercises intended to train the student in precise critical observation of mental phenomena. The contents are: The science of psychology; The organism; The neuro-terminal mechanism; Physiology of the neuron; Stimulation, adjustment, and response; Behavior; Conscious experience; The senses; The components of mental states; Primary mental states; Secondary mental states; Succession of mental states; Attitudes; Character and personality; Organized mental life. The appendix deals with some debatable problems for the benefit of the advanced students and contains: The mind-body relation; Mechanism and purpose; Neural activity; The visual process. There are also illustrations and tables; directions for performing the exercises and an index.
“Comprehensiveness, thoroughness, clear definitions, elaborate classifications and an open-minded, progressive outlook are what characterize this work. And it is not only comprehensive, in that it covers the entire field of descriptive psychology, but it is comprehensive in its grasp of the subject.” F. W. C.
+ Boston Transcript p8 Je 19 ’20 800w
“Professor Warren’s book is interesting not only in itself, but also in the indication which it gives of the phases of psychology which may be expected to survive after this period of devotion of the science to its practical applications.”
+ El School J 20:392 Ja ’20 480w
“In sum, this is a most scholarly work, which in the beginning, and generally in outward semblance, gives promise of breaking fairly away from the traditions that produced the behavioristic schism, but which is found to be still heavily burdened with the inheritance of formalism, only partially offset by its clearness, criticism, humor, and tolerance.” F. L. Wells
+ − Mental Hygiene 4:982 O ’20 660w
Reviewed by Joseph Jastrow
Nation 111:15 Jl 8 ’20 90w
“Professor Warren’s work as a whole would be an excellent introduction for beginners in psychology, though it is, of course, a work of interest for advanced students also.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p586 S 9 ’20 300w
WASHBURN, CLAUDE CARLOS. Order. *$2 (1½c) Duffield
20–4014
Marville, the beautiful residential suburb of a big city was law and order incarnate—order with all its ugly sordid features pruned away, beautified and civilized. Into it blows its antithesis, the spirit of romance in the person of Peter Gresham, Englishman, packed off to America by his aristocratic relatives. He literally explodes into Marville in a train wreck, becomes its hero, and later upsets the tranquillity of everybody with whom he comes in contact. The reactions of this spirit of romance on law and order form the substance of the story. By one man and one woman it is understood. Peter himself does not understand but is it, and when it brings him in contact with Annette Cornish, beautiful young wife of an elderly man, there is fire. Others are simply stimulated, bewildered, shaken out of their repose for the nonce. Annette and pretty Elsie Cook succumb completely to its spell. Annette, disciplined and broken-in by order from childhood, fears it and is broken by it. Elsie, the half-savage, gives herself to it unstintingly, but comes out with flying colors by dint of a saving remnant of hard practical sense. Peter turns his back on it all and is killed at Neuve Chapelle.
“Exceptionally interesting story. Here we have a book of ideas which is never didactic, but presents both sides of a case with striking fairness, a tale whose plot springs from the natural interplay of character upon character, and whose lights and shadows are managed with notable artistry.”
+ N Y Times 25:190 Ap 18 ’20 100w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
Review 2:393 Ap 17 ’20 120w + Springf’d Republican p13a Ap 18 ’20 320w
WASHBURNE, CARLETON W. Common science. il *$1.60 World bk. 502
20–15542
The book belongs to the New-world science series edited by John W. Ritchie. It is based on a collection of 2000 questions asked by school children in the upper elementary grades over a period of a year and a half. These questions are sorted and classified according to the scientific principles involved in answering them. The object of the method is to lead the child from an interest and curiosity in a specific phenomena to a general principle and to arouse his imagination by making it clear to him what part it plays in his own life. The contents are grouped under the headings: Gravitation; Molecular attraction; Conservation of energy; Heat; Radiant heat and light; Sound; Magnetism and electricity; Electricity; Mingling of molecules; Chemical change and energy; Solution and chemical action; Analysis. There are appendices, an index and illustrations.
“The book should be of value in conserving and developing the science interests of children of junior high-school age.”
+ El School J 21:154 O ’20 350w
WASSERMANN, JACOB. World’s illusion; auth. tr. by Ludwig Lewisohn. (European library) 2v *$4 (1½c) Harcourt
20–22159
This is the first book by this author, a Viennese novelist, to appear in English. It was written, he says, during the last years of the war: “Only in this way could I keep contact with and faith in humanity.” It has nothing to do with the war, but is a picture of pre-war society in central Europe, a brilliant, feverish picture of a society in the first hectic stages of decay, resting on insecure foundations of poverty, misery and crime. The first volume is devoted to the life of the upper classes, represented by Crammon, the Austrian aristocrat, Christian Wahnschaffe, son of a German captain of industry, Eva Sorel, the dancer, and almost countless others. The scenes flit from capital to capital with the haste and inconsistency of a screen drama. In the second volume we have in contrast the dregs of society, for Christian, in search of truth, has descended to the lowest depths. He gives up his fortune, studies medicine to fit himself for a field of usefulness and in the end cuts himself off entirely from his family and disappears, to continue his search elsewhere.
“Despite the penny-dreadful stuff there is a breath of serenity that reveals the artist in complete mastery of his material and despite the frank consideration of sex, there is an indubitable chastity hovering over all these pages. In fact, were one to select a single word with which to describe the mood of the work as a whole, he would most probably say, austerity.” I. G.
+ Boston Transcript p4 D 4 ’20 1400w
Reviewed by Paul Rosenfeld
+ − Freeman 2:545 F 16 ’21 2550w
“It would hold the interest through all its 787 pages if there were nothing in it save its arresting procession of grotesque incidents, but there is something more, and that something is an ironical quality that suggests the manner of the great Russians. All his characters, high and low, are pathological cases. Thus the chronicle, to an American, cannot carry much conviction despite its fine passion and its vivid detail.” H. L. Mencken
+ − Nation 111:sup668 D 8 ’20 880w
“Wassermann has created a work of strange and sombre power. The translation is unusually good.” E. A. Boyd
+ N Y Evening Post p3 Ja 15 ’21 1750w
“The book’s chief values lie in its interpretation of modern industrial society as Wassermann sees it. But surely not all European society is degenerate. Humanity as a whole is not portrayed in ‘The world’s illusion.’”
+ − N Y Times p16 N 28 ’20 1050w
WATKIN, EDWARD INGRAM. Philosophy of mysticism. *$5 Harcourt 149.3
The author differentiates between the mystic and his mystical experiences, and the metaphysics of mysticism. The mystic, he says, can not adequately state his experiences in terms of discursive reason, nevertheless the philosophy of mysticism is “the body of truth about the nature of ultimate reality and of our relationship to it to be derived from the content of mystical experience.” (Preface) He regards the Catholic church as the best vehicle of expression for this body of truth. The contents are: The divine immanence; Unity of God; The transcendence of God; The relation between the soul and God; Views of the mystic way; The negative way; The active night; Mystical experience previous to the night of spirit; The passive night of spirit; Purgatory and the passive night of spirit; The transforming union: or mystical marriage; On the mystical interpretation of Scripture; The witness of nature mysticism to the teaching of Catholic mysticism studied in the mysticism of Richard Jefferies; St John the poet; Epilogue; Notes.
Reviewed by G. E. Partridge
N Y Times p28 D 26 ’20 170w
“Mr Watkin’s book is written exclusively for his co-religionists, and others will not find it worth while to study it.”
− The Times [London] Lit Sup p387 Je 17 ’20 420w
WATSON, E. L. GRANT. Deliverance. *$2 (2½c) Knopf
20–3264
The author tells us that in this his third novel he has tried to portray the spiritual emancipation of a woman whose “love for the increasing light of her own spirit ... becomes more precious than even the unique love of woman for man.” (Preface) The scene is laid in contemporary England. The principal characters are Susan Zalesky, who is brought up in the country by her aunt, Mrs Dorothy Tyler; Paul Zalesky, Susan’s father, a philanderer, who carries on a secret love affair with Dorothy; Tom Northover, the “primitive male,” who marries Susan but makes “no claims upon her soul”; Noel Sarret, a young painter with whom Tom, who believes that the only test of morality is “the sincerity of the emotion,” goes to live shortly before the birth of Susan’s child; and Martin Hyde, a gentle young painter who loves Susan.
“However one takes it, it is a novel exposition; there is much reality in these persons, not least in the figure of Susan’s irresponsible and almost incorrigible father.” H. W. Boynton
+ Bookm 51:343 My ’20 240w
“If he had nothing else, he would be sure to win recognition for the sheer beauty of his workmanship. Indeed it is easier to quarrel with some of the natural results of his process of spiritual emancipation than with his illustrations of it in characters, or with his manner of setting it forth.” H. I. Gilchrist
+ Dial 68:794 Je ’20 2500w
“His story is not quite as persuasive as his philosophy. His women are suspiciously fine in fibre and amazingly articulate. Attractive as they are, they remain a little dim. And the dimmest of all is Susan, whom Mr Watson adores and through whose words and actions he chiefly projects his sense of the new moral world that is being created by all sorts of people in many places today.”
+ − Nation 110:373 Mr 20 ’20 600w
“Just what Susan Zalesky emancipates into is a little difficult to conceive, and sounds, on the whole, much less interesting than the rather fascinating story of her procedure. Judged more freely, however, ‘Deliverance’ is interesting and delightful for other qualities than its processes. It comes in many ways as near the art of the Russian novelists as any English novel.” R. V. A. S.
+ − New Repub 24:128 S 29 ’20 430w
“Each reader will determine for himself whether or no Mr Watson’s message is worth this unpleasant ragout.”
− N Y Times 25:240 My 9 ’20 550w
WATSON, JOHN BROADUS. Psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist. il *$2.50 Lippincott 150
20–447
“A treatise on the new American methods in psychology known as behaviourism. The essential feature of this school is that it regards man purely as a ‘reacting mass,’ and endeavours to determine his reactions without importing into the observation preconceived ideas, affecting interpretation. The present author, indeed, does not find it necessary to use such terms as ‘sensation,’ ‘perception,’ ‘attention,’ ‘will,’ ‘image,’ and the like. He states that he does not know what they mean, and he suggests that no one succeeds in using them consistently.”—Ath
+ Ath p557 Ap 23 ’20 120w
“By consistently disregarding all the essential steps in ‘thinking’ in which most psychologists (and the world at large) are interested, and by cavalierly treating the problems in which the behaviorist happens not to be interested, he produces a ‘psychology’ which is as true as the railway maps of any one company showing only the towns on its line, with its own route straight and prominent, and rival systems indicated if at all by lightly drawn and circuitous detours.” Joseph Jastrow
− Nation 111:15 Jl 3 ’20 850w
“The present writer as he reads the book finds himself in continual expectation that now he is coming to the end of the physiology and the beginning of the psychology, but is continually disappointed. This book may inspire, and will direct, the student to practical researches of the highest interest to the advance of science. To this extent every psychologist will welcome it. It is difficult to find anything in its principle to disagree with, save only its limitation and negation.” H. W. Carr
+ − Nature 105:512 Je 24 ’20 900w
WATSON, ROBERT.[[2]] Stronger than his sea. *$1.90 (2c) Doran
20–18387
Much of the charm of the story lies in the quaint Scotch dialect of its characters and much of Sandy Porter’s winsomeness in his Scotch sturdiness. Five when his father died, he began to help his mother support the family when he was six. He carried milk to the customers of a dairy night and morning throughout his school years and still found time for boyish mischief. How he led his schoolmates in a strike against a superannuated tyrannical master, and other escapades is amusingly told. In old Doctor Telford he had a wise friend who kept an eye on him and made things possible without making them too easy for him. So it was that the penniless boy reached his goal and became a veterinary surgeon. He also won the old doctor’s daughter, Doreen, altho there was a rival and Sandy blundered in his impulsiveness. But his poetry helped.
Cleveland p105 D ’20 40w
“The story of the young man Sandy is fully as attractive, if not so adventurous as that of the child, and both are delightfully told.”
+ Boston Transcript p4 F 9 ’21 190w
“‘Stronger than his sea’ illustrates perfectly the difference between the novel that is literature and the story that is simon-pure entertainment. It is good of its kind—‘light fiction’ that scarcely aspires to the artistic dignity of holding the mirror up to life.”
+ N Y Times p26 D 26 ’20 440w
WATTS, MRS MARY STANBERY.[[2]] Noon mark. *$2.50 Macmillan
20–18922
“It is emphatically an American story, full of the flavor of American life—American life, that is to say, as it is lived in such a small middle-western city as that one in which the scene of ‘The noon mark’ is laid. As this story progresses, the dominant figure is discovered to be that of Nettie Stieffel, whose father was in the accounting department of the Travelers and Traders’ bank. Clean-minded and clean-hearted, generous, brave, efficient, unimaginative and consequently a little hard, without an ounce of romance in her composition, honest and loyal to the core, and incidentally very good looking, she develops into an easily recognized type of American business woman, capable, hard-working, intelligent and dependable. When we leave her she is a married woman who has, as she herself says, ‘everything anybody could want,’ including a motor car—and happiness.”—N Y Times
“It is a story to be placed, by those who respond to this story-teller’s genial-ironic kind of thing, beside ‘The Boardman family’ and ‘The rise of Jennie Cushing,’—not a great novel but a real and solid one.” H. W. Boynton
+ Bookm 52:344 Ja ’21 380w
“It is, indeed, a small fragment of American life that Mrs Watts has described in ‘The noon mark,’ but it is a very real fragment and an extremely realistic portrayal of it.” E. F. Edgett
+ Boston Transcript p6 N 17 ’20 1400w
“Mrs Watts’s new novel is more rewarding in transit than in termination. The conclusion is indefinite in its effect, ending on an interrogation which does not flow naturally out of the materials with which the author started.” L. B.
+ − Freeman 2:406 Ja 5 ’21 130w
“In the loose-jointed aggregation which is our United States, there can be, we must conclude, no ‘American’ novel. There can be only sectional novels, the portraiture of a sort, of a class. Of these Mrs Watts is a valuable chronicler. She is selective. It is not the light of imagination that lives in her books, but the steady rays of the impartial sun.” Alice Brown
+ N Y Evening Post p4 D 4 ’20 880w
“The author’s comments on it all are cleverly phrased, with occasional touches of irony which lend spice to the story. She is a realist, unspoiled by pessimism.”
+ N Y Times p22 N 14 ’20 950w
“In construction and the centralizing of interest in one large situation the novel is less successful than some of its predecessors.”
+ − Outlook 126:690 D 15 ’20 60w
“Her localism, as always, is faultless. But it is in characterization, the ultimate test, that she achieves most. Her Nettie Stieffel is as actual and unescapable a person as Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt—or her own Jennie Cushing.” H. W. Boynton
+ |Review 3:623 D 22 ’20 440w
“The story is not so organic as Mrs Watts’s best, but will arouse a considerable degree of interest among readers.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 2 ’21 670w
WAUGH, ALEC. Loom of youth; with a preface by Thomas Seccombe. *$1.90 (1½c) Doran
20–8276
This novel of English school life was written some three years ago when the author was barely past seventeen. It is a boy’s criticism of the English public school, its emphasis on sports at the expense of scholarship, its lack of mental discipline, its low standard of morals, and the dull formalism of its teaching, written while these matters were fresh in mind. Midway in his school course Gordon Caruthers accidentally discovers the delights of English poetry and Byron, Swinburne and Rossetti influence his development. The story is carried into the first years of the war and the author shows how school life was affected by outward events. For one thing, the glamor was stripped from athleticism and school sports.
“He has not ranted. He has not preached. But he has spoken the truth as it appeared to him, swiftly, unalterably. It must remain, I think, for a long time, as one of the few remarkable records of school life which this generation or any generation has furnished.” D. L. M.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ag 7 ’20 1050w
“‘The loom of youth’ is apt to bore American readers because the viewpoint is annoying, and the action and dialogue not sufficient to stimulate reading.”
− + Cath World 111:693 Ag ’20 380w
“There are very definite signs of youth in the minuteness of detail in all matters and in the exhaustive descriptions of cricket and football matches, but the writing on the whole is astonishingly mature.”
+ − Ind 104:66 O 9 ’20 280w
“What is fresh in the book is its clear insight into the morality of the boys, especially in their relations with the masters and its objective projection of its complex and busy scene.”
+ Nation 110:625 My 8 ’20 300w
“A very evident sincerity and an infinite patience in the transcription of details give a value to this book altogether greater than that of most of the innumerable books about Harrow, Eton, and other similar institutions.” S. C. C.
+ New Repub 23:94 Je 16 ’20 550w
“The breath of a dogged sincerity, a determination to set down nothing but the truth, emanates from every page. As a narrative of sustained power and interest the book holds up well. Mr Waugh’s characters are broadly drawn but they do give forth an intimate sense of reality. It is the meticulous eye of Mr Waugh that plays a large part in the book’s success.”
+ N Y Evening Post p2 Ap 24 ’20 850w
“The book is one which will probably be of far greater interest to an English than to an American audience. It would seem to be, take it all in all, a book of no little promise.”
+ N Y Times 25:220 My 2 ’20 600w
“Everything in this really spirited book is sane, equable, intellectually mature. It may be read either as a narrative of a boy’s school days or as a treatise on education. Remarkable to relate, it is about equally instructive and diverting from either point of view.
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Je 20 ’20 550w
WEALE, BERTRAM LENOX PUTNAM, pseud. (BERTRAM LENOX SIMPSON). Wang the ninth. *$1.75 (3c) Dodd
20–16797
Shrewdness, courage, loyalty, honesty and resourcefulness are this remarkable Chinese boy’s equipment. Of the poorest peasantry, he is early an orphan, and in shifting for himself he comes to be a groom in the household of one of the “foreign devils.” During the Boxer rebellion he remains with his master, partly from ignorance of what it is all about, partly from self-interest and an instinct of loyalty. He is sent on a dangerous mission to the allied army, bearing the message rolled up in his ear. Reaching the army after a perilous journey he is given a return message. This is too bulky for his ear, so in a moment of panic of discovery, he swallows it. Of this he calmly informs his master, when at last, spent and exhausted, he returns to him, adding, “and by your blessing I shall now die a natural death.”
“The book is throughout written, at least theoretically, from the native point of view, and has, in consequence, an unusual and fascinating quality.”
+ Ath p523 O 15 ’20 120w
“There are many dramatic adventures and a rich background of Chinese life.”
+ Booklist 17:74 N ’20
“A good picture of peasant childhood in China as well as a first-rate adventure story for boys.”
+ |Cleveland p107 D ’20 40w
“A highly interesting book, worth while both for its story element and for the faithful picture of the humble inner life of the great sleeping empire off in the yellow West.”
+ N Y Times p27 S 12 ’20 260w
“The tale is one of adventure and courage, and the character of the Chinese boy is unusual and decidedly interesting.”
+ Outlook 126:238 O 6 ’20 50w The Times [London] Lit Sup p653 O 7 ’20 80w
WEAVER, GERTRUDE (RENTON) (MRS HAROLD BAILLIE WEAVER) (G. COLMORE, pseud.). Thunderbolt. *$1.90 Seltzer
20–7061
“Mrs Bonham takes her engaged daughter for a trip on the continent. In Germany Dorrie injures a foot and is sent with her French maid to Professor Reisen, a famous clinician with whom Mrs Bonham has become acquainted. Instead of taking the girl to the doctor’s private office, the blundering maid takes her to a clinic conducted by Dr Reisen for experimental purposes. Shortly after this a suspicious sore appears on Dorrie’s arm, followed by a similar one on her lip. Alarmed by the sores, Mrs Bonham takes her daughter to a specialist in Paris, and is filled with horror when she learns the name of the disease with which Dorrie was inoculated in Dr Reisen’s clinic. Back in England Mrs Bonham tells Dorrie’s fiancé what has happened. The young man promptly ends the engagement. Dorrie does not learn of her lover’s defection and is kept ignorant of her disease. The old nurse, who has been sent for, realizes the truth of Dorrie’s statement that it would kill her if her fiancé stopped loving her. She determines that Dorrie must never learn the truth, and, by a noble and tragic sacrifice, keeps it from her.”—N Y Times
Dial 69:210 Ag ’20 80w
“This sorry fable is quite devoid of the melodramatic ‘punch,’ the thrill of spurious horror which was, obviously, its one attainable merit. Honestly written, it would have been a rattling shilling shocker. Aping the sober garb and earnest manners of a modern novel, it has succeeded in being hailed—for various reasons—as a masterpiece.”
− Nation 110:772 Je 5 ’20 280w
“‘The thunderbolt’ has all the exquisite artistry of Swinnerton at his best, and a realism as ultimate and magic as Leonard Merrick’s. It is hard to overpraise this book, and you are unfair to yourself if you do not acquaint yourself with it.” Clement Wood
+ N Y Call p10 My 9 ’20 1350w
“The two parts of the book might have been written by different authors in different ages. Absolutely nothing prepares the reader for the shock he receives when the author launches her thunderbolt. An ugly story with an undeniable dramatic dénouement.”
− + N Y Times 25:198 Ap 18 ’20 550w
“Having once read the book, no competent judge of good craftsmanship would dare refuse to acknowledge the unfaltering purpose, the patient insistent building up, the cumulative power of this grim book.” Calvin Winter
+ Pub W 97:994 Mr 20 ’20 380w Sat R 127:484 My 17 ’19 60w
“It might have been, within its limits, a little masterpiece. But in the groping for tragedy the author fails and the conclusion is merely shocking. The most captivating human figure is the nurse, Hannah.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p17 O 5 ’19 460w
WEBB, CLEMENT CHARLES JULIAN. Divine personality and human life. (Library of philosophy) *$4 (*10s 6d) Macmillan 231
20–12837
“This volume contains the second part of the Gifford lectures, delivered in the University of Aberdeen in 1918–1919.” (Nation) “In the first series of these lectures, ‘God and personality,’ it was argued that by a ‘personal God’ is meant a God with whom a personal relationship is possible for his worshippers; that such a relationship is associated with the higher forms of religious experience; that in Christianity certain difficulties which attach to the conception of the personality of God are avoided by the assertion that God is not a single person; and it was claimed, not indeed that this position was free from difficulties, but that it was attended by fewer and less serious difficulties than its rivals. In the present course personality in man is examined in the light of these conclusions; the various activities in which this human personality expresses itself—economic, scientific, aesthetic, moral, political, and religious—being viewed in relation to the supreme spiritual reality revealed to us in the experience given in religion. The three concluding lectures consider the rank to be assigned in the kingdom of reality to the finite individual person.” (Spec)
“A careful reader will very seldom even suspect him of confusion in ideas; there is hardly a word and—once the sentences have been construed—hardly an argument to baffle an intelligent schoolboy. Yet, with all these pitfalls avoided, we are defrauded of a good philosophical style, the worthy yet popular expression of a valuable thought, by the elementary failure to construct an unambiguous and balanced sentence.”
+ − Ath p74 Jl 16 ’20 750w
“It belongs to the front ranks of its class. Altogether the reading of the book is a rich experience, and its comparative freedom from the jargon of the philosophical schools makes it available for a much wider circle of readers than is usually the case with this kind of literature.” R. R.
+ Nation 111:sup417 O 13 ’20 880w
“In Mr Webb, terminology is reduced to a minimum. His argument can be followed by any fairly well read man without difficulty, and this is no small praise.”
+ Spec 124:51 Jl 10 ’20 1400w
“Mr Webb could not, we think, publish a book that did not contain acute and illuminating pages, but he certainly does not show here anything like the constructive force, or the lucidity of exposition, which marked his earlier volume.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p790 D 2 ’20 980w
WEBB, CLEMENT CHARLES JULIAN. God and personality; being the Gifford lectures delivered in the University of Aberdeen in the years 1918–1919. (Library of philosophy) *$3 Macmillan 231
19–14097
“All students of the philosophy of religion know that Mr C. C. J. Webb, fellow of Magdalen college, Oxford, has, within the last few years, won for himself a position in the front rank among philosophical critics and defenders of religion. Mr Webb’s argument [in this book] amounts to a philosophical defense of the Christian conception of and belief in God. Mr Webb’s emphasis falls wholly on the value of ‘religious experience’ as affording the profoundest clues to the nature of the world we live in. He holds that religious experience testifies to the reality of God and of the worshipper’s personal intercourse with God. More than this, he holds that the doctrine of the trinity, with its distinction of three persons within the Godhead, renders in language admittedly metaphorical, a differentiation within the all-enfolding divine life which is required for an adequate interpretation of religious experience in its highest, i.e., Christian form.”—New Repub
“A fine and characteristic specimen of the best type of modern Oxford philosophy. Unlike so many modern English philosophers, Mr Webb has an admirably pure and simple vocabulary. It is the more to be regretted that his syntax is often obscure and even inaccurate.”
+ − Ath p333 My 16 ’19 800w + Booklist 16:221 Ap ’20
“Mr Clement C. J. Webb has written a book on ‘God and personality’ which is a remarkable achievement in more ways than one. He has managed to discuss a difficult and abstract problem in delightfully clear and often beautiful language. And in doing so he has shown that he possesses in considerable degree the quality of which real philosophers are made. Mr Webb’s answers are interesting, and in the main we may agree with them, but they are certainly not incontestable.” Lincoln MacVeagh
+ − Dial 68:785 Je ’20 1650w
“From Aristotle to Bergson, from the fathers of the church to Benedetto Croce, from Dante to H. G. Wells, he moves with equal mastery, and when he measures swords with Bradley or Bosanquet, the honors are not all on their side.” R. F. A. H.
+ New Repub 22:163 Mr 31 ’20 1650w Sat R 127:584 Je 14 ’19 850w
WEBB, SIDNEY, and WEBB, BEATRICE (POTTER) (MRS SIDNEY WEBB).[[2]] Constitution for the socialist commonwealth of Great Britain. *$4.25 (*13s 6d) Longmans 335
20–18152
“The volume falls into three parts. The first is a survey of the existing signs and agencies of collectivism: the democracies of consumers (cooperative societies, friendly societies, municipalities, and national services); the democracies of producers (trade unions, copartnership concerns, and professional associations); and finally the political democracy of king, lords, and commons. The second part of the volume deals with the national structure that is to be set up in the socialist commonwealth. The lords are to be swept away and there are to be two parliaments—one political and the other social. Both are to be elected by universal suffrage but the idea of a vocational or economic soviet is utterly rejected. In the third part the authors propose to administer nationalized interests through special committees of the social parliament—one committee for each.”—Nation
Ath p809 D 10 ’20 680w Booklist 17:96 D ’20
“The idea that foreign affairs, the maintenance of order, the administration of justice, colonies, and defense can be separated from cities, municipalities, and national services; economics seems utterly chimerical. The third part of the volume is real, stimulating, suggestive. It is here that the Webbs have laid all students of government under a great debt. They do not speculate, but with clear eyes face the terrible tangle of realities that must make up any order new or old.” C: A. Beard
+ − Nation 111:sup664 D 8 ’20 1250w
“There is no field of social organization they do not enter; and there is no field where their analysis is not at once amazingly suggestive and incomparably well-informed. Not indeed, that there is not ample room for criticism and even criticism of fundamentals. What Mr and Mrs Webb have done is to cast a light upon the mechanism of government such as it has not had since Mr Graham Wallas’s ‘Human nature in politics’ in one field, and Bagehot’s ‘English constitution’ in another.” H. J. L.
+ New Repub 24:198 O 20 ’20 1100w
“It deserves the careful study of every person who desires to see a better system, and who is anxious that that system be inaugurated with the maximum of intelligence, the minimum of pain.”
+ Socialist R 10:29 Ja ’21 190w
“Lenin would contemptuously sweep the whole thing aside as lackeyism in the interests of the bourgeoisie. We are not prepared to do that, but we cannot help arriving at a like degree of condemnation for entirely different reasons.”
− Spec 124:240 Ag 21 ’20 1650w
“What the authors fail to appreciate is that to forbid the social parliament to interfere with conduct by making it criminal will be of no effect; the body in control of the price system can enforce conformity to prescribed economic conduct by methods which, though subtler, are no less effective than the criminal law—methods by which the present capitalists exercise their dictatorship. This criticism is not intended to detract from the merits of an extraordinarily able work.” R. L. Hale
+ − Survey 45:514 Ja 1 ’21 750w
WEBB, SIDNEY, and WEBB, BEATRICE (POTTER) (MRS SIDNEY WEBB). History of trade unionism. rev ed *$7.50 (*21s) Longmans 331.87
20–10724
“‘The history of trade unionism,’ is issued in a revised edition. The original work, published in 1894, broke off in 1890. The present edition carries the story on to the beginning of 1920. There is little alteration in the main part of the book, which describes the origin and progress of trade unionism in the United Kingdom.”—Springf’d Republican
Reviewed by J: R. Commons
+ Am Econ R 10:834 D ’20 1350w
“They are quite clear in their own minds as to the relative importance of facts and ideas.”
+ Ath p762 Je 11 ’20 320w
“Americans particularly will find this study of value, because the British labor movement is more like our own than that of any other country, and its differences from ours are consequently more significant.” G: Soule
+ Nation 110:803 Je 12 ’20 950w
“The new part of the work would be very valuable if it stood alone, but it gains immensely from coming after the story of the building-up of the movement.”
+ Nation [London] 27:76 Ap 17 ’20 1200w
“In solidity of knowledge, in massiveness of generalization, in the firm grasp of complex details, Mr and Mrs Webb have certainly no superiors and possibly no equals. If they lack any single quality, it is an inability to make the institution reflect the men who build it.” H. J. L.
+ − New Repub 22:359 My 12 ’20 1450w
“The authors unite a thorough knowledge of their subject with a sympathetic understanding of the struggle of the masses, making a combination that is rare in historians. A number of appendices and a good index, together with good binding and paper, make this work heartily welcome.” James Oneal
+ N Y Call p10 Jl 4 ’20 750w
“Mr Webb, like most Fabian Socialists, is cultured, persuasive, smooth-spoken. In the gentlest words possible he has pronounced the failure of trade unionism. We can be grateful to him for his exposure of its vices.”
+ − Sat R 129:412 My 1 ’20 900w
“‘The history of trade unionism’ might easily have been a very great work; even as it stands it possesses high merit; but its partisanship divests it of authority, and the reader must be continually on his guard lest he accept its statements without independent evidence of their truth.”
+ − Spec 124:621 My 8 ’20 850w Springf’d Republican p8 My 1 ’20 180w
“I cannot feel that even the Webbs have been able to achieve the same objectivity in dealing with the almost contemporary records as they did with earlier data and still it is of more value to have their original great work brought up to-date than it would be to obtain a separate narrative covering only recent industrial history.”
+ − Survey 44:313 My 29 ’20 480w The Times [London] Lit Sup p126 F 19 ’20 40w
“It remains unchallenged, after a generation not by any means barren in books on industrial affairs, as the standard work on the rise and development of trade unions. It is a pity that the greater part of the section given to the railway trade unions in the new edition should be too biased to be historical.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p206 Ap 1 ’20 600w
“A vital change is to be noted in his viewpoint. A quarter of a century ago he wrote primarily as a scholar, though from a frankly avowed moderate socialist standpoint. Now he writes, equally frankly, as an avowed political partisan, as a statesman of the Labor party. Despite all this Mr Webb’s analysis of the present labor and political conditions in Great Britain is invaluable. It is not difficult, after his bias is once known, to allow for his prejudices.” W: E. Walling
+ − Yale R n s 10:220 O ’20 800w
WEBLING, PEGGY. Saints and their stories. il *$5 (9c) Stokes 922
The stories of saints related in this edition de luxe are: St Christopher; St Denis; St Helena; St Alban; St George; St Nicholas; St Ambrose; St Martin; St Augustine of Hippo; St Bride; St Gregory the Great; St Augustine of Canterbury; St Etheldreda; St Swithin; St Dunstan; St Hugh of Lincoln; St Zita; St Francis of Assisi; St Catherine of Siena; St Joan of Arc. There are eight full page illustrations in color by Cayley Robinson.
“Written particularly for Catholic children, but with much in it to interest all young lovers of beautiful stories.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p4 N 28 ’20 150w
“The volume’s chief value lies in the narrative of those saints not well known. The illustrations are beautiful.”
+ Outlook 127:32 Ja 5 ’21 50w
WEBSTER, HENRY KITCHELL. Mary Wollaston. *$2 (1½c) Bobbs
20–18250
Two emotional situations complicate this novel. One is the triangular relationship involving Mary, her father, and Paula, her beautiful stepmother. The other grows out of the fact that Mary, while engaged in war work in New York, has had a casual love affair with a young soldier bound for overseas. Once she tries to tell her brother, but he will not listen. Again she tries to tell her father, but he refuses to believe, thinking that Mary in her innocence doesn’t know what she is talking about. Finally she flings the truth in the face of young Graham Stannard, who in asking her to marry him, persists in treating her as a whited saint. The situation is saved by Anthony March, who listens to Mary’s story, understands it and loves her none the less for it. Anthony also resolves the difficulty in the other situation. Anthony is a composer of genius and Paula is an opera singer, and there is much musical talk in the story.
“This will be pronounced immoral by some readers. The analysis of women’s thoughts and emotions is illuminating; a book that women rather than men will read.”
+ − Booklist 17:75 N ’20
“Mary Wollaston and her Anthony March have discovered that ‘sentimentality is the most cruel thing in the world’; but it would be difficult to find another word for the atmosphere with which this story invests its realism of fact. That is why I for one find little health in it.” H. W. Boynton
− Bookm 52:344 Ja ’21 400w Cleveland p106 D ’20 60w
“This novel has both the faults and the merits of its subject-matter, which is a representative cross-section of American metropolitan life in the immediate wake of the great war. It has neither faults nor merits of its own. To apply to it the canons of literary criticism would be an empty futility, for it has nothing to do with literature. It is, in three words, a competent realistic novel.” Wilson Follett
+ − N Y Evening Post p3 N 27 ’20 1950w
“The most interesting thing about ‘Mary Wollaston’ and the chief reason for reading it is that it is so accurately contemporary. The young generation seem to be frightening their elders in these days, and perhaps this novel will explain the fear without allaying it.” W: L. Phelps
+ N Y Times p8 O 31 ’20 640w + Outlook 126:470 N 10 ’20 70w
“It is most cleverly compact and as neat as a good play in its action. But the climax lacks something of convincing the reader. ‘Mary Wollaston’ is well worth reading. And if read, it demands to be thought about. If you like stimulating novels, you cannot find a more satisfying one than Mr Webster’s latest.” E. P. Wyckoff
+ − Pub W 98:657 S 18 ’20 350w
“One finds that the title is inappropriate. Indeed, not a few will conclude that Mary never quite attains a position of first importance.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p9a N 14 ’20 550w
WEBSTER, NESTA H. French revolution; a study in democracy. *$8 Dutton 944.04
“‘The siege of the Bastille—the march on Versailles—the two invasions of the Tuileries—the massacres of September—and finally the reign of terror—these form the history of the French people throughout the revolution. The object of this book is, therefore, to relate as accurately as conflicting evidence permits, the true facts about each great crisis, to explain the motives that inspired the crowds, the means employed to rouse their passions; and thereby to throw a truer light on the role of the people, and ultimately on the revolution as the great experiment in democracy.’”—The Times [London] Lit Sup Jl 24
“The method of the book is as unscientific as the conception of the problem. It was a pure waste of time to write such a book, and it is unfortunate that it was ever published, for it is attractively written, has all the earmarks of a scientific work, and may do much harm, if it finds its way into public libraries and into the hands of readers incapable of forming a correct estimate of its value.” F. M. Fling
− Am Hist R 25:714 Jl ’20 600w
“That there is a kernel of truth in each of these factors which fomented trouble and disorder in France, as there is at the bottom of every caricature, none will deny; but to magnify them a hundred-fold as the great cause of the revolution is to caricature, not correct, history. Mrs Webster’s volume is exceedingly interesting: it may lead historians to pay more attention to these new factors which she emphasizes.” S. B. Fay
− + Am Pol Sci R 14:732 N ’20 470w
“The book is interesting reading. A good deal of the evidence accepted by Mrs Webster is very shaky, since it consists of accounts given after the ending of the terror by men who wished to exculpate themselves at the expense of their colleagues.” B. R.
+ − Ath p943 S 26 ’19 1850w
“It overstates its case in an endeavor to emphasize the dangers and the downright wickedness of revolutions and revolutionaries. It is, perhaps, too long. Certainly it is prejudiced. But it is a good piece of work, and good reading, for all that, and any account of the French revolution must reckon with it and the material on which it is based.” W. C. Abbott
+ − Bookm 51:570 Jl ’20 1850w
“The style is fascinating, the temper sincere, and the argument (granting the hypotheses) convincing. But there are faults of method, prejudices of standpoint, and manipulations of material, which make the book not only a most biased interpretation of the French revolution but one of the most mischievous and malicious attacks on democracy that have come to our notice. The book is called ‘a study in democracy’; it is a studied insult to democracy from cover to cover.” D. S. Muzzey
− + Nation 111:300 S 11 ’20 2200w
“Allowing for Mrs Webster’s tenderness for that old régime, to which in other respects she is only just, she deserves our devout thanks for having shown that the French revolution was not at all a democratic movement. To a large circle of younger readers who are more and more getting their knowledge of historical events from text books and novels, this volume will prove a real delight.” M. F. Egan
+ − N Y Times 25:10 Je 27 ’20 2350w
“She has written an interesting and ingenious survey from her own special angle, but one can not help feeling that the angle is a somewhat narrow one.”
+ − Review 2:653 Je 23 ’20 1300w
“Is there anything left to be said on the subject? Frankly, we thought not, and the first glance at Mrs Webster’s book seemed to confirm this opinion. Yet Mrs Webster makes good. The style of the book has no particular individuality: it is plain, straightforward and devoid of ornament. But the author is scrupulous in affording ample data for every statement made.”
+ − Sat R 128:386 O 25 ’19 900w + Sat R 129:29 Ja 10 ’20 950w
“Mrs Webster, by drawing largely on Royalist and Moderate sources, supplies a much-needed corrective to the many books which glorify even the wild and wicked excesses of the revolution. Yet she goes too far in suggesting that the revolution was unnecessary and disastrous.”
+ − Spec 123:245 Ag 23 ’19 1700w The Times [London] Lit Sup p402 Jl 24 ’19 100w
“Mrs Webster’s book is full of vivacious interest, and the lines of her argument are followed through the mass of detail with an artistic skill. Her ardour communicates to the reader a desire to get close to facts. But the facts may not be the same as Mrs Webster’s, for though she has read extensively and marshalled her authorities, her use, and often her choice, of them shows how strongly she is bent on proving a case. So she does not convince us that her book is the one true history of the revolution.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p443 Ag 21 ’19 1650w
Reviewed by W. C. Abbott
Yale R n s 9:879 Jl ’20 1150w
WEIGALL, ARTHUR EDWARD PEARSE BROME. Madeline of the desert. *$2 (1½c) Dodd
20–20189
Madeline had been born beyond the pale of respectable society at Port Said in Egypt; had grown up in ignorance of conventional morality and lived in open defiance of it until she was twenty-three. But there had been growing pains and a crisis came when she must either die or be reborn. Father Gregory—retired from ecclesiastical honors in England to a hermitage in the desert—and his nephew, Robin Beechcroft, the young explorer, help her to a rebirth. The former points her to her supreme need, Christ, the latter loves and makes her his wife. The story traces Madeline’s unfoldment as a woman, a thinker and a seer. She and Robin pass through trials, even tragedies, but it is Madeline’s fineness and clear-sightedness that at last saves the day for them both.
“Under its appearance of superficiality there is a quite unusual and remarkable understanding of the character of Madeline.” K. M.
+ − Ath p702 My 28 ’20 580w
“Mr Weigall’s novel grows weaker with the turning of pages, and there is no marvelous rising above climax after climax. Madeline, vivid at first, becomes more and more pallid as the tale progresses.”
+ − Boston Transcript p12 D 8 ’20 310w
“It is impossible to withhold from Mr Weigall a tribute of admiration for the amazing fluency and fertility of imagination which enable him to make a long story out of very scant material. Whether the story was worth making is another question.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p22 O 23 ’20 250w
“The author’s vivid pictures of Egyptian life are explained by the fact that he has lived in Egypt a great deal, and has the faculty of presenting pleasingly and convincingly that which he sees. On the whole, he has presented to the world a very readable, as well as clever, book.”
+ N Y Times p22 N 21 ’20 220w
WEIGLE, LUTHER ALLAN. Talks to Sunday-school teachers. *$1.25 Doran 268
20–6997
“While much of the subject matter is in essence that contained in ‘The pupil and the teacher,’ it is given here in the form of delightful chatty chapters, supplementing the previous work. The book brings the same pleasure and information that often comes from the question period following a lecture. The first chapters deal with the pupil and seem to be repetition of much that has already appeared for the use of the teacher of religious education, though special mention should be made of chapter 12, ‘How religion grows.’ The last chapters are most suggestive, especially ‘Learning by doing’ and the ‘Dramatic method of teaching.’”—Springf’d Republican
“Professor Weigle is a trained pedagogue who has lost neither his enthusiasm, his love of youth, nor his sound common sense, and is excellently fitted to be the teacher of teachers that he proves himself to be by the test of his last book.”
+ Bib World 54:648 N ’20 170w
“Written popularly and made effective for more intensive work by chapter questions and carefully chosen bibliographies.”
+ Booklist 16:301 Je ’20
“The lists for further reading at the end of each chapter are excellent and quite up to date.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 18 ’20 110w
WELLES, WINIFRED. Hesitant heart. *$1 Huebsch 811
20–6983
Poems reprinted from the North American Review, the Century, the Liberator, Contemporary Verse and other periodicals. Among the titles are: The hesitant heart; From a Chinese vase; The unfaithful April; Driftwood; Threnody; Love song from New England; Moonflower; Surf; Setting for a fairy story.
“Miss Welles’s is an art at times as ingenuous as Emily Dickinson’s though always classical in its impeccable taste.” R. M. Weaver
+ Bookm 51:457 Je ’20 280w
“The mood of the book is April’s mood. The process by which the poems arrive at bloom is exactly the process by which April arrives at fulfilment. You can only feel the pulse of it, the subtle and mysterious thrill in it, and by that realization know without defining the loveliness of a miracle.” W. S. B.
+ Boston Transcript p10 Ap 3 ’20 1800w
“Like a handful of golden pollen scattered on the wind is the little book of Winifred Welles’ poems, ‘The hesitant heart.’ Simple, fresh, luminous, of the early morning, they are as whimsical as charm itself, and as reticent in their cool distinction.”
+ Freeman 1:71 Mr 31 ’20 100w + Nation 111:247 Ag 28 ’20 70w
“Hers is a limited gamut, an obviously restricted range. Yet, within that range, her voice is pure, the art is skilful and the melodies exquisite. None of the younger singers has communicated with more charm her accents of soft delight mingled with a perturbed wistfulness. Even her more intense affirmations have a timid tenderness.” L: Untermeyer
+ New Repub 23:156 Je 30 ’20 550w
“‘The hesitant heart’ is a lovely collection of fragile lyrics. Miss Welles has a deft and magical touch all her own, a slight and restrained magic, but an authentic one.”
+ N Y Call p11 Ag 1 ’20 180w
“Miss Welles is no purveyor of novelties. She cannot be called original, or even inventive. Yet she has a magic of lyrical speech that gives the reader a sense of new delight and of a new personality in the world of lyric artists.”
+ N Y Times 25:193 Ap 18 ’20 180w
“Her technique is much like that of Miss Millay, although she is not so mature as an artist. But this is not to say that Miss Welles has imitated Miss Millay. She is very much herself.”
+ N Y Times p15 Ja 9 ’21 220w + Springf’d Republican p9a Jl 4 ’20 70w
WELLS, CAROLYN (MRS HADWIN HOUGHTON), comp. Book of humorous verse. *$7.50 Doran 827
20–20663
This volume is intended for everyone of the human race who possesses the power of laughter. The compiler calls attention to the book as a compilation, not a collection, as no cover of one book could contain the latter. The poems are classified under the headings: Banter; The eternal feminine; Love and courtship; Satire; Cynicism; Epigrams; Burlesque; Bathos; Parody; Narrative; Tribute; Whimsey; Nonsense; Natural history; Juniors; Immortal stanzas. The book is indexed for authors, titles and first lines.
Booklist 17:147 Ja ’21
“As a whole. Miss Wells has done a most excellent piece of work that should be an addition to the library of every lover and maker of verse.”
+ N Y Evening Post p3 Ja 15 ’21 520w
“Here at last is a collection of humorous lyrics, chosen and set in order by an expert anthologist, who is also an expert humorist.” Brander Matthews
+ N Y Times p3 D 12 ’20 1600w
“‘The book of humorous verse’ has done in its province what Burton Stevenson’s ‘Home book of verse’ has done for all poetry.” E. L. Pearson
+ Review 3:531 D 1 ’20 300w
WELLS, CAROLYN (MRS HADWIN HOUGHTON). Raspberry jam. il *$1.60 (2½c) Lippincott
20–7522
Sanford Embury is found one morning dead in bed. He was an exceptionally healthy man, and absolutely no reason can at first be discovered for his death. His proud, hot tempered wife is at once suspected, for the two had many tiffs about money matters, for although Embury was rich, it pleased his pride to give his wife no ready spending money. Detectives are called in, investigations made. No headway is gained until Fleming Stone and his irresponsible “kid” helper, Fibsy McGuire, appear on the scene. Then the mystery slowly clears, through the aid of a “spook,” a trumped up medium, a pot of raspberry jam and certain information in regard to a “human fly.” Mrs Embury is acquitted, the real murderer at once arrested, and a long delayed love comes at last into its own.
N Y Times 25:153 Ap 4 ’20 350w
Reviewed by M. A. Hopkins
Pub W 97:602 F 21 ’20 240w Sat R 130:262 S 25 ’20 70w
“The story stirs a lively interest in the reader.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Mr 14 ’20 160w
“As is common in detective stories of this type, Miss Wells makes considerable demands on her readers’ credulity or ignorance.”
− The Times [London] Lit Sup p426 Jl 1 ’20 160w
WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE. Outline of history. 2v il *$10.50 Macmillan 909
20–19599
Mr Wells’ “plain history of life and mankind” (Sub-title) is in two volumes, composed of nine books, as follows: The making of our world; The making of man; The dawn of history; Judea, Greece and India; Rise and collapse of the Roman Empire; Christianity and Islam; The great Mongol empire of the land ways and the new empires of the sea ways; The age of the great powers; The next stage in history. The work has been written with the advice and editorial help of Mr Ernest Barker, Sir H. H. Johnston, Sir E. Ray Lankester, and Professor Gilbert Murray. It is illustrated with maps, time diagrams and drawings by J. F. Horrabin.
“A history of this kind is just what is wanted at the present day. There are now sufficient scientific and historical data to make the attempt possible; it is time we had a glimpse of the wood: we have had innumerable examinations of the separate trees.”
+ Ath p1256 N 28 ’19 400w
“In praising so large a work, one must presumably begin with its arrangement. Arrangement is a negative quality, but a great one: it is the faculty of not muddling the reader, and Wells possesses it in a high degree. Selection is of course a more controversial topic, and here the critics can get going if they think it worth while. A third merit is the style. The surface of Wells’ English is poor, and he does not improve its effect when he tints it purple. But it does do its job. Arrangement, selection, style; so these make up the case for his ‘Outline,’ and it is an overwhelming case.” E. M. F.
+ Ath p8 Jl 2 ’20 1100w
“Now for the defects, and the first of them is a serious one. Wells’ lucidity, so satisfying when applied to peoples and periods, is somehow inadequate when individuals are thrown on to the screen. The outlines are as clear as ever, but they are not the outlines of living men. He seldom has created a character who lives and a similar failure attends his historical evocations.... Such are the defects of the book; but, as the previous article indicated, they are entirely outweighed by its great merits.” E. M. F.
+ − Ath p42 Jl 9 ’20 1950w
“It has been a great book, finely planned, well arranged, full of vivid historical sketches and of telling raps upon the knuckles and noses of the great, but as soon as it starts for the stars its charm decreases.” E. M. F.
+ − Ath p690 N 19 ’20 1500w Booklist 17:110 D ’20
“The great thing which Wells has done—and it is, unqualifiedly, a very great thing—is to state the evolutionary concept of history as a continuing, growing entity, in terms readily understandable of the common man. It is not too much to call it the most potentially formative book of our day.” H. L. Pangborn
+ Bookm 52:358 Ja ’21 950w
“In his entire career Mr Wells has never written a more important book than this. It is a superlatively fascinating piece of writing, in all its details and as a whole, and it proves that the best historian is the man with imagination who has created, or who is capable of creating, real literature.” E. F. Edgett
+ Boston Transcript p6 N 24 ’20 2850w
“This is the true and lasting value of the work of Wells—that he has given our world a greatest common historical denominator.” H. W. van Loon
+ Dial 70:202 F ’21 720w
“History as seen through the temperament of Mr Wells is novel, piquant, and entertaining. Mr Wells has no sense of time, for he discusses events in the remote past as if they were still happening. This gives vividness to his story and truthfulness, too.... With the chapter on Buddhism the ‘Outline’ reaches its high water mark. From thence on, a startling change is noticeable. And the change is for the worse. J. S. Schapiro
* + − Nation 112:sup224 F 9 ’21 9250w
“There is one criticism that I should like to make. Mr Wells has written political history and overlooked economic facts.... One cannot help wishing that Mr Wells had restrained his enthusiasm a little by omitting Book 1, and thus clipping off several hundred million years from the period which he was seeking to cover. He might also have eliminated Book 2 on ‘The making of man.’ I am glad that there was someone in the English-speaking world brave enough and earnest enough and with enough leisure time to write it.” Scott Nearing
+ − N Y Call p8 N 29 ’20 1500w
“It is eminently readable. Mr Wells could not write dull if he tried to. The first impression made by his volumes is deepened by their study. It is that Mr Wells has undertaken a task too great for his powers and equipment. Mr Wells has, of course, read widely and industriously. Yet his sources are plainly meagre. They are almost exclusively English.”
− + N Y Times p1 N 14 ’20 2550w
“Certain sections—the early chapters upon the origin of the earth and of man upon the earth, the part dealing with the rise and spread of Buddhism, for examples—are excellent when read by themselves.” E. L. Pearson
+ Review 3:558 D 8 ’20 60w
“Most of us think of history only in terms of the records of particular nations, races or periods. Mr Wells ventures on a far bolder conception—viewing all human history as one whole. If the work did nothing more than to fix definitely this new viewpoint it would be worth while.”
+ R of Rs 63:111 Ja ’21 220w
“High-school history teachers and students will read the work with profit. They certainly come more nearly being world-history than any previous work in the field.”
+ School R 29:155 F ’21 900w + Spec 122:698 N 22 ’19 190w
“It is good to take a broad view of history, and Mr Wells has done a real service to his generation by writing this entertaining ‘Outline.’ He has found a talented illustrator in Mr Horrabin, whose numerous maps and diagrams and reconstructions of extinct mammals are very attractive and helpful. There are also many photographs, well chosen and well reproduced.”
+ Spec 124:798 Je 12 ’20 300w
“There is room for Mr Wells’s ‘Outline of history,’ for the hand of the specialist has lain heavy on this branch of scholarship, and the books which give a bird’s-eye view of world history are few and not very accessible.”
+ Springf’d Republican p15 D 21 ’19 380w Springf’d Republican p13a F 8 ’20 1000w (Reprinted from London Nation)
“The ‘History’ is a remarkable one: there should be more books as readable and provocative and daring.” P. B. McDonald
+ Springf’d Republican p7a N 21 ’20 1100w The Times [London] Lit Sup p693 N 27 ’19 880w
“Magnificent as is the panorama which Mr Wells unfolds, the details of it are sometimes questionable.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p415 Jl 1 ’20 1050w The Times [London] Lit Sup p612 S 23 ’20 2000w
“Mr Wells’s work should find its way into all but the most bigoted sectarian colleges and even into the schools, as supplementary reading for both teacher and pupil.” J. H. Robinson
+ Yale R n s 10:412 Ja ’21 2650w
WELSH, JAMES C. Underworld. *$1.75 (1½c) Stokes
20–17082
A story of the British coal industry by the author of “Songs of a miner.” While yet a mere boy Robert Sinclair sits up long past his bed time to listen to the talk between his father and Robert Smillie, and it is the inspiration of that remembered conversation that sends him far in the growing labor movement. Robert goes into the pit at twelve years and on that very day there is an accident in the mine that kills his father and brother and leaves him his mother’s chief support. The story pictures the hard conditions in a disorganized industry, the tyranny of the foreman and his control of the private lives of the men, and the discouraging efforts to form a union. Robert loses the girl he loves and in the end meets his father’s fate in the mine while trying to save others. His mother is left desolate and the author’s final plea is to the men to stand firm together and protect their women folk from such tragedies.
“James Welsh, the miner, has rough-hewn a rather powerful and readable tract.”
+ N Y Evening Post p22 O 23 ’20 230w + Sat R 129:477 My 22 ’20 180w
“As he commands a fluent and forcible pen, complete mastery of the dialect, and an unflinching realism in the treatment of details, his work claims attention as well as respect.”
+ Spec 124:765 Je 5 ’20 670w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p202 Mr 25 ’20 170w
WENDELL, BARRETT. Traditions of European literature, from Homer to Dante. *$6 Scribner 809
20–20996
This book has developed from lectures given at Harvard between 1904 and 1917. The author says: “Years of dealing with Harvard students had shown me not only that Americans now know little of the literary traditions of our ancestral Europe, but also that they are seldom aware even of the little they know.” (Introd.) He adopts the point of view of “English-speaking Americans of the twentieth century of the Christian era” and concerns himself with those traditions of literature “which, we need not ask why, have chanced among ourselves to survive the times of their origin.” His task is somewhat simplified by the fact that during the period covered, from Homer to Dante, the traditions “originating in the primal European civilisation of Greece, and extending throughout imperial dominion of Rome, remained for many centuries a common possession of all Europe.” It has been possible therefore to treat the subject as a whole. This is done in five books: The traditions of Greece; The traditions of Rome; The traditions of Christianity; The traditions of Christendom; The traditions of the middle ages. Bibliographical suggestions occupy twenty-three pages and there is an index.
+ Booklist 17:147 Ja ’21
“Nothing brings a keener joy to the heart of a conscientious reviewer than to have in his hands to appraise and to praise a book which seems to him altogether good—worthy in theme, comprehensive in conception, shapely in plan and skillful in execution. This joy is mine now that I have read this admirable example of interpretive scholarship.” Brander Matthews
+ N Y Times p3 D 26 ’20 1750w
WEST, WILLIS MASON. Story of modern progress; with a preliminary survey of earlier progress. (Allyn and Bacon’s ser. of school histories) il $2 Allyn 940.2
20–7751
This work is a successor to the author’s “The modern world” written with a redistribution of time to give more space and emphasis to the period since 1870. The author says, “I have taken glad advantage of the chance to write a new book, better suited, I hope, to elementary high-school students; and I have used the treatment in the ‘Modern world’ only when I have found it simpler and clearer than any change I could make today.” (Foreword) An unusual amount of space has been given to English history, while American history, which is sure of full treatment elsewhere, is omitted “except where the connection of events demands its introduction.” Contents: Introduction: a survey of earlier progress; Age of the reformation, 1520–1648; England in the seventeenth century; The age of Louis XIV and Frederick II, 1648–1789; The French revolution; Reaction, 1815–1848; England and the industrial revolution; Continental Europe, 1848–1871; England, 1815–1914; Western Europe, 1871–1914; Slav Europe to 1914; The war and the new age. There is a list of books for high schools, followed by an index and pronouncing vocabulary.
“This present ‘Story of modern progress’ is consoling in a measure, but also provoking. The writer has some straight views, then again, the three-hundred-year-old tradition enfolds him.”
+ − Cath World 111:824 S ’20 550w
“For a one-year course in modern European history there is possibly no better text on the market.”
+ School R 28:549 S ’20 280w
WESTERVELT, GEORGE CONRAD, and others. Triumph of the N.C.’s. il *$3 Doubleday 629.
20–7597
The N.C.’s are flying boats as distinguished from hydroaeroplanes and the present volume contains the story of their design and building and of their first achievements. In part 1 Commander G. C. Westervelt tells “How the flying boats were designed and built”—the immense number of details that had to be worked out, the numerous tests that had to be conducted, and the many troublesome features that had to be corrected. Part 2—The “lame duck” wins—is Lieut.-Commander A. C. Read’s story of the transatlantic flight of the N. C. 4. Part 3 contains the log of the N. C. 3 by Commander H. C. Richardson, who also gives an account of previous attempts at transatlantic flight.
Booklist 16:335 Jl ’20
“The story of the crossing is told in lively and readable narrative, with picturesque details and with unassuming modesty.”
+ N Y Times 25:22 Jl 18 ’20 500w
WESTON, GEORGE. Mary minds her business. il *$1.75 (2½c) Dodd
20–4960
Of the long line of Josiahs of the firm of Josiah Spencer & son, successful manufacturers, Mary’s father was the last. His cousin, Stanley Woodward, had long been figuring on the eventuality of Josiah’s demise, to get entire control of the business. But he had not counted on Mary. His first shock came when Mary had herself chosen president of the corporation and proceeded, with the coaching of a friendly judge and business councilor to run things for herself. And run them she did in a most revolutionary manner. She employed women to such an extent that the factory was finally worked entirely by women on a greater level of efficiency than ever. Other reforms went hand in hand—a rest room, nurseries, kindergarten, laundry, an orchestra of one hundred pieces all played by women. Of course there was fighting to do, Uncle Stanley to be over-ruled, his son Burdon to be shown his place. When the scheme was out of the woods and the most pressing suitor married off, the woman in Mary was alone and aweary and it was then that Archey Forbes, the construction engineer, came into his own.
Booklist 16:315 Je ’20
“The light story has sometimes, under Mr Weston’s pen, developed a diaphanous quality, which has made us wonder why it was worth writing at all. Now in surprising manner Mr Weston has discovered some ideas—not very new ones perhaps, but nevertheless things of substance.”
+ Boston Transcript p4 Je 2 ’20 200w
“Brightly written, full of action, and with a love interest kept discreetly subordinate to that of the extremely efficient Mary’s management of the factory, this story also has the merit of dealing with a question which many will think has been thoroughly answered—the proper sphere of women in this age.”
+ N Y Times 25:30 Je 27 ’20 400w
WEYL, MAURICE. Happy woman. *$1.75 (2c) Kennerley
20–6129
The distinctive feature of this story is its character drawing. There is Henry Hardwick, a man of decided ability but with just that grain of iron lacking in his make-up that would make him a success in his enterprises and the master of his domestic circumstance. Fred Pemberton’s efficiency, on the other hand, verges on hardness and almost wrecks his love-life, deep and true though it is. The two leading women of the tale are likewise opposites, but both in the end can claim the title. Ruth Bernstein, proud, reticent, an unusually able business woman, but feminine in the best sense when off guard, is happy when she yields to her love for Fred Pemberton. Dowdy, voluble, irresponsible Mrs Hardwick is happy when she discovers that her “gift of gab” can be put to good use in swaying and winning admiration from an audience.
“‘The happy woman’ is that rather unusual thing—a genuinely realistic novel.”
+ N Y Times 25:1 Mr 7 ’20 850w + N Y Times 25:190 Ap 18 ’20 50w
WHALE, GEORGE. British airships: past, present and future. il *$2 (4c) Lane 629.1
20–9651
Without attempting a lengthy and highly technical dissertation on aerostatics the book briefly describes the main principles underlying airship construction. It then gives a general history of the development of the airship to the present day before taking up the British airship, which had been practically neglected prior to the twentieth century. The contents, with many illustrations and charts are: Early airships and their development to the present day; British airships built by private firms; British army airships; Early days of the naval airship section—Parseval airships, Astratorres type, etc.; Naval airships: the nonrigids; Naval airships: the rigids; The work of the airship in the world war; The future of airships.
“A useful account, well illustrated.”
+ Ath p353 Mr 12 ’20 40w
“It is a pity that the usefulness of the book is hampered by the absence of an index.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p717 D 4 ’19 80w
WHARTON, ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH.[[2]] In old Pennsylvania towns. il *$5 (6c) Lippincott 974.8
21–155
The author describes a motor trip thru Pennsylvania, on which Lancaster, Lebanon, Gettysburg, Carlisle, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Wilkes-Barré, Bethlehem and other towns were visited. Philadelphia and Germantown are omitted, as too well known, for it is the author’s purpose to call attention to the quaint and unusual. The pictures show many of the interesting old Pennsylvania houses.
+ Boston Transcript p5 D 29 ’20 460w
“The illustrations will delight all who are interested in early American architecture.” M. K. Reely
+ Pub W 98:1891 D 18 ’20 300w
WHARTON, MRS EDITH NEWBOLD (JONES). Age of innocence. *$2 (1½c) Appleton
20–18615
The milieu of the story is New York “society” in the early seventies. It describes the old aristocracy who took life “without effusion of blood,” who “dreaded scandal more than disease,” who “placed decency above courage” and who considered “nothing more ill-bred than ‘scenes.’” Newland Archer was one of the few whose vision penetrated this crust of conventionality and he fell in love with the one off-color member of the tribe just as he had engaged himself to its most perfect product. Ellen Olenska, wife of a profligate European count, had left her husband and returned to America at this critical moment and Archer hastens his marriage to May Welland before he becomes too deeply involved with Ellen. Ellen’s fine sense of honor and of human kindliness, on the other hand, holds him to his compact and puts the ocean between herself and Archer by returning to Europe. Almost thirty years later, Archer has the satisfaction of seeing his own children step out freely and joyously on the road that had been closed to him.
“The time and the scene together suit Mrs Wharton’s talent to a nicety.” K. M.
+ − Ath p810 D 10 ’20 620w Booklist 17:161 Ja ’21
“On the book’s enduring quality it is idle to speculate. The slight theme beaten out with delicate care is the fashion of the day, and the best examples will no doubt remain. What is certain, however, is that a multitude of readers today will read with a well-justified delight this picture of New York in the ‘seventies.’” A. E. W. Mason
+ Bookm 52:360 D ’20 780w
“As a matter of fact, the author of ‘The age of innocence’ is not the Mrs Wharton of ‘The valley of decision,’ ‘The house of mirth,’ ‘Ethan Frome’ or of any one of the several volumes of short stories with which her reputation was made. She is the Mrs Wharton—with some of her skill and much of her knowledge of life remaining—of a new era that demands yellow pages in its fiction as well as yellow newspapers in its journalism. Until she becomes again the Mrs Wharton of a decade ago, she certainly cannot maintain her once high place among the novelists of today.” E. F. Edgett
− + Boston Transcript p4 O 23 ’20 1200w
“One must occasionally be grateful in a day devoted, on the one hand, to detail, and on the other to a futuristic sketchiness, for a literary gift as serene as Mrs Wharton’s. Her new novel, ‘The age of innocence,’ is the perfect fruit of an austere and disciplined art.” L. M. R.
+ Freeman 2:358 D 22 ’20 240w
“The interest of the story lies, not with the doings of the rather wooden characters of the book, but with the picture it purports to give of New York some fifty years ago. Here the author is clearly at fault in portraying a society of such portentous dullness and also in representing the town as devoid of anything else. The book is full of anachronisms which are sure to be noticed by old New-Yorkers.”
− Lit D p52 F 5 ’21 880w
“‘The age of innocence’ is a masterly achievement. In lonely contrast to almost all the novelists who write about fashionable New York, she knows her world. In lonely contrast to the many who write about what they know without understanding it or interpreting it, she brings a superbly critical disposition to arrange her knowledge in significant forms.” C. V. D.
+ Nation 111:510 N 3 ’20 580w
“Someone told me that ‘The age of innocence’ was ‘a dull book about New York society in the seventies.’ This is amusing. It is, undoubtedly, a quiet book, and quietness is dullness to the jazz-minded. It is really a book of unsparing perception and essential passionateness, full of necessary reserve, but at the same time full of verity.” F. H.
+ New Repub 24:301 N 17 ’20 1450w
“Mrs Wharton’s story-telling method is precise and neat, and it is her own. What surprises us, however, in ‘The age of innocence’ is the pervasive glint of oblique criticism that dazzles our eyes from almost every page. And that criticism is no wise lessened because it happens to be leveled against New York society of the ’70s. Is New York, or America, so different in the year 1920?” Pierre Loving
+ N Y Call p10 D 12 ’20 1100w
“A fine novel, beautifully written, ‘big’ in the best sense, which has nothing to do with size, a credit to American literature—for if its author is cosmopolitan, her novel, as much as ‘Ethan Frome,’ is a fruit of our soil.” H: S. Canby
+ N Y Evening Post p3 N 6 ’20 1100w
“By the side of the absolute mastery of plot, character and style displayed in her latest novel, ‘The house of mirth’ seems almost crude. Edith Wharton is a writer who brings glory on the name America, and this is her best book. It is one of the best novels of the twentieth century and looks like a permanent addition to literature.” W: L. Phelps
+ N Y Times p1 O 17 ’20 1950w
“Mrs Wharton’s new novel is in workmanship equal to her very best previous work. In its adequate dealing with a large motif this is a book of far more than ephemeral value.” R. D. Townsend
+ Outlook 126:653 D 8 ’20 620w
“The plot is unobvious, delicately developed, with a fine finale that exquisitely satisfies one’s sense of fitness, and as always with Mrs Wharton, the drama of character is greater than that of event. One revels recognizingly in her clean-cut distinction of style, the inerrant aptness of adjectives, the vivisective phrase.” Katharine Perry
+ Pub W 98:1195 O 16 ’20 520w
“The limitations of the present note on Mrs Wharton’s new story may be revealed by the confession that the annotator’s delight in it as a picture is greatly tempered by his distrust of its leading male figure. I don’t much like this Newland Archer, and I don’t quite believe in his existence; and this doubt curdles my faith in the integrity of the story as a whole.” H. W. Boynton
+ − Review 3:476 N 17 ’20 1100w
“From a literary point of view, this story is on a level with Mrs Wharton’s best work. As a retrospect of the early ‘seventies, it is less satisfactory, being marred by numerous historical lapses.”
+ − Sat R 130:458 D 4 ’20 360w
“The picture is so finished, so convincing, and withal so entertaining, that the study of these pages is recommended to all students of manners.”
+ Spec 126:55 Ja 8 ’21 720w
“The greatest defect in the book is that of the character of Ellen, whom her creator constantly asserts to be charming, but who does not in the least produce that effect on the reader.” Lilian Whiting
+ − Springf’d Republican p9a D 5 ’20 720w
“Altogether Mrs Wharton has accomplished one of the best pieces of her work so far. As for her picture of the times, how is any of us over here to criticize it, beyond saying that it is full of vivacity and of character and of colour, and that there is not a point in it which seems to be false?”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p775 N 25 ’20 1200w
“This theme, the contrast of times and manners, dealt with in some of her short stories, is one Mrs Wharton handles with skill.”
+ Wis Lib Bul 16:239 D ’20 90w
WHARTON, MRS EDITH NEWBOLD (JONES). In Morocco. il *$4 Scribner 916.4
20–17098
“In 1918 Mrs Wharton, under the guidance of a French military mission, in a French army motor, spent a month traveling in Morocco. Her account of her travels in a country without a guide book is for the benefit of the travelers who she feels sure will flood the land when the war is over. All the properties of an Arabian Nights tale are here.” (Nation) “In the space of one month a military automobile carried her from Tangier to Marrakech, from Rabat to Fez. She entered the sacred city of Moulay Idriss, the surviving stronghold of the Idrissite rule; she walked the streets of ancient Salé, the ‘Phoenician counting house and breeder of Barbary pirates’; she examined the ruins of Volubilis, the African outpost of the Roman legions; and she enjoyed the hospitality of his Majesty the Sultan Moulay Youssef and his favorites in ‘the happiest harem in Morocco.’” (N Y Times)
+ Booklist 17:68 N ’20
“Edith Wharton’s ‘In Morocco’ is a model of restrained and rounded prose, as well as a vivid picture of oriental richness.” Margaret Ashmun
+ Bookm 52:344 D ’20 60w + Boston Transcript p4 D 22 ’20 920w
“‘In Morocco’ adds another swiftly-told, graceful, vivid, and yet informative travel book to Mrs Wharton’s globe-trotting shelf.”
+ Dial 70:231 F ’21 50w
“The best thing a returned traveler can do is to give you not facts but atmosphere. Edith Wharton in ‘In Morocco’ does this for you excellently well, partly because she is so impersonal, never intruding her own reactions, simply bringing up the scene around you with all its blinding sunlight, desert heat and vivid colors.”
+ Ind 104:242 N 13 ’20 170w
Reviewed by Irita Van Doren
Nation 111:479 O 27 ’20 680w
“The combination of authenticated facts and illuminating comment makes her book fascinating.”
+ N Y Evening Post p18 N 13 ’20 150w
“The publication of ‘In Morocco,’ by Mrs Wharton, is practically simultaneous with that of her most recent novel, ‘The age of innocence.’ Both of these books add security to their author’s position as one of the foremost contemporary writers of English prose. Never before has Mrs Wharton enjoyed so ideal an opportunity to display her gifts of colorful description as she does in this volume.” B. R. Redman
+ N Y Times p9 O 31 ’20 980w
“Nothing seen by her sensitive, unsparing eye is omitted, and her nervous style never fails to convey the effect at which she aims.”
+ Sat R 130:339 O 23 ’20 360w + Spec 125:541 O 23 ’20 200w
“The duration of her visit—one month—was fortunately too short for her to carry out her intention of writing a guide-book. One writes ‘fortunately,’ for her book would have lost in broad suggestiveness far more than it would have gained from precision in detail. With her knowledge of other countries and peoples, her sensitiveness, her gift of vivid description, and her unobtruded skill in ordered presentation, she does more than one would have thought possible to convey what was suddenly revealed to her eyes to those who will never see it with their own.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p649 O 7 ’20 1200w
WHEAT, GEORGE SEAY, ed.[[2]] Municipal landing fields and air ports. il *$1.75 Putnam 629.1
20–22004
The book is a compilation with chapters by the chief of the army air service, General Menoher, the director of naval aviation Captain Craven and their officers in charge of landing field operations. The most acute and immediate problem now facing commercial aeronautics is the need for flying routes and landing fields. It is the object of the book to present all that this involves in concrete form. Besides illustrations, diagrams, a map and an appendix containing a list of landing fields on file in the office of the chief of air service, the contents are: The need for landing fields; The present plight of flight; How to construct a field; Aircraft hangers; Aerial routes; Naval air ports; Airplanes and seaplanes.
WHEELER, EVERETT PEPPERRELL. Lawyer’s study of the Bible; its answer to the questions of today. *$1.50 Revell
19–19947
“Mr Wheeler’s book is really a study of life, and he uses the Bible in interpreting life. His chapter titles indicate this characteristic of his volume: they are such as The presence of God in the soul of man; Prayer; Socialism; War; Labor, capital, and strikes; Immortality. Incidentally he asks what light does the Bible throw on these problems?”—Outlook
Boston Transcript p6 D 24 ’19 550w Outlook 124:119 Ja 21 ’20 220w
“Perhaps the most important feature for the average reader is the adaptation of legal procedure into rules for the study of the Bible.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 Mr 18 ’20 180w
WHIBLEY, CHARLES. Literary studies. *$3 Macmillan 820.4
20–1521
“Five of these eight studies are from the ‘Cambridge history of English literature.’ They deal with phases of literature in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries. The others are on Rogues and vagabonds of Shakespeare’s time (a chapter in ‘Shakespeare’s England,’ 1916), Sir Walter Raleigh (from Blackwood’s), and Jonathan Swift, a Leslie Stephen lecture at Cambridge, 1917.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup N 13 ’19
“Mr Whibley is as readable as ever.”
+ Ath p1241 N 21 ’19 70w
“He has the first requisite of a critic: interest in his subject, and ability to communicate an interest in it. His defects are both of intellect and feeling. He has no dissociative faculty. There were very definite vices and definite shortcomings and immaturities in the literature he admires; and as he is not the person to tell us of the vices and shortcomings, he is not the person to lay before us the work of absolutely the finest quality.” T. S. E.
+ − Ath p1332 D 12 ’19 1350w
Reviewed by Augustine Birrell
+ Nation 111:159 Ag 7 ’20 20w
“Mr Whibley, by being included among the journalists, dignifies journalism. His way is not that of the headline, nor are his literary manners those of the siren in a fog—a not unfair description of much that appears in the journal to which he is a weekly contributor it?) acquired the habit of writing for the sake of filling a column.”
+ − Sat R 129:61 Ja 17 ’20 650w The Times [London] Lit Sup p653 N 13 ’19 60w
“It is very convenient to have these essays detached from the larger volumes in which they first appeared. Here they express the author’s own mind, they support and answer one another, not dressed and drilled by an editor in company not of their own choice. Here there is harmony among them.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p691 N 27 ’19 2000w
WHIPPLE, GUY MONTROSE. Classes for gifted children. (School and home education monographs) $1.25 Public-school 371.9
19–14686
Detailed account of an experiment successfully carried out in the year 1917 in the public school of Urbana, Illinois, consisting of selecting and training especially gifted, or super-average children. Fifteen pupils from the fifth grade, also fifteen from the sixth, constituted the special class. Of these thirty, it was found eight had been wrongly selected as gifted. The remaining twenty-two completed a two years’ course in one, without forcing or fatigue, in addition to gaining certain cultural advantages. Through tests applied, and results observed, a more reliable standard of selecting children than that of teachers’ marks was evolved. The book includes an analytical study of talent in drawing, with an annotated bibliography, and it closes with a partial bibliography on gifted children and education. Dr Whipple, formerly professor of education, University of Illinois, is at present professor of applied psychology, Carnegie institute of technology.
WHITAKER, ALBERT CONSER. Foreign exchange. *$5 (2c) Appleton 332.4
20–1958
The book, the author suggests, will serve the double purpose of a practical business manual, and a treatise in economics. “Stated briefly, the subjects of study in this volume are the methods or proceedings and the forms or documents of foreign-trade settlement, banking, and financing. Belonging with these, the international movement of gold and the measures taken to influence it are examined at length.” (Preface) A partial list of the contents is: Means of payment and commercial paper; The negotiability of commercial paper; Discount and interest; Commercial banking; The rates of exchange; The bank credit and letter of credit; Foreign money market factors; Speculation in exchange; The mint price and the market price of gold; Standard money; Monetary systems of the leading nations; Specie shipments; Addendum and index.
“This volume is probably in many ways the most satisfactory that has appeared up to the present time on foreign exchange.” M. J. Shugrue
+ Am Econ R 10:370 Je ’20 450w R of Rs 61:447 Ap ’20 120w + Springf’d Republican p13a Ap 18 ’20 80w
WHITAKER, CHARLES HARRIS. Joke about housing. *$2 Jones, Marshall 331.83
20–6282
Housing is here treated as a problem of land values. The remedy for present conditions is “for the state to put an end to the frightful waste involved in our present riotous development of land, and thus make the house a stable element of our national life, free from the destructive effects of speculation in land which forces speculation in building and which always brings communal disaster in its train.” The subject is discussed in seven chapters: Why do we have houses? The house and the home—a world program; Houses and wages; The employer and the housing question; The two plants; What are the possible ways out of the dilemma in housing? The general problem of land control. In the appendixes two prize essays on the solution of the housing problem are reprinted. The author is editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects.
“The style in which the book is written should make this book one of the most popular works on housing. Like all books devoted to the presentation and emphasis of one fundamental idea the work suffers from lack of perspective in so far as its use as a work upon which a thoroughly constructive housing program could be built.” Carol Aronovici
+ − Am J Soc 26:244 S ’20 370w Booklist 16:301 Je ’20
Reviewed by L: Mumford
+ Freeman 1:501 Ag 4 ’20 440w
“Some will no doubt assert that he lays too much stress upon the idea that the solution hangs upon the disallowance of speculation in land. Possibly this single subject is over stressed. But relative emphasis is a matter of little importance. What is of importance is that the subject of land and profit and speculative adventuring has been intimately connected with housing in the sense of cause and effect. The importance of this change of base, so to speak, in approaching the problem can not be overrated.” F. L. A.
+ J Am Inst of Architects 8:342 S ’20 1050w N Y Times 25:268 My 23 ’20 1000w
“The book is written from a full heart and with sympathetic understanding for the aspirations of common folks; it is one of the most readable tracts from the ‘left wing’ of the housing movement that we have seen.” B. L.
+ Survey 44:253 My 15 ’20 360w
WHITE, BENJAMIN.[[2]] Gold, its place in the economy of mankind. il $1 Pitman 669.2
20–21980
In the volume of the Common commodities and industries series devoted to gold, chapters take up: Its appreciation—ancient and modern; Its properties and distribution; The production of early times; The production of the nineteenth century; Present production and prospects; The evolution of British coinage; The mintage of the world; The gold standard; The movements of gold; Stocks; Industrial use; Gold and the great war. There are illustrations, tables, an index and a brief list of works consulted.
“The tables should be of interest to students of commercial geography and economics.”
+ Nature 105:774 Ag 19 ’20 80w
WHITE, BENJAMIN. Silver, its intimate association with the daily life of man. il $1 Pitman 669.2
(Eng ed 18–801)
In this volume of Pitman’s common commodities and industries the author treats his subject under three heads; Production; Industrial consumption; Utility as money, past and future. There are several illustrations and tables and two folding charts. Some of the tables are based on the annual reports of the director of the United States mint. There is an index.
“Contains much of service to teachers and students.”
+ Nature 105:774 Ag 19 ’20 60w
WHITE, MRS GRACE (MILLER). Storm country Polly. il *$1.75 (2c) Little
20–8242
The scene of the story is a squatter colony on the shores of Lake Cayuga. The colony is known as Silent City and Jeremiah Hopkins is its unofficial mayor. His daughter Polly is the story’s heroine. Polly, the one person in Evelyn Robertson’s confidence, knows the story of Evelyn’s secret marriage to Oscar Bennett. Evelyn desires release, for she is now in love with Marc MacKenzie, the man making war on the squatters, and Bennett will grant it only on condition that Polly agrees to marry him. And Evelyn, who might intercede with MacKenzie, promises to do so if Polly will pay the price, but Polly cannot, for she is in love with Robert Percival, Evelyn’s cousin. Marc carries out his threats. Daddy Hopkins is sent to jail, wee Jerry is torn from Polly’s arms and her love is turned to hate. But not for long and love triumphs all round in the end.
“A more apt title for the book would have been ‘Storm country Pollyanna,’ for the leading figure in the novel is so good that it almost hurts to think of her. In spite of the archaic construction and material of the story, it manages to sustain a certain amount of interest.”
− + N Y Times 25:252 My 16 ’20 200w
WHITE, SAMUEL ALEXANDER. Ambush. il *$1.50 (2c) Doubleday
20–11893
In the days when the Hudson’s Bay company, north of Lake Superior, is fighting two rival fur trading companies, Paul Carlisle is factor of one of their most important posts. In addition to his never-ending disturbances with the Free traders and the Northwest Fur company, his position is further complicated by the fact that he is in love with Joan Wayne, daughter of the Free trader’s chief. And as if being his business rival were not enough, Ralph Wayne is in addition Paul’s bitter personal enemy, for a reason which Paul at first can not understand. But the cause of this enmity is made clear to him presently by Richelieu, the third party in this three-cornered rivalry, the manager of the Northwest Fur company, and also in love with Joan. Eventually Paul wins out both in business and love, after a series of exciting and dramatic events.
Booklist 17:75 N ’20
WHITE, SAMUEL ALEXANDER. Foaming fore shore. il *$1.50 (2½c) Doubleday
20–16344
A tale of the sea. Cap’n Walter Taylor is a fisherman in Newfoundland waters, but becomes a fugitive as the result of breaking some of the fishing regulations. He takes refuge in the Magdalen Islands and there finds Madeline Boucher, with whom he speedily falls in love. But Jacques Beauport, his hereditary enemy, as his father before him had hated him, has been on the field first, and considers Madeline engaged to him. He seeks Taylor out to return him to justice, but Taylor has no idea of tamely submitting to this, and the chase grows exciting before its finish. Finally a decision of the Hague tribunal puts Taylor in the right, but not before Beauport has lost his life in his spiteful attempt to make Taylor suffer. The story is full of descriptions of fishing and sailing in the turbulent northern waters.
WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. Killer. il *$1.75 (1c) Doubleday
20–9477
“The killer,” which opens this collection, is a story of novelette length. It is a story of the old West with a central character whose malignity and propensity for killing extends even to birds and insects. He never kills men, but has only to nod to one of his Mexican servitors and the desired deed is accomplished. How a reckless young cowboy took a dare and asked for a night’s lodging at his ranch and what followed form the substance of the story. Two shorter tales, The road agent and The tide, come next and the remainder of the book is taken up with three descriptive essays reminiscent of Mr White’s earlier work in “The forest.” The titles are: Climbing for goats; Moisture, a trace; The ranch.
Booklist 16:351 Jl ’20
“‘The killer,’ the first story in Stewart Edward White’s new book, is crammed with action, exciting, unexpected, mysterious; in the last story, ‘The ranch,’ nothing happens at all and yet the chances are that you will read them both with interest and joy. The moral of which of course is that the important thing about a tale is the way you tell it.”
+ Ind 104:66 O 9 ’20 150w
“The essays in the volume are entirely delightful.”
+ N Y Times 25:237 My 9 ’20 550w
“Mr White knows the old land of the cowboys, desert, ranches, and border raiding settlements as do few writers of the present day.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Je 20 ’20 380w
“Mr White belongs to the school of American literature which has been more popular than any other in this country principally because we ourselves have nothing similar to it. From the point of view of construction his stories are, as he himself allows, irregular, but for sheer gustiness they are hard to equal.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p586 S 9 ’20 360w
WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. Rose dawn. *$1.90 (1c) Doubleday
20–21290
This novel follows “Gold” and “The grey dawn” and completes Mr White’s California trilogy. It is a story of the transition period of the eighties when the great ranchos of the cattle era began to give place to irrigation and the small fruit farm, and pictures the land boom that heralded the change. It opens with a fiesta at Corona del Monte, the rancho of Colonel Peyton, an old time Californian, who with his wife, Allie, dispenses hospitality to all comers with the high-handed manners of the old days. Other characters are Brainerd, the easterner who experiments with irrigation on a small scale, foreseeing the future of the country from a scientific point of view, and Patrick Boyd, who recognizes its financial future. The romance of the story develops between Daphne Brainerd and Kenneth Boyd, and the plot turns on the rallying of all the colonel’s friends, including Sing Toy, his cook, to save Corona del Monte. The story ran as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post.
“Mr White has always written good books, but he has never written as good a novel as ‘The rose dawn.’ Incidentally it is by far the best of his California trilogy.” G. M. H.
+ Boston Transcript p7 N 13 ’20 440w
“The book is written by one who loves to write. We have the leisurely style of the Victorians. The writer goes into byways of description and character drawing, forcing us to his mood. In the art of description he is unusually gifted. One could not imagine this book dramatized, the action is of so little importance. The story, nevertheless, is delightful.”
+ N Y Evening Post p10 O 30 ’20 300w
“In this sequel to ‘Gold’ and ‘The grey dawn,’ there is all the charm, scenic coloring and clean-cut delineation of character which distinguished the earlier works.”
+ N Y Times p23 O 31 ’20 380w
“With much to commend it as narrative and as descriptive of California, ‘The rose dawn’ is an addition to the White novels that many readers will welcome.”
+ Springf’d Republican p9a D 5 ’20 150w + Wis Lib Bul 16:239 D ’20 90w
WHITE, WILLIAM ALANSON. Thoughts of a psychiatrist on the war and after. $1.75 Hoeber 940.3
19–15865
“The author sees in the social upheavals incident to the war and after merely a reflection on a huge and unprecedented scale of the phenomena which the psychiatrist encounters daily in frustrated individual lives. It is because of this that he endeavors to apply some of the psychological principles which have been found to be of help in adjusting individual lives for the purpose of a better understanding of the changes that have come with the war and as an aid to their adjustment.”—Survey
“The brevity of the book will make it difficult for readers unacquainted with psychoanalytic literature. If it leads some of these into the more extended discussions of the psychology of war it will accomplish what doubtless was the purpose of the author.” E. R. Groves
+ − Am J Soc 26:238 S ’20 150w
Reviewed by A. R. Hale
+ − Freeman 2:333 D 15 ’20 650w
“The psychiatrist adds his hope to the hopes of the advocates of a league of nations that shall make it possible to outgrow war, as men in socialized communities have outgrown their older, cruder ways. Such a confirmation of our political hopes by scientific analysis is encouraging; and Dr White maintains his thesis with skill and interest.”
+ Nation 110:114 Ja 24 ’20 650w
“The book is an interesting contribution to individual and social psychology and is written with the lucidity characteristic of the author. It ought to prove of considerable help to those interested in the problems of individual and social maladjustment.” Bernard Glueck
+ Survey 44:307 My 29 ’20 360w
WHITE, WILLIAM PATTERSON. Hidden trails. il *$1.90 (1½c) Doubleday
20–12058
This tale starts merrily with two wild west killings before the twentieth page, and whiskey and shots follow one another briskly thruout the book. Johnny Ramsay, “an impulsive young man of uncertain temper,” is the hero. He undertakes to earn the reward offered for the capture of the bandits who are making the life of Sunset county exciting at the time. He has two pals in partnership with him in his private detective work, Racey Dawson and Telescope Laguerre, but to Johnny belongs most of the credit. The bandits prove to be a large band, and it is no easy job to round them all up, but Johnny very nearly accomplishes it. His life is not always safe; once he comes perilously near being lynched, but thanks to a girl, he is spared. The tale is certainly not lacking in adventure, with a dash of romance added.
“There is a clever, though somewhat involved plot which keeps the reader guessing. The dialect and style seem crude in spots. On the order of ‘The Virginian,’ though not so well done.”
+ − Booklist 17:161 Ja ’21
“Though the story possesses a definite human appeal, is entertaining, and contains several suggestive bits of landscape description, it is not done with deftness or a sure touch.” L. B.
+ − Boston Transcript p10 D 8 ’20 430w
“It shows so firm a touch, such sure and skillful handling of materials and so good an eye for local color that it bespeaks for Mr White a cordial welcome to the realms of authorship and gives hopeful promise of his future work.”
+ N Y Times p23 Ag 8 ’20 300w
WHITE, WILLIAM PATTERSON. Lynch lawyers. il *$1.75 (1½c) Little
20–625
A story of the wild West opening with a stage coach robbery. The occurrence is one of a chain of daring deeds and, much to the discomfort of Red Kane, the evidence seems to point to a recently arrived “nester,” Ben Lorimer. At first sight Red had fallen hopelessly in love with Lorimer’s daughter Dot and he knows that a man who takes a stand against her father will have no chance with the girl. He protects the father from a lynching mob, is shot and nursed back to health by the girl. Eventually after much action and many complications the mystery of Lorimer’s past is cleared away and all ends well.
“The story as a whole is a masterpiece of remarkable conversation, and excellent descriptions.”
+ Boston Transcript p4 Je 2 ’20 250w
“Written along thoroughly familiar lines, the story is considerably longer and very much slower in movement than are the majority of such tales. The book contains a fair amount of bloodshed, and gunplay enough to satisfy the most exacting.”
+ − N Y Times 25:22 Ja 18 ’20 300w
“A cowboy story with wild excitement in every chapter and a strong touch of romance to offset the sensationalism.”
+ Outlook 124:249 F 11 ’20 20w
WHITE, WILLIAM PATTERSON.[[2]] Paradise Bend. il *$1.90 (2c) Doubleday
20–18297
A story with all the features of the western thriller. Tom Loudon is in love with Kate Saltoun, his employer’s daughter and when he learns that she is engaged to Sam Blakely he throws up his job and leaves. He had long suspected that Blakely is responsible for the frequent disappearances of cattle, but “Old Salt” had refused to believe his neighbor guilty and Kate sides with her father. With Tom’s departure for Paradise Bend Blakely manages to throw the blame on him and he narrowly escapes arrest and lynching. Sudden death lies in wait and is averted in countless other forms before the story closes, with the villains receiving their just deserts and the lovers happy.
Booklist 17:161 Ja ’21
“Nothing in this book distinguishes it from the crops of mediocre western novels which glut the market year after year and which all seem to be made according to a standard recipe.”
− N Y Evening Post p21 O 23 ’20 120w
“What ‘Paradise Bend’ lacks in literary finish and pretensions to intellectual pabulum it replaces with a plenitude of skill in construction and dialogue.”
+ − N Y Times p20 D 5 ’20 430w
WHITEHOUSE, VIRA (BOARMAN) (MRS NORMAN DE R. WHITEHOUSE). Year as a government agent. il *$3 (4c) Harper 940.48
20–2700
When our country entered the war Mrs Whitehouse was appointed by George Creel as representative for Switzerland of the Committee on public information. Her duties were to give every possible publicity to American news through the press, through special articles and pamphlets and motion-picture reels. The book is an accurate, honest account of her experiences, throwing interesting sidelights on diplomacy open and otherwise. Not until the difficulties she encountered in the American legation at Berne drove her to abandon her undertaking and return to America, did she in her second attempt succeed in breaking through the diplomatic armor plate and in gaining a foothold for her work. The contents are: My appointment; Diplomatic methods; The vanishing news service; Apparent defeat; To America and back; At work; Success under difficulties; One thing after another; Swiss problems; The approaching end; Grief and adventure; Strife and confusion; The end of the year. There are illustrations and appendices containing the correspondence and cablegrams between Washington and the American legation on the one hand and Mrs Whitehouse on the other.
Boston Transcript p6 Mr 13 ’20 460w
“She writes of important international work from an agreeably personal angle.”
+ Ind 104:244 N 13 ’20 220w
“Our conviction that her story is essentially true is not only because of her own definiteness and of the evidence the older diplomatic tradition gives about itself in the appendix, but also because of our general experience throughout the reign of war psychology. Mrs Whitehouse has the gift of taking the reader along with her in her adventure.” Edith Borie
+ New Repub 23:67 Je 9 ’20 1100w
“Aside from its historical interest, the book has fascination as a narrative, for Mrs Whitehouse possesses the very great gift of unconsciousness. The story runs as simply as though she were telling it over a table, and there is a delightful, if somewhat caustic, vein of humor that gives color to the whole.” G: Creel
+ N Y Times 25:1 F 22 ’20 1700w
“A reading of her book, interesting as it is, leaves one in doubt as to whether it is an apologia or a suffrage tract. Further, it exposes again the error of creating an extra-legal government department, the Committee on public information, with authority to act abroad in matters of foreign policy independently of the Department of state.”
+ − Review 2:208 F 28 ’20 380w R of Rs 61:445 Ap ’20 50w
“Besides being a woman of invincible courage and executive ability, as her work in Switzerland proved, Mrs Whitehouse shows in her book that she has a sense of humor and pleasing ability as a writer.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 Ap 8 ’20 300w
“In a delightfully straightforward style Mrs Whitehouse has told the story of her work in Switzerland.”
+ Wis Lib Bul 16:120 Je ’20 80w
WHITELEY, OPAL STANLEY. Story of Opal (Eng title, Diary of Opal Whiteley). il $2 (2c) Atlantic monthly press
20–19873
This “Journal of an understanding heart” (Sub-title) is the diary of an orphan, brought up in a lumber camp, and is ascribed to the end of her sixth and to her seventh year. Before her adoption by strange people she evidently had a careful bringing up and careful instruction from a loving mother, as the outpourings of her childish heart and bits of her history reveal. The records are remarkable for the deep and loving insight into nature and the child’s communion with animal and plant life, which they reveal. Parts of the diary have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.
“We have no space to pursue our analysis into details. An amateur Sherlock Holmes will find much of interest in this volume. For instance, is the vocabulary consistent? Is the idiom consistent? Is the ignorance consistent? For the rest, and in spite of Earl Grey’s ‘sheer delight’ in the book, we find it flat, dreary, utterly uninteresting, a reductio ad absurdum of, as we have hinted, the American sentimental novel.” J. W. N. S.
− Ath p372 S 17 ’20 1400w
“Nature lovers and lovers of childhood especially will be delighted by it.”
+ Booklist 17:69 N ’20
“The truest thing about the journal to my own mind is its truth of emotion—it is the absolute record of a child’s emotion.” A. C. Moore
+ Bookm 52:258 N ’20 740w
“Completely delightful book.” C. H. O.
+ Boston Transcript p4 S 29 ’20 2200w
“That it is a beautiful and touching and piercingly honest revelation of an imaginative child’s spirit seems to me evident beyond cavil.” Christopher Morley
+ N Y Evening Post p4 N 13 ’20 1200w
“The question asked with regard to ‘The young visiters’ is being repeated in connection with the present book—‘Could a child really write it?’ Only a child could have written ‘The story of Opal.’ No adult could put into language such innocent and spontaneous grace combined with such freshness of perception.” Marguerite Wilkinson
+ N Y Times p14 O 3 ’20 1900w
“If ever the word unique is appropriate to a literary production, certainly it is here. The reader sometimes tires of the singular manner and strange expressions in the diary, but he never fails to feel the genuine fineness and charm of Opal’s love for animals and trees and all of out-of-doors, and her sweetness and affection toward the few human beings who responded to her appeal.”
+ Outlook 126:201 S 29 ’20 1150w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
+ − Review 3:269 S 29 ’20 120w
“The book is so incessantly sentimental as to be very tiresome reading to most English people—Americans seem to have stronger stomachs. Again, the inverted style is tedious—almost perhaps as tedious as the humour.”
− Spec 125:504 O 16 ’20 750w
“The style of the diary is irresistible. Full of quaint phrases, unconscious humor, the profound philosophies of childhood, the sentences move along in solemn, yet sparkling procession.”
+ Springf’d Republican p9a O 24 ’20 720w
“It is not safe to dogmatize upon the limits of precocity, but the hand at work in many passages is prima facie not that of the six-year-old, but of the more mature professional humorist. Whatever be the solution, the main interest of the book is its vitality of imagination and its pregnancy of issues bearing upon child life remains unaffected.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p10 N 13 ’20 230w (Reprinted from London Observer)
“We may say without absurdity that the child has a style. And it reaches, particularly towards the end of the diary, a rare poetic suggestiveness. We hope that Opal Whiteley will write the other books she planned in childhood, but we do not expect them to be like this book; it is one of those inspirations which can seldom be repeated.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p593 S 16 ’20 2500w
WHITHAM, G. I. St John of Honeylea. *$1.75 (1½c) Lane
20–7526
When Evelyn St John was ten he was left an orphan in the keeping of a hard aunt. Of his father’s family he knew nothing. By force of character and personal charm he holds his own, makes friends and achieves a sheep farm at the Cape, when at the age of thirty he falls heir to the ancestral estate of the St John’s, Honeylea, in the south of England. In reality he had inherited much more: dark mysteries, a curse and the hatred and suspicions of a neighborhood. Honeylea had once been abbey land, had been wrested from the monks, who still haunted the woods where they had been murdered and had cursed the place. What became the banqueting hall of Honeylea had once been a church and all the St Johns had come to grief—the curse and their own pride being their undoing. The modern skepticism and moral courage of the present St John struggles bravely against the atmosphere and hidden malignity of the place which he loves for its beauty. Not until he has learned to pray as a last refuge from despair and the house is burned, is the curse lifted and fortune in love returns to a St John.
Ath p1354 D 12 ’19 40w
“A very good bit of character work, an intensely absorbing story, this will appeal equally to those who love realistic tales of today, and to the fortunate folk who are made happy by medieval legends of days of old. For the book has both.”
+ Boston Transcript p6 O 9 ’20 480w
“Those who read ‘Mr Manley’ will not need to be told that G. I. Whitham knows how to write an interesting story. And ‘St John of Honeylea’ is an improvement on her earlier book, more convincing and better written, to say nothing of its possession of an unusually romantic and picturesque atmosphere.”
+ N Y Times 25:236 My 9 ’20 600w
“It is a good book, and many interesting people are to be met in it; not the least of whom are two who live only in the descriptions of the neighbours who have known them, ‘Uncle Charles,’ and his nephew and successor Cecil, the two last owners of the house. They are perhaps more distinctly drawn than any of the actual characters of the story.”
+ Sat R 128:590 D 20 ’19 480w
“The subject sounds familiar, but Mr Whitham has treated it in an original way.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p694 N 27 ’19 450w
WHITIN, CORA BERRY. Wounded words. *$1 Four seas co. 793
20–1007
A little book of rhymed charades designed by the author for the entertainment of convalescent soldiers. At the end a key is provided by which answers may be tested.
Boston Transcript p10 Ap 17 ’20 140w Cath World 111:554 Jl ’20 70w
“Mrs Whitin has been more concerned with ingenuity of expression than with Tennysonian polish of her verses.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p8 Mr 2 ’20 120w
WHITING, GERTRUDE. Lace guide for makers and collectors. il *$15 Dutton 746
20–2109
“While this is a book which few people would enjoy for leisure reading, it represents the work of years of careful study of a subject which is nearest and dearest to the author’s heart. The work was produced, with the cooperation of lace experts of the Metropolitan museum for the guidance of students, makers, collectors and classifiers of bobbin laces. The author explains in detail the general rules for making various laces. These rules are expanded to include all variations from the simple grounds to the most complex stitches of many patterns of laces.” (Springf’d Republican) “The book is profusely illustrated with plates giving key designs, with accompanying directions to show students of lace how certain meshes are woven, to aid those planning to produce lace, and to assist classifiers and collectors in identifying laces. The book also contains a bibliography and lace nomenclature in five languages.” (Nation)
“There is an increasing interest in lacemaking and lace collecting in this country, and Miss Whiting’s thorough technical knowledge as imparted in this book will do much to foster the movement.”
+ Nation 110:773 Je 5 ’20 280w
“The author has undertaken an arduous task, which she accomplishes with seeming ease. The explanations are made yet more valuable by the excellent photographs.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 N 26 ’20 380w
WHITING, JOHN D. Practical illustration; a guide for artists. il *$3 Harper 741
20–21999
The book deals with the problems peculiar to the work of the illustrator and the commercial designer and proposes to acquaint him with actual conditions in the publishing world. It is offered as a textbook for the teacher of “applied art” and a guide to the student. It is indexed and profusely illustrated—many of the plates in color—and the contents are: Looking over the field; Pictorial art for reproduction; Concerning illustrations; Concerning cover designs; Concerning commercial designs; Filling “rush orders”; Mechanical reproduction; Processes in color; Some concrete examples; The published art of tomorrow.
WHITLATCH, MARSHALL. Golf; for beginners—and others. il *$2 (4c) Macmillan 796
The author had disdained golf as a mollycoddle game but when he tried it, it hit him hard. He spent much time—wasted it—copying the style of professional experts, till he came to the conclusion that—barring a few fundamentals—it is an individual game for which each player must develop his own method. The object of the book is to call attention to the fundamental principles that must be observed under every form or method. The book is well illustrated and some of the chapter headings are: Balance the foundation of golf; Getting the power into the ball; Accuracy—not distance; Making the swing; Ease rather than effort; The part the body plays; On the putting green.
“There is little advice in it which may not be found in other books of its kind, but Mr Whitlatch has suited his instructions particularly to the man who takes up golf in middle age with the handicap that his years force upon him. The illustrations are rather more radical than the text.”
+ N Y Times p28 Ag 1 ’20 390w
WHITMAN, ROGER BRADBURY.[[2]] Tractor principles. il *$2 Appleton 621.14
20–17311
Tractors are far from being as standardized as automobiles and there are almost as many types and designs as there are tractor makers. A man competent to handle and care for one type may be at a loss as to how to handle another. The purpose of the book is to describe and explain all the mechanisms in common use so that anyone may be able to identify and understand the parts of any make. The contents are: Tractor principles; Engine principles; Engine parts; Fuels and carburetion; Carbureters; Ignition; Battery ignition systems; Transmission; Tractor arrangement; Lubrication; Tractor operation; Engine maintenance; Locating trouble; Causes of trouble. The book is indexed and carefully illustrated.
WHITMAN, WALT.[[2]] Gathering of the forces. il 2v *$15 Putnam 814
The books contain the editorials, essays, literary and dramatic reviews and other material written by Walt Whitman as editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1846 and 1847. The editors of the collection are Cleveland Rodgers and John Black, the latter contributing a foreword, inspired by the spirit of Whitman, and the former a sketch of Whitman’s life and work. The contents fall into seven parts with classification of the articles as follows: Part 1—Democracy: American democracy; Europe and America; Government; Patriotism. Part 2—Humanity: Hanging, prison reform, unfortunates; Education, children; Labor, female labor; Emigrants; England’s oppression of Ireland. Part 3—Slavery and the Mexican war: The extension of slavery; The union of states; War with Mexico; The Oregon boundary dispute. Part 4—Politics; Political controversies; Two local political campaigns; Civic interests; Free trade and the currency system. Part 5—Essays, personalities, short editorials; General essays; Personalities of the time; “The art of health”; Short editorials; Whitman as a paragrapher. Part 6—Literature, book reviews, drama, etc. Part 7—Two short stories not included in Whitman’s published works: The love of Eris; A legend of life and love. The books are illustrated and indexed.
Reviewed by E. F. Edgett
Boston Transcript p4 D 24 ’20 1550w
“To those who knew him only by his great and minor poems or by the stories of his vanities and eccentricities, these volumes will be a revelation. They reveal his soul as it grew; and nothing will be more surprising than their conventional form, their respect for the current conventions of morality, and their unforced and clear style.” M. F. Egan
+ N Y Times p2 Ja 2 ’21 3000w
“It is a human document, a great side-light on Whitman’s poems, and incidentally, a mine of information on a host of matters of temporary and local interest.” F: T. Cooper
+ Pub W 99:168 Ja 15 ’21 600w
WHO was who. *$6.50 Macmillan 920
(Eng ed 20–14622)
“This book fills the gap between the standard biographical dictionaries and the current Who’s who. It contains the notices, reprinted from former volumes of Who’s who, of those more or less well-known persons who died between 1897 and 1916, with the dates of their deaths. It runs to nearly eight hundred pages of small type.”—Spec
“There is no reason why ‘Who was who’ should not be a democratic work instead of what it is now. There is even no reason why it should not be readable. Accidental exclusion must always occur; deliberate ought never. We commend to the editors the ‘Modern English biography’ of Frederic Boase, as a model of hard fact, of brevity, and yet of amplitude. At the same time, we recognize the greatness of their task and the great usefulness (in the right quarter) of their volume.”
+ − Ath p79 Jl 16 ’20 280w
Reviewed by Ralph Bergengren
Boston Transcript p4 S 22 ’20 2250w + − Sat R 130:40 Jl 10 ’20 370w
“As a work of reference it will be found exceedingly useful, all the more because many of the persons named will never figure in the ‘Dictionary of national biography’ if, as we hope, that great work should be continued.”
+ Spec 124:88 Jl 17 ’20 90w
“Apart from its utility as an indispensable book of reference for the man of affairs, ‘Who was who’ will remain as a permanent store house of information about the personalities of one of the most important and critical epochs of British history.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p458 Jl 15 ’20 220w
WIDDEMER, MARGARET (MRS ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER). Boardwalk. *$1.60 (3½c) Harcourt
20–773
Omitting all the rose-garden atmosphere of her novels, Margaret Widdemer has written a series of short stories about boys and girls of high school age. The scene is one of the summer resort towns along the Atlantic coast during the months of the year when the boardwalk belongs to the young people who live there the year round. The titles are: Changeling; Rosabel Paradise; Don Andrews’ girl; Black magic; The congregation; The fairyland heart; Good times; Oh, Mr Dreamman; Devil’s hall.
“Clear cut, interesting little sketches into which the same people step again and again until one knows quite the whole village.”
+ Booklist 16:173 F ’20
“We must admit of them all that they piece together with their small tragedies and happinesses into what seems a very truthful representation of an American town. Whether or not these stories meet with the immediate popularity of ‘The rose garden husband,’ it must be conceded that Miss Widdemer has done a more difficult thing and revealed a more mature and a surer art.” D. L. M.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ja 21 ’20 850w
“It is a sordid, tawdry, unwholesome atmosphere, the sort of atmosphere that one would shun if the ideas back of the stories and their psychology, for they are primarily stories of character, were not really interesting. Is the skill with which it is done a sufficient excuse for painting dead fish and tinsel?”
− + Ind 102:374 Je 12 ’20 190w
“Her delving into the substrata of inarticulate being is sometimes faltering, and her presentation of the less obvious springs of human emotion is not always convincing, but her distinct penchant for transferring to paper the elusive quality of personality is undeniable.”
+ − N Y Times 25:145 Mr 28 ’20 650w
“On the whole, it is a strong and searching collection.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Mr 7 ’20 420w
WIDDEMER, MARGARET (MRS ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER), comp. Haunted hour. *$1.75 Harcourt 821.08
20–5609
The little volume presents an anthology of ghost-poems and contains only such poems as treat of the return of spirits to earth. Even so no attempt has been made at inclusiveness, but the selections range from the earliest ballads to the present time. With an opening poem by Nora Hopper Chesson: “The far away country,” the poems are arranged under the headings: “The nicht atween the sancts an’ souls”; “All the little sighing souls”; Shadowy heroes; “Rank on rank of ghostly soldiers”; Sea ghosts; Cheerful spirits; Haunted places; “You know the old, while I know the new”; “My love that was so true”; Shapes of doom; Legends and ballads of the dead. There is an index.
+ Booklist 16:272 My ’20 + Nation 111:278 S 4 ’20 70w
“A most unusual anthology of real merit and charm.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 Ap 29 ’20 120w
WIDDEMER, MARGARET (MRS ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER). I’ve married Marjorie. *$1.75 (3c) Harcourt
20–13699
Married in haste, Marjorie Ellison has had ample leisure to repent while her soldier husband has been away in France. Now on the eve of his return she is badly upset at the thought of the reunion. When Francis comes, it is as bad as she had feared. With the best intentions on both sides, he frightens her, and she hurts him. Hot tempers and strained nerves almost complete a tragedy of separation. But Francis is really in love with Marjorie and so he ventures on an experiment before giving her up entirely. In a delightful spot in the Canadian woods, his scheme is tried out, a scheme which leads through storm and stress to final joy and happiness for both.
“This will be liked by young girls and many women, though some readers will find it light and sentimental.”
+ − Booklist 17:75 N ’20
“Her theme in ‘I’ve married Marjorie’ is cut from the sheerest gossamer material. Also it possesses all the old essential ingredients of cuteness, wistful humor and the necessary serious touch that brings the theme to a sweet conclusion. But there is a sparkling sanity about it.”
+ N Y Times p27 Ag 22 ’20 550w
“A lively and amusing tale. Not a big book nor a provable story, but agreeable ‘summer reading.’”
+ Outlook 126:67 S 8 ’20 80w Wis Lib Bul 16:196 N ’20 70w
WIENER, LEO. Africa and the discovery of America. 2v ea $5 Innes & sons 970
20–7013
The book is archaeological and etymological, showing how many of the plants believed to have been indigenous to America, and how much of the language and customs of the Indians, have an African origin. Besides a long list of the sources quoted, illustrations, a word and a subject index, the book contains: The journal of the first voyage and the first letter of Columbus; The second voyage; Tobacco; The bread roots.
“It is unfortunate that one so well trained in this field of study should not have undertaken to present his material in a more logical and readable manner. He is not always convincing, and is often dogmatic.” E. L. Stevenson
+ − Am Hist R 26:102 O ’20 550w
“It is not to be expected that a work like this can pass unchallenged, and the soundest of criticism and the most profound of scholarship should be invoked before an exact estimate can be made of its value. But the erudition displayed in this volume is enough to make us wait with impatience Professor Wiener’s second volume.” G. H. S.
+ Boston Transcript p8 N 13 ’20 1050w
“Worthless as a scholarly contribution, the book provides the psychologist with a valuable example of distorted erudition and methodological incompetence.”
− Dial 69:213 Ag ’20 90w
“His book indicates the widest scholarship.” W. E. B. Du Bois
+ Nation 111:350 S 25 ’20 390w
WIGMORE, JOHN HENRY. Problems of law; its past, present, and future. *$1.50 Scribner 340
20–26999
“Professor Wigmore discusses the law’s evolution, its mechanism in America, and its problems as they relate to world legislation and America’s share therein. These lectures constituted one series of the Barbour-Page foundation lectures at the University of Virginia.” (N Y Evening Post) “It is assumed by Dean Wigmore that a new age is at hand, for which a considerable amount of new legislation will be required, and in view of this fact he urges that our legislators must be made experts ‘(1) by reducing their numbers, (2) by giving them longer terms, (3) by paying them enough to justify it [that is, apparently, the work of legislation] as a career for men of talent, (4) by making their sessions continuous.’” (Review)
“Three clarifying lectures for the thoughtful layman.”
+ Booklist 17:96 D ’20
“Dean Wigmore demonstrates anew the wide range of his intellectual rummaging and the queer quirks of his marvelous mind. The second lecture on ‘Methods of law making’ is intelligible and sensible.”
+ − Nation 111:568 N 17 ’20 500w + N Y Evening Post p26 O 23 ’20 90w
Reviewed by E: S. Corwin
Review 3:449 N 10 ’20 250w
WILDE, OSCAR FINGALL O’FLAHERTIE WILLS. Critic in Pall Mall. *$1.50 Putnam 824
(Eng ed A20–616)
A selection from the reviews and miscellaneous writings of Oscar Wilde made by E. V. Lucas. The papers were contributed to the Irish Monthly, Pall Mall Gazette, Woman’s World and other journals and date from 1877 to 1890. At the end under the heading Sententiæ Mr Lucas has grouped a number of briefer extracts from other reviews.
“The extent to which Wilde was a deliberate poseur is made very clear by this book, for here there is very little pose. In these reviews, chiefly from the Pall Mall Gazette, we see Wilde as a critic with strong common sense, general good taste and with an outlook on life and literature sufficiently ordinary to be indistinguishable from that of half-a-hundred other critics of his time and of ours.”
+ − Ath p1258 N 28 ’19 600w
“It has all his delights and all his superficialities and all his faults.”
+ − Dial 69:212 Ag ’20 110w
“There is nothing especially characteristic about the collection except, perhaps, a lightness of touch that distinguishes its contents from the ordinary book-review, and while they reveal the delicacy of Wilde’s taste and the sincerity of his delight in art and letters they reveal his limitations, also, and the shallowness of his intellectual draught.”
+ − Freeman 1:430 Jl 14 ’20 250w
“There is certainly no adequate reason why these forgotten writings of Oscar Wilde should be sought out and set in order, and sent forth in a seemly little tome of two hundred pages. Their resurrection does not add anything to his reputation, nor does it detract anything. It does not enlarge our knowledge of the writer or cast any new light upon the character of the man.” Brander Matthews
− + N Y Times 25:69 F 8 ’20 3400w
“These modest criticisms impress one collectively as good-natured, orthodox, and sensible. Its art vibrates between distinction and mediocrity—which is another way of saying that it is undistinguished.”
+ − Review 3:152 Ag 18 ’20 330w
“Collections of this kind usually do no honour to their author. But in this case the result is a contribution to literature; in the first place, because the selection has been made by Mr E. V. Lucas, and in the second place, because it illustrates not only Wilde’s gift for perverse banter, but also his genuine scholarship and his ability to perform plain, downright work in an honest, craftsmanlike way.”
+ Spec 124:492 Ap 10 ’20 1450w
“These chapters are slight, but they are models of literary criticism of the less formal and serious type. Apart from style their superiority over the contemporary causerie lies chiefly, perhaps, in the cultivated background that they denote in the writer and presuppose in the reader.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 Je 10 ’20 800w The Times [London] Lit Sup p605 O 30 ’19 1350w
WILDMAN, EDWIN. Famous leaders of industry. il *$2 (3c) Page 926
20–3587
This is a book for boys about boys who have gained success, wealth, honor, and prestige in the business world. It contains more than twenty-six sketches of successful men, among them: Philip Danforth Armour—California pioneer and Chicago packing king; P. T. Barnum—the world’s greatest showman; Alexander Graham Bell—immortal telephone inventor, and humanitarian; James Buchanan Duke—American tobacco and cigarette king; Henry Ford—the Aladdin of the automobile industry; Hudson Maxim—poet, philosopher, and wizard of high explosives; John Davison Rockefeller,—oil king and world’s greatest industrial leader; John Wanamaker—America’s foremost retail merchant and originator of the department store; Orville and Wilbur Wright—who achieved immortal fame as airship inventors. A portrait accompanies each sketch.
+ Booklist 16:317 Je ’20
“In these conventionally laudatory portraits of a group of American inventors and business men there is no departure from the old Sunday school type of ‘helpful’ stories for the young except in a decided journalistic snappiness of style.” E. S.
+ Survey 44:323 My 29 ’20 140w
WILKINSON, MRS MARGUERITE OGDEN (BIGELOW). Bluestone. *$1.50 Macmillan 811
20–11184
A volume of lyrics. In her preface the author touches on the relation of lyric poetry to music as she employs it in the composition of her poems. Contents: Bluestone; Songs from beside swift rivers; Songs of poverty; Preferences; Love songs; Songs of an empty house; Songs of laughter and tears; Whims for poets; California poems; The pageant.
“Songs with a wide appeal because they are mostly ‘themes of the folk.’ The appreciation of nature and outdoor feeling are keen.”
+ Booklist 17:63 N ’20
“There is an undoubted poetic element in these poems of Mrs Wilkinson, but it is dew rather than flame. And being excellently even in craftsmanship, there is no poem that fails to satisfy the reader’s interest in being what it is.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ Boston Transcript p6 Jl 31 ’20 1050w
“Marguerite Wilkinson has decided moral and metrical spring without conspicuous originality; though she is deeply touching here in Songs of an empty house, on the childless state.” M. V. D.
+ − Nation 111:248 Ag 28 ’20 70w
“Mrs Wilkinson undoubtedly possesses a deal of talent; it is evident throughout her work, cropping out in felicitous stanzas here and rhythmical lines there, but she allows an occasional triteness to retard the success of the book as a whole.”
+ − N Y Times p16 N 7 ’20 590w Spec 125:280 Ag 28 ’20 560w
WILLARD, FLORENCE, and GILLETT, LUCY HOLCOMB.[[2]] Dietetics for high schools. il *$1.32 Macmillan 613.2
20–12948
“Home economics teachers will be interested to learn that a much needed textbook of dietetics has recently appeared. The content of the book is especially significant in view of the experience of both authors as teachers of the subject and of one of them as worker with actual problems of malnutrition and of family feeding on low incomes in the Association for improving the condition of the poor. The book starts with a comparison of the weights and heights of the girls in the class with the standards for their ages. Following this is a study of food values as to fuel, protein, mineral, vitamines, and the requirements of a good diet. Following the general study of the basis for planning meals, the authors make an interesting and concrete section of the book by selecting a family containing children of various ages and discussing the marketing problems of this family. The high-school girl thus makes application of her earlier nutrition study to actual food purchase for the family’s need.”—School R
“This book is a distinct contribution to the very small group of elementary textbooks in nutrition. The work is accurate and up-to-date. The points are supported and illustrated by suitable tables and charts in such number as to constitute a unique feature of a beginner’s book in nutrition. One specially commendable feature is the fact that it may be used quite as appropriately as a textbook for boys as for girls.” M. S. Rose
+ J Home Econ 12:513 N ’20 300w
“A splendid and thoroughly scientific body of material makes the book a well-rounded and teachable text.”
+ School R 28:798 D ’20 360w
WILLIAMS, ARIADNA TYRKOVA- (MRS HAROLD WILLIAMS). From liberty to Brest-Litovsk. *$6 Macmillan 947
19–18461
“This is a narrative of events from the first uprisings of the revolution in March, 1917, to the ratification of the peace with Germany a year later. Herself a member of the Petrograd municipal council and the Moscow conference, Mrs Williams has described in detail the cabinet crises and political vicissitudes of the provisional government and the steady trend of the socialist center toward bolshevism. Less complete is her account of the first months of the bolshevist régime and its negotiations with Germany at Brest-Litovsk.”—Survey
Ath p1275 N 28 ’19 220w
“Although the book is emotionally coloured with righteous anger and hatred towards the Bolsheviks, we cannot but welcome it as an honest attempt to narrate the history of the first year of the Russian revolution.” S. K.
+ − Ath p1367 D 19 ’19 1100w
“The facts here recorded will be most impressive to all who keep even an approximately open mind on the Russian question.”
+ − Ind 102:66 Ap 10 ’20 150w
“She might have made her book a skilful and telling arraignment of her political opponents if she could have restrained her quite intelligible hatred and indignation. She betrays her prejudice and weakens her case most seriously in loading on the Bolsheviki the blame for all that Russia has suffered since the beginning of the revolution.” Jacob Zeitlin
− + Nation 110:399 Mr 27 ’20 360w
“When we had finished this long book of Mrs Harold Williams, we asked ourselves why it left us with the taste of the dust of Dead Sea apples. The answer is, we believe, that nothing is so barren as perpetual denunciation. Only a political controversialist could be quite so self-blind as Mrs Williams.”
− Nation [London] 26:402 D 13 ’19 700w
“This book may be recommended as a storehouse of facts, and it is to be hoped that the author will in due course produce another volume, bringing the story down from Brest-Litovsk to the present day.”
+ Sat R 129:62 Ja 17 ’20 540w
“She shows an intimate knowledge of the political convulsions of 1917, and she describes them in a clear and forcible style. The dominant note of the book is amazement that the Russian people, with their many good qualities, could have allowed themselves to be dominated by a gang of scoundrels.”
+ Spec 123:579 N 1 ’19 1450w
“Partisan and patriot Mrs Williams is, and the reader will not find in her description of the storm-tossed waters of the revolution any clear perception of its deeper currents. But the reader will find in her book a useful chronicle of events and an interesting and vivid representation of the political kaleidoscope and of the opinion of no small part of the Russian intelligentsia during that momentous year.” Reed Lewis
+ − Survey 44:48 Ap 3 ’20 200w
“A connected account of the first phase of the Russian revolution has been badly needed. Mrs Williams has a clear picture in her own mind of what led to Bolshevism, and her main theme is easy to trace throughout the book. In these days, when many English liberals join in the foolish denunciation of nearly all Russian liberals as counter-revolutionaries without examining the positive side of their policy, it is useful to see the aims and policy of the provisional government clearly and sympathetically restated.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p618 N 6 ’19 1000w
WILLIAMS, BEN AMES. Great accident. *$2 (1½c) Macmillan
20–5226
This is a story of American provincial politics and of education gone wrong. The way Winthrop Chase, junior, had been brought up by a well meaning father and mother had brought out strongly the negative side of his character. He always did the thing he was told not to do and was fast becoming a drunkard. Shrewd old Ames Caretall, congressman, returns from Washington just as a mayoral election is coming on. He resolves to take a gambler’s chance with young Wint and uses his influence to have him elected mayor over the head of Wint’s own father. How the “joke” does the trick, knocks manhood into Wint, and develops him into a sober, unusually decent, honorable and lovable character is the burden of the story.
“This town and its inhabitants stand out with remarkable clearness, and it is well worth while for English men and women to read of it. They will see for themselves how different is their country from that huge one which speaks the same language.” O. W.
+ Ath p16 Ja 7 ’21 1300w + Booklist 16:315 Je ’20
“This is a capital story. There are a number of well-drawn subsidiary personages, making the life of the small town vivid and often amusing. Its atmosphere is distinctive and typical.” N. H. D.
+ Boston Transcript p4 S 4 ’20 650w Dial 69:211 Ag ’20 110w
“It is a perfectly good idea and the characters are interesting enough, but the author seems to be a little bit tired; it all needs to be keyed up to a higher pitch.”
+ − Ind 103:53 Jl 10 ’20 110w
“It will go far toward dispelling in the average reader’s mind the illusion that a realistic presentation of American life must necessarily be dull, morbid and unduly sophisticated.”
+ N Y Evening Post p3 My 1 ’20 600w
“The merit of the tale lies in its portrayal of small town life, of the men who control or try to control the political destinies of the friendly little town of Hardiston, and in an easy and agreeable style.”
+ N Y Times 25:163 Ap 11 ’20 400w
“Two romances and a broad vein of humor balance the political narrative, making an entertaining if rather unlifelike American tale.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p8a S 19 ’20 420w
WILLIAMS, GAIL. Fear not the crossing. $1.25 (9c) Clode, E. J. 134
20–1895
A series of spirit communications given to the author through automatic handwriting by the spirit of a man who had but recently died, and who found it at first very difficult to adjust himself to conditions on the other side. The messages are given from day to day, and describe the life beyond death, its great beauty, satisfying joy, its boundless service for others, and its superiority to our flesh-bound existence. Advice is given too for our greater serenity of the spirit while still in the flesh. Think of God, pray to Him, in order that His power may radiate through you, and enable you to do the tasks assigned to you, is the advice frequently repeated by this spirit control. He speaks often of love as the most beautiful earthly force. A new note in this book is its description of the temporary agony of the soul newly awakening “on the other side of death.”
Boston Transcript p4 My 5 ’20 350w
“The just complaint that most spirit revelations are of such trivial and childish nature, finds no grounds here, as the matters treated are all of large and worthy import.” Katharine Perry
+ Pub W 97:610 F 21 ’20 360w
Reviewed by Joseph Jastrow
Review 3:42 Jl 14 ’20 90w
WILLIAMS, HENRY SMITH. Witness of the sun. il *$1.90 (3c) Doubleday.
20–16495
When John Theobold is killed in his office, some one has to be found to fasten the murder to, as is usual in such cases. The guilty man seems to be Señor Cortez, a fiery Brazilian, jealous of Theobold’s interest in his wife, with Frank Crosby, the murdered man’s private secretary, as his accomplice. The case comes to trial, and the counsel for the defense springs a surprise. With the aid of Jack Henley, a bright office boy with an interest in photography, he presents proof, substantiated by actual pictures taken on the spot, showing that Cortez and Crosby could not have committed the crime, and who did and why. But all surprises are not yet over: the counsel for the defense learns that no amount of circumstantial evidence ever proves anything, it only shows that things might have happened in a certain way, but they might also have happened in some other way, and in this case they did.
N Y Times p24 O 31 ’20 130w
“The plot and its solution evince striking ingenuity on the part of Mr Williams.”
+ Springf’d Republican p9a O 24 ’20 200w
WILLIAMS, JAMES MICKEL.[[2]] Foundations of social science. *$6 Knopf 301
The book is an analysis of the psychological aspects of the social sciences and emphasizes the vital relation of social psychology to the other social sciences, pointing out how the advancement of the latter is dependent on the development of the former. Although the assumptions of social science are in their last analysis, all resting on human nature, they have relied too much on the traditional social relations and have failed to discriminate between “a motive that is essential in traditional political relations, or in traditional economic relations and one that is essential in human nature.” Also they have allowed mass phenomena to obscure the individual and have lost sight of the fact that only through the operation of certain instinctive dispositions of individuals do they act as groups. The volume falls into four parts: Social psychology and political science; Social psychology and jurisprudence; Social psychology as related to economics, history and sociology; The field and methods of social psychology. Appended is a partial list of the books, documents and articles referred to in the text, and an index of subjects.
Boston Transcript p3 D 4 ’20 840w
WILLIAMS, JENNIE B. Us two cook book, rev and enl ed *$1.50 Harper 641.5
In this cook book “every recipe has been carefully estimated and tested—the ingredients reduced so as to supply the requirements of two.” (Preface) Contents: Soups; Fish; Meats; Poultry and game; Entrees; Vegetables; Eggs; Beverages; Breads, cakes, etc.; Desserts; Fruits, pickles and sauces; Miscellaneous. Tables for cooking and measuring come at the end. There is no index. The book was copyrighted in Canada in 1916.
WILLIAMS, LLEWELLYN W. Making of modern Wales. *$2.25 Macmillan 942.9
“The recorder of Cardiff, in this well-organized, well-documented, and well-indexed treatise, studies the processes, legal, political, and social, by which mediæval was transformed into modern Wales. He devotes much space to the story of Catholicism in Wales after the reformation, and to an account of the Courts of great session—subjects on which far less has been written than on the council of the Marches, the history of Welsh nonconformity, and other main topics. His last chapter deals with the bilingual problem.”—Ath
Ath p1210 N 14 ’19 90w Nation 111:304 S 11 ’20 280w
“The author’s chapter on the Great sessions, which were abolished in 1830, is the best account of them that has yet been written.”
+ Spec 122:48 Ja 10 ’20 1400w The Times [London] Lit Sup p613 O 30 ’19 70w
“The solid value of Mr Williams’s researches arouses gratitude and deep respect. We should, however, describe his work as research of the second—the organizing stage, chiefly—rather than of the first stage. The chapter on the reformation is extremely interesting. The chapter on the Welsh Catholics is the most picturesque and attractive in the book, and probably contains the most generally unfamiliar information. The most workmanlike and most original chapter is that on the king’s Court of great sessions.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p625 N 6 ’19 1400w
WILLIAMS, SIDNEY CLARK. Unconscious crusader. *$1.75 (2c) Small
20–4708
This is a story of present-day journalism and of James Radbourne, who started as reporter on a daily paper and ended as proprietor of one. All the ups and downs of a newspaper career, all the rivalries and jealousies between staff and managers of different papers come out in the story and how James Radbourne took the straight course until he won out and made himself a name for honest journalism. He did not know that some one was watching this course, but when she was satisfied that it was the right one she came and asked for a job. It was “Miladi.”
Booklist 16:351 Jl ’20
“When we turn from the world of business and politics to that of romance the atmosphere is clean and fresh. The setting for the romance is deliciously funny.” G. L. E.
+ − Boston Transcript p4 Ag 28 ’20 400w
“‘An unconscious crusader’ will hardly set the world aflame, yet it is readable and affords a glimpse of the inside workings of a newspaper office.”
+ − N Y Times 25:329 Je 20 ’20 420w
“An attempt, not wholly successful, is made to weave in a love story, or rather an alleged one. It detracts from the interest of the story, rather than adds to it.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p13a Ap 18 ’20 340w
WILLIAMS, WAYLAND WELLS. Goshen street. *$1.90 (1½c) Stokes
20–17177
Goshen street is a New England country road. David Galt, who is born on a Goshen street farm, is given an education thru the benevolence of a millionaire who makes a hobby of sending poor and promising boys to college. He goes into journalism afterwards and rises high in his profession, but Goshen street always remains an influence in his life. It is Sylvia Thornton who first brings David to her father’s attention and as he continues to make his way up in the world David holds to the intention of marrying Sylvia, but instead he marries Naomi Fiske. The war comes, David is first a correspondent, then a soldier. Naomi dies of influenza while nursing in France and after the war David and Sylvia again meet in Goshen street.
“Interesting, well written, a truthful picture of Connecticut farm people.”
+ Booklist 17:161 Ja ’21
“Although the scenes in New York are interesting, and although David’s wife Sylvia is an artistic triumph, particularly because she is so difficult, it is Goshen street itself, David’s ancestral home, and his father, mother and brother, to which my memory returns most fondly. The descriptions of the street are admirable examples of English style. This book has such fine quality that it sharpens one’s appetite for the next.” W: L. Phelps
+ N Y Times p8 O 31 ’20 330w Wis Lib Bul 16:196 N ’20 130w
WILLIAMS, WHITING. What’s on the worker’s mind. il *$2.50 Scribner 331.8
20–17086
“Mr Williams was a prominent official in a large steel fabricating concern. He wished to fit himself for the position of employment manager, and thought it a part of his preparation to find out what it was like to be a workman. Therefore he left home with a few dollars in his pocket and looked for a job. This is the story of his adventures in a basic steel plant, a rolling mill, a coal mine, an oil refinery, a shipyard, and other resorts of toil.”—Nation
“Reveals without bitterness or antagonizing radicalism the unsatisfactory lives of the workers. Vivid and worth while, but will not be popular.”
+ Booklist 17:96 D ’20
Reviewed by Harold Waldo
+ Bookm 52:556 F ’21 640w + Boston Transcript p4 Ja 22 ’21 390w
“An unusual and interesting book.”
+ Cleveland p111 D ’20 30w
“As a first-hand account of actual working and living-conditions in the great basic industries, Mr Williams’s ‘What’s on the worker’s mind’ is of considerable value for the author is an excellent reporter. But as an analysis of what the worker is actually thinking and doing about his problems, and in so far as it proposes solution for these problems, the book falls far short of its mark.” W: Z. Foster
+ − Freeman 2:404 Ja 5 ’21 880w
“The narrative of his adventures is of extraordinary interest and his conclusions are worth attention.”
+ Ind 105:170 F 12 ’21 100w
Reviewed by G: Soule
Nation 111:533 N 10 ’20 650w
“Short as the book’s economic perspective is, its central contribution remains intact; its psychological analysis is penetrating and original. Its educational value can be literally tremendous.” Ordway Tead
+ − New Repub 25:266 Ja 26 ’21 1500w + Outlook 126:334 O 20 ’20 90w
“Not only are the observations obviously timely, but they have a force that results from their having been derived from actual experience.”
+ Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 2 ’21 1150w
WILLIAMS-ELLIS, CLOUGH, and WILLIAMS-ELLIS, A. Tank corps; with an introd. by H. J. Elles. il *$5 (4½c) Doran 940.4
20–3588
Major-General Ellis commander of the tank corps, in his introduction to the volume, calls attention to the “difficulties of dealing concisely, even by comment, with the kaleidoscopic events of two and a half crowded years—with the questions of organisation, training, personnel, design, supply, fighting, reorganisation, workshops, experiments, salvage, transportation, maintenance.” This states in a nutshell the enormous problem solved by the tank in its rapid and forced evolution while the war was in process. The first chapter is intended for the civilian who, thanks to the censorship, “has had no opportunity of making himself familiar with the tactical opportunities and problems that the use of tanks has introduced or with the conditions under which tank crews fight.” It contains several plans and diagrams showing the general arrangement and construction of this formidable machine. There are other illustrations and an index.
Ath p64 Ja 9 ’20 90w
“Excellent and well illustrated book.”
+ Review 3:712 Jl 7 ’20 630w
“The tank corps was one of the miracles of the war, and its history was bound to be one of the best romances. It is good to have the full story told so soon and by such competent chroniclers. The authors give us all the technical information that is needed, and at the same time they fit the achievement of the tank corps into the great movements of the campaign. The style is never for a moment ponderous or dull.” J: Buchan
+ Spec 123:691 N 22 ’19 2100w
“A vivid military treatise.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a My 30 ’20 600w
“A confused collection of details instead of a coherent story. The confusion is not helped by the absence of maps. The book is a disappointment; but no mistakes can entirely rob of their interest the first full accounts that have been published of the terrible struggles of the tanks in the Flanders mud during the third battle of Ypres.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p660 N 20 ’19 850w
WILLIAMSON, CHARLES NORRIS, and WILLIAMSON, ALICE MURIEL (LIVINGSTON) (MRS CHARLES NORRIS WILLIAMSON). Second latchkey. il *$1.60 (2c) Doubleday
20–7290
Annesley Grayle meets the man who calls himself Nelson Smith under romantic circumstances and marries him without knowing his real name or anything about him. As paid companion to a crabbed old lady she has found life dreary and colorless. He brings love and joy into it and she adores him and asks no questions. Shortly after it becomes apparent to the reader that the man is a very clever jewel thief. The heroine however is slower witted and when the truth is forced home to her she is crushed and believes her love dead. There follows a period of estrangement and penitence spent on the hero’s ranch in Texas, followed by reconciliation.
“A tale of plot, whose surprises and thrills are never balked by the improbable.”
+ Booklist 16:315 Je ’20
“The Williamsons have succeeded in concentrating our entire interest in their plot, and though—as is natural in this type of story—we should not be likely to read the book a second time, it is equally likely that we should be inclined to read the next Williamson book upon the recommendation of this.” D. L. M.
+ Boston Transcript p11 My 22 ’20 550w
“The authors have not allowed a trifle like probability to stand in their way, but the tale holds the reader’s interest, and Annesley is a charming heroine. Smoothly and pleasantly written, ‘The second latchkey’ is an agreeable and an entertaining romance of things as they are not.”
+ − N Y Times 25:219 My 2 ’20 500w
WILLIS, GEORGE. Philosophy of speech. *$2.50 Macmillan 404
(Eng ed 20–17996)
“Mr Willis’s book is not so much a connected system of philosophy as a series of thoughts on various subjects connected with the faculty of speech. Beginning with a discussion of the origins of speech, he goes on to show the connection of the history of speech with the history of thought; he devotes a chapter to metaphor, another to grammar, another to the question of spelling and spelling reform, others to purism and correct speech, and a final section to speech and education.”—Ath
Ath p383 Mr 19 ’20 130w
“One does not always agree with Mr Willis, but one can never find him anything but very entertaining and stimulating.”
+ − Ath p601 My 7 ’20 600w
“This is, indeed, a strange book. It seems to be a survival from the linguistic dark ages. The author does not disclose any intimacy with Anglo-Saxon, with Gothic or with old high English, nor does he show any scholarship in comparative philology.” Brander Matthews
− N Y Times 25:24 Je 27 ’20 2500w
“The present writer has not for years come across a book in which highly disputable assertions were mixed up with facts with such complete impartiality. Nothing could be more admirable than the author’s attack upon the ordinary grammar-books, and his exposition of the causes which have led to the extraordinary muddle-headedness of these compilations.”
+ − Spec 124:523 Ap 17 ’20 780w
WILLOUGHBY, D. About it and about. *$5 Dutton 824
(Eng ed 20–10519)
“These essays, most of which appeared in Everyman, consist of comment on questions of the day, written from a ‘moderate’ point of view.” (Ath My 21 ’20) “Roughly speaking, Mr Willoughby touches on all the burning or still glowing topics of the day, on peace and war, on housing, on labour, on Ireland, on servants civil and domestic, and many other more or less immediate doubts and difficulties.” (Ath Je 11 ’20)
“Readably and brightly written.”
+ Ath p686 My 21 ’20 40w
“The rational good-humor characteristic of the book, a really precious quality at this time, naturally brims over in laughter, spontaneous and frequent enough to convey to the reader a feeling of expectant animation. Occasionally, the easy note of mirth has been forced.” F. W. S.
+ − Ath p764 Je 11 ’20 640w
“A witty, animated, keen-sighted, judicious and mature product of journalism. Informing and revealing sentences abound.”
+ Springf’d Republican p10 O 1 ’20 660w
“The author is implicit in it—‘his vaunts, his feats.’ He is often amusing. Mr Willoughby’s detachment is aloofness; from his Olympian height he scans the depths—or would if the depths were not shallows. His knowledge, however, does not come of patient observation, but from the study of the authorities.”
− + The Times [London] Lit Sup p291 My 13 ’20 630w
WILLOUGHBY, WESTEL WOODBURY. Foreign rights and interests in China. $6 Johns Hopkins 327
20–8714
“Professor Willoughby, of the Johns Hopkins university, served as legal adviser to the Chinese republic during the war. He has used his special knowledge to compile a statement of the rights conferred by treaties or agreements of an official character upon foreigners and foreign powers in China. As he says, the situation is ‘complicated in the extreme,’ for China permits all kinds of extra-territorial rights and suffers ‘spheres of interest, “special interests,” war zones, leased territories, treaty ports, concessions, settlements and legation quarters’ to infringe on her sovereignty, to say nothing of commercial concessions and revenue services under foreign control.”—Spec
“As a work of reference the volume may be highly commended.”
+ − Am Hist R 26:138 O ’20 500w
“His explanations and comments are thorough-going and illuminating. They are never wearisome, as legal discussions sometimes are.” E. B. Drew
+ Am Pol Sci R 14:727 N ’20 500w
“It has a quality that renders it easily read from beginning to end. This happy issue must be ascribed in due degree to the author’s admirable style and control of his material; but while the book is a model of what a thesis should be, it possesses, besides its usefulness as a work of reference, a human interest that is altogether compelling.” F: W. Williams
+ Nation 111:sup421 O 13 ’20 1100w + Spec 124:767 Je 5 ’20 210w
“The work is well done and is an addition of permanent value to the literature on the Far East.” W. R. Wheeler
+ Yale R n s 10:431 Ja ’21 340w
WILSON, CAROLYN CROSBY.[[2]] Fir trees and fireflies. *$1.75 Putnam 811
Poems on varied themes. Among the titles are: Mid winter; The patchwork quilt; Houseless; On the arrogance of lovers; Roads; December; Two songs for my child; Late March. These miscellaneous verses are followed by a series of love sonnets. Some of the pieces are reprinted from Vanity Fair, New Republic, Pagan and Vassar Miscellany.
“There is a certain nicety of phrasing, evenness and melody of line that raises them out of the ordinary and yet they are by no means pallid bits. Throughout, there is upon these poems, some greater, some less, the unmistakable hallmark of distinction.”
+ Boston Transcript p9 Ja 29 ’21 300w
“At its best Miss Wilson’s verse has a tight-lipped irony about it; or it may even develop into humor that is broad but never blatant. At its worst her poetry is quite a different matter; without ever being badly written, it is pompously and conventionally emotional.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p12 D 31 ’20 80w
WILSON, EDWIN BIDWELL. Aeronautics. il *$4 Wiley 629.1
20–4713
“The introduction to the book includes the ideas underlying simple flight and the aerodynamics of aerofoils. In the chapter on ‘Motion in two dimensions’ are collected with proofs the fundamental theorems in dynamics. The principles are carried step by step to the consideration of stability, and are then illustrated by example. The study of motion in three dimensions is committed to a following chapter. The last chapter in the section devoted to rigid dynamics applies the equations developed to the stability of the aeroplane. The rest of the book is devoted to ‘Fluid mechanics.’”—Nature
“It is very clearly written, and will be particularly valuable to advanced students of the subject for many reasons. On the other hand, it will not appeal strongly to the less advanced worker.”
+ Nature 106:173 O 7 ’20 600w N Y P L New Tech Bks p4 Ja ’20 50w
WILSON, MRS MARY A. Mrs Wilson’s cook book. *$2.50 Lippincott 641.5
20–17378
According to the title page the author was “formerly Queen Victoria’s cuisiniere,” as well as instructor in domestic science in the University of Virginia summer school and for the United States navy. The present volume contains her best recipes, set forth, as she says, not in the heavy cook book style, but in a more intimate manner “as if housewife and author were conversing upon the dish in question.” The recipes follow one another without arrangement or order but an index provides a guide to the contents.
+ Springf’d Republican p9a O 3 ’20 130w
WILSON, MAY (ANISON NORTH, pseud.). Forging of the pikes. *$1.90 (1½c) Doran
20–4710
The pikes are forged for the rebels of the Upper Canadian rebellion of 1837. The hero Alan’s sympathies are with the rebels the while his whole being is in the toils of his love for Barry. Barbara Deveril, the supposed daughter of the tavern-keeper is Indian in appearance and in her love for the forest and Indian traditions. She is Alan’s “Oogenebahgooquay”—the wild rose woman. One day, soon after the appearance of a dazzlingly handsome stranger, an Englishman, she disappears from the woods and the countryside, leaving Alan with his grief and his suspicion. While the rebellion and its dangers, and a brief sojourn in Toronto engage Alan, Barry is living through her short and sorrowful romance as the Indian-wed wife of the handsome Englishman. But they were meant for each other and the sick, disillusioned and widowed Barry finds herself still linked to life by her love for Alan.
“The description of country life, of the woods and of nature is vivid. The historical portions, on the other hand, are unsatisfactory.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p16 My 1 ’20 380w
“The story part of the book is an entirely secondary affair, conventional and not particularly interesting. To the average American reader the best of the tale will be the picture it gives of Canadian life at the time.”
+ − N Y Times 25:270 My 23 ’20 280w
“The style is flowing and simple and has an agreeable if not strictly synchronous flavor of Pepys.” H. W. Boynton
+ Review 2:463 My 1 ’20 160w + Springf’d Republican p11a Je 13 ’20 140w
WILSON, PHILIP WHITWELL. Irish case before the court of public opinion. il *$1.25 Revell 941.5
20–12207
“Mr P. Whitwell Wilson, who has more than once written for this Review and who is now living in the United States as a special correspondent of the London Dally News, has produced for American readers a little volume entitled ‘The Irish case before the court of public opinion.’ Mr Wilson was formerly a Liberal member of Parliament and also for a number of years worked in harmony with men like the late Mr Redmond and the other nationalist leaders. Mr Wilson, however, is wholly opposed to the present Sinn Fein movement for a separate Irish republic, and he undertakes in this book to show how, one after another, the real grievances of Ireland have been remedied.”—R of Rs
“Whether one agrees with Mr Wilson or not, one cannot help admiring his extremely lucid and convincing defence of Great Britain’s Irish policy. Partisan it is, but books on the Irish question have a tendency to be strongly pro-Irish or pro-English, and Mr Wilson sets forth his case in a very tolerant manner.”
+ Boston Transcript p6 O 13 ’20 200w
“It is almost unbelievable that any competent journalist who undertakes to discuss Sinn Fein should be still ignorant of the meaning of those two words, yet that is the plight of Mr Wilson. Since he has not yet discovered the meaning of two simple words now universally familiar to every newspaper reader, it is not surprising that his references to the financial relations of Ireland and England teem with incredible misstatements.” E. A. Boyd
− Freeman 1:547 Ag 18 ’20 1650w
“A remarkably fair-minded and adequate summary of the reasons for viewing with distrust the Sinn Fein propaganda.”
+ Ind 103:292 S 4 ’20 40w
“Whether or not one agrees with the conclusions presented by Mr P. Whitwell Wilson, one must appreciate the good temper and moderation with which he argues.”
+ − Nation 111:223 Ag 21 ’20 400w N Y Times p1 Ag 1 ’20 750w
“His book is valuable from the standpoint of its convenient recital of recent political history in relation to Ireland, and should have a wide reading.”
+ R of Rs 62:110 Jl ’20 240w
WILSON, THEODORE PERCIVAL CAMERON.[[2]] Waste paper philosophy; with an introd. by Robert Norwood. *$1.50 Doran 821
20–20440
The author of these papers and poems had been a schoolmaster before his enlistment in 1914. He was killed in 1918. Waste paper philosophy, part I of the book, is composed of short prose essays written for his son. Part 2 contains his poems, the first of which, Magpies in Picardy, was printed in the Literary Digest in February, 1917.
“Among the many poems inspired by the late war, ‘Magpies in Picardy’ has stood out as one of the very best. To every schoolboy in our land should a copy of ‘Waste paper philosophy’ be given. One closes the little book tenderly, for here is the record of a rare spirit.” C. K. H.
+ Boston Transcript p2 N 27 ’20 800w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
Review 3:648 D 29 ’20 200w
WILSON, WOODROW. Hope of the world. *$1 (2c) Harper 353
20–13562
This volume of speeches continues the series that began with “Why we are at war.” It contains “Messages and addresses delivered by the president between July 10, 1919, and December 9, 1919, including selections from his countrywide speeches in behalf of the treaty and covenant.” In making the selection from the addresses on the peace treaty and the League of nations the aim has been to avoid repetition and to present “the more cogent and significant portions of Mr Wilson’s appeal to the public.” Among the state papers are included the message on the high cost of living, letter to the national industrial conference, appeal to the coal miners, and message to the new Congress.
“Nearly all have in greater or less degree the characteristic merits with which we have become familiar, and the title chosen for the collection hits very well the note of earnest, almost wistful, conviction that gives impressiveness and driving force to practically everything that President Wilson has said. There is much material here for reflection, and it is presented with the lucidity and grace that we have learned to respect.”
+ − Grinnell R 15:262 O ’20 150w
WINDLE, SIR BERTRAM COGHILL ALAN. Science and morals. *$2.75 Kenedy 215
“Sir Bertram Windle, the distinguished Roman Catholic scientist, now professor of anthropology in St Michael’s college, Toronto, collects here (with some revision) nine essays which he has contributed to the Dublin Review, the Catholic World, America and Studies. Apart from the title essay he writes on Theophobia and Nemesis; on the narrowness of the strictly scientific, especially the biological view (Within and without the system); on the relation of the Roman church to science (Science in ‘bondage’); Science and the war; Heredity and ‘arrangement’; Special creation; Catholic writers and spontaneous generation; and he reviews Mr F. H. Osborn’s ‘The origin and evolution of life.’”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
Ath p126 Ja 23 ’20 50w
“This is worth while and very much worth while. It is worth while as a readable and popularly rendered contribution to apologetical literature; it is very much worth while because it is a contribution from a recognized scientist on a subject of wide scientific consequence.”
+ Cath World 111:253 My ’20 360w Int J Ethics 31:120 O ’20 130w The Times [London] Lit Sup p158 Mr 4 ’20 100w
WISE, JENNINGS CROPPER. Turn of the tide. *$1.50 (3c) Holt 940.373
20–4806
Cantigny, Château Thierry, and the second battle of the Marne are the three operations in which the American troops made their initial appearance in battle in the great war and which mark the transition of the Allies from the defensive to the offensive and the turn of the tide of victory in their favor. The author was a member of the Historical section of the General staff of the American expeditionary force for a number of months after the armistice, had access to the archives at General headquarters, came in contact with many of the leaders of the war and visited and made a careful study of every battlefield of which he writes. The three battles are the subjects of the three chapters of the book which also has a number of maps and appendices.
Boston Transcript p4 Je 9 ’20 150w
WISTER, OWEN. Straight deal; or, The ancient grudge. *$2 (2c) Macmillan 327
20–7009
The ancient grudge is the American feeling of ill-will toward England. This anti-English prejudice is explained by the author as a “complex” founded on false history teaching in childhood and fostered by Great Britain’s enemies. He reviews the history of our relations with England from the revolution down and says in conclusion: “In this many-peopled world England is our nearest relation. From Bonaparte to the Kaiser, never has she allowed any outsider to harm us. We are her cub. She has often clawed us, and we have clawed her in return.... Her good treatment of us has been to her own interest.... If we were so far-seeing as she is, we also should know that her good will is equally important to us.”
“Mr Wister’s purpose in his new book commands our sympathies. He has good intentions, but he is just a shade too friendly. He presses our hand a little too enthusiastically.”
− + Ath p825 Je 25 ’20 730w Booklist 16:332 Jl ’20
“Mr Wister is too good a writer of fiction to be quite satisfactory as a historian. He relies too much upon imagination and invention; he deals with historic personages as though they were characters in a novel, to be managed as the requirements of the plot dictate. The fact is that this book of Mr Wister’s, like his earlier ‘Pentecost of calamity,’ is a product of war psychology. It is a case of off with the old hate, on with the new.” R. L. Schuyler
− Bookm 51:566 Jl ’20 1000w Boston Transcript p8 Mr 10 ’20 150w
“Hysterical and rather silly book. To put it bluntly, Mr Wister has far to go before he recovers from the panic psychology of the war. Mr Wister is the victim of economic innocence and of a sincere admiration, which does him credit, for English civilization.” H. S.
− + Freeman 1:549 Ag 18 ’20 900w
“Makes many true and effective points, but is a little exclusive in its attitude towards nations outside the frontiers of Anglo-Saxondom.”
+ − Ind 103:292 S 4 ’20 40w
“Mr Wister’s frivolity and fatuity are basic. He has his grip on the facts of Anglo-American history. In this region he escapes being a jingo and, what is more, he escapes being a toady, at least nine times out of ten. But once he tries to grip the facts of the world, outside Anglo-America, he is dangerously sentimental and at sea.” F. H.
− New Repub 22:319 My 5 ’20 1250w
“His is not a calm judicial mind; he is very much a partisan and a fighter. His vehemence now and then runs to the choler of the elderly man who dogmatizes angrily from his club window. Apropos of America’s attitude toward England, we learn the writer’s opinion of Roosevelt, of Secretary Daniels, of Admiral Sims, and so on. I for one regret his occasional fling of cynicism.” H. W. Boynton
+ − N Y Evening Post p13 My 8 ’20 1150w
“Mr Owen Wister has written a good book; and in writing it he has done a good deed. Mr Wister knows the English at home and abroad; he is an American of the Americans, but he is a grandson of Fanny Kemble and he has both relatives and relations in England. He is therefore unusually well equipped to discuss the social usages and the national peculiarities of the two countries.” Brander Matthews
+ N Y Times 25:235 My 9 ’20 2300w
“A very readable book. We do not agree with him, or with the politicians and the press men, in thinking that friendship can be ensured by books, and speeches, and leading articles.”
+ − Sat R 129:404 My 1 ’20 1550w
“Unfortunately, the book will not attain its end. For this Mr Wister is himself to blame. Much of the work is trivial arguments. It will not be any better to write our history with deliberate sympathies than with deliberate antipathies.”
− Springf’d Republican p8 My 18 ’20 350w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p263 Ap 29 ’20 550w
WITHAM, GEORGE STRONG. Modern pulp and paper making; a practical treatise. il $6 Chemical catalog co., 1 Madison av., N.Y. 676
20–19275
The author has had thirty-seven years’ practical experience in the pulp and paper industry. He is now manager of mills for the Union bag and paper corporation, Hudson Falls, N.Y. His aim in this book has been “to describe the equipment and processes actually used in pulp and paper plants on this continent today.... No attempt has been made to describe every piece of equipment ever used in the industry. Neither has the author attempted to deal with the historical aspect. Also, while recognizing the great importance of chemistry in connection with papermaking, no chemical considerations have been introduced which would not readily be comprehended by one with no special knowledge of that science.” (Preface) Contents: Processes by which pulp is produced; Materials from which pulp is produced; Varieties of paper; The saw mill; The wood room; The sulphite mill; The acid plant; The soda process; The sulphate process; The ground wood mill; Bleaching; The beater room; The machine room; The finishing room; General design of pulp and paper plants; The power plant; Testing of paper and paper materials; Paper defects: their cause and cure; Personnel; Useful data and tables; Index. There are over 200 figures in the text.
Booklist 17:101 D ’20
“This is the first book on the subject of paper-making that we have ever read that is really worth while; it is a practical treatise on paper technology that bears the stamp of genuine authority. One subject, however, in the book which has been somewhat summarily dealt with is that relating to the dyeing and coloring of paper. In its typographical makeup the present volume is a credit to its publishers.”
+ − Color Trade J 7:118 O ’20 460w
“For ‘the man on the job’ this is, on the whole, a much more satisfactory work than that of Cross and Bevan; moreover it deals only with American practice. The practical aspect of the book should be emphasized.”
+ N Y P L New Tech Bks p69 Jl ’20 100w
WITWER, HARRY CHARLES. Kid Scanlan. *$1.75 (2½c) Small
20–10733
Kid Scanlan, welterweight champion, goes into the movies and this is the story of his adventures as told by his manager, Johnny Green. Among the titles of chapters, each of which constitutes a short story, are: Lay off, Macduff; Pleasure island; Lend me your ears; The unhappy medium; Life is reel! Hospital stuff.
“This book may be scoffed at by the more intellectual, but the wideness of its appeal is evident.”
+ N Y Times 25:27 Jl 25 ’20 340w
“A humorous mixture of extravagance and slang in Witwer’s happiest vein.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Ag 8 ’20 110w
WITWER, HARRY CHARLES. There’s no base like home. il *$1.75 (3c) Doubleday
20–9784
A combination of baseball and the movies. Ed Harmon, “the undisputed monarch of the diamond,” continues the series of letters to his friend Joe, and tells what happened after he brought his French wife, Jeanne, to New York. Jeanne not only learns English, she undertakes to teach that language to her husband. She also goes into the movies, and drags her reluctant husband with her. Jeanne’s relatives come from France to pay a surprise visit, but as suddenly return, inspiring their son-in-law to give three cheers for prohibition. The stories are: There’s no base like home; She supes to conquer: A fool there wasn’t; So this is Cincinnati!; The merchant of Venus; The freedom of the shes; A word to the wives; The nights of Colombus; The league of relations.
Booklist 17:76 N ’20
“Abounding in picturesque slang, unusual figures of speech and shrewd comment on present-day tendencies and foibles.”
+ Cleveland p72 Ag ’20 70w
“In a certain way, Witwer’s stories remind one of Keystone comedies, although, of course, they are not quite so far-fetched in their incongruous situations. This kind of patter is handled with skill by Mr Witwer, who hardly ever descends to a too-obvious cheapness.”
+ N Y Times 25:27 Jl 25 ’20 340w + Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 11 ’20 200w
WODEHOUSE, PELHAM GRENVILLE. Little warrior. *$2 (1½c) Doran
20–18298
Jill Mariner is an American girl brought up in England. In her, cheerfulness and impulsive kindliness are counterbalanced by pride and quick temper. Between the two she never succumbs to any situation, but fights her way through. There are abrupt changes in her circumstances. From possessing a fortune and being engaged to an English peer, she drops to the position of chorus girl in an American musical comedy. After a brief but stormy career of a tragi-comical nature—with the emphasis on the comical—and after being wooed a second time by Sir Derek, she decides that she loves Wally Mason, her girlhood chum and now a writer of musical comedy in New York, best.
Booklist 17:162 Ja ’21
“So much of current fiction is touched with glowering realism or sour-mouthed cleverness that such real spontaneity and good humor as Mr Wodehouse’s is irresistible.” H. W. Boynton
+ Bookm 52:343 Ja ’21 290w
“The author manages to play upon even such a light-eroded spot as Forty-second street and Broadway with such piquant and Americanesquely touch-and-go ironical sparkle, such color and deft comedy tempo, as to leave with the reader an illusion of freshness and a complex of winning aftertones.”
+ N Y Evening Post p10 N 6 ’20 200w
“The gay comedy-romance is a top-notcher of its kind. The reader who doesn’t chuckle over this melange of English and American slang will have to be determinedly gloomy.”
+ N Y Times p24 O 10 ’20 530w
“The tale is capital burlesque with a warm touch of human nature.”
+ Outlook 126:470 N 10 ’20 50w
WOLCOTT, THERESA HUNT, ed. Book of games and parties for all occasions. il *$2 Small 793
20–19282
The material for the book has largely been compiled from the entertainment page of the Ladies’ Home Journal. The contents are intended to furnish entertainments for home, school and church parties, beginning with New Year’s Eve, extending throughout the year and taking in all the holidays of a general and private character, with invitations, menus for special occasions, appropriate rhymes and poetry, illustrations and an index.
Booklist 17:104 D ’20
WOOD, CLEMENT. Jehovah. *$2 Dutton 811
20–8539
A long narrative poem with frequent lyric interludes. The time is 1034 B. C., in the reign of David. David’s forces under Joab, sweeping south, spoiling and conquering in the name of their God, Jehovah, meet the resistance of the Kenites, the hill dwellers of Mount Sinai whose tribal God Jehovah is. Demanding tribute for their king and worship for their God, the Israelites are faced with the Kenites’ claim for priority in Jehovah worship, Moses having learned it from his Kenite father-in-law, Jethro. In the conference that follows two conceptions of Jehovah are set forth. The tribal god of the Kenites is opposed to the imperialist god of Israel. By trickery Joab outwits the weaker forces and falls upon them unawares to slay and exterminate, all for the glory of Jehovah. Toward the end a new conception of God is developed, the God of brotherhood as visioned by the prophet Jotham. The poem was awarded one of the Lyric poetry prizes for 1919.
+ Booklist 17:148 Ja ’21
“If it won the Lyric prize, it was hardly for its lyrism. Still, the poem is dramatic, the characterization interesting, and some of the passages genuinely powerful.”
+ − Dial 69:435 O ’20 90w
“When Clement Wood wrote ‘Jehovah’ he took the chance at being dull on the bigger chance of successfully writing a poem about an evolving god. He fails, and he is dull; but there is a sort of leaden grandeur about the attempt.” R. D.
− + Freeman 1:382 Jl 7 ’20 120w
“It has, curiously, a flavor of ‘Beowulf’ rather than of the Hebrew poets and prophets. It is written in a variety of verse forms, many of them interesting.”
+ − Ind 104:246 N 13 ’20 80w
“‘Jehovah’ suffers from a too constant strenuousness of reach and a too mighty savagery of diction; there is more motion than flow, more activity than strength. Yet certain of the songs genuinely mount; and Uz, the wrinkled patriarch, spokesman for the Kenites, is a triumph in portraiture.” Mark Van Doren
+ − Nation 111:sup415 O 13 ’20 120w
“The various songs about Jehovah sung by the two conflicting tribes of warriors, are replete with beauty that is made more significant and meaningful because there are depths to the thoughts expressed. There is an unmistaken classic air about Clement Wood’s ‘Jehovah.’” Alvin Winston
+ N Y Call p10 Jl 18 ’20 430w
“The grim expectancy in the tale is a strong point. There are cases, unfortunately, in which the vocabulary, not the conception, is herculean, in which it is only the dictionary that bares its thews.” O. W. Firkins
+ − Review 3:171 Ag 25 ’20 380w
“The poem is a faithful attempt to produce a visualization of men and events of 3000 years ago. It is hardly distinguished, but it shows considerable knowledge of the subject.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 18 ’20 210w
WOOD, CLEMENT. Mountain. *$2.50 Dutton
20–8518
“Pelham Judson grows up on the mountain, the son of the successful exploiter of its resources in iron; goes to Yale and absorbs the conventional social ideals (including an exploit as a strikebreaker); leads an almost preposterously chaste life, which he compensates for after his marriage to Jane by a delayed affair with Louise; returning to Adamsville after graduation, becomes converted to the cause of labor and socialism and is one of the leaders in the long drawn-out strike in the mines. The result of the conversion is, of course, permanent estrangement from his father and mother, the former the leader of the standpat forces.”—New Repub
“A heterogeneous mass of capital and labour, love and catastrophe. Mr Wood’s masterful portrayal of the negro race, however, furnishes a background which puts his high-lights to shame and leaves us the hope that he will visualize the white race with equal clarity.”
− + Dial 69:663 D ’20 60w
“Love, it may be said, Mr Wood presents more convincingly than economics. The characters of his story, never clearly realized, make sudden and inexplicable shifts of attitude to meet the necessities of a somewhat vaguely conceived plot, just as his social theories are strained to make destructive facts work toward constructive ends.” H. S. H.
+ − Freeman 1:574 Ag 25 ’20 360w
“One looks in vain for a single passage of supreme beauty, for one arresting phrase; yet there is in the book an undercurrent of power rare in a first novel.”
+ − Grinnell R 15:285 N ’20 620w
“From the point of view of art the mind is unpersuaded and the imagination a blank. The book is all haste and over-eagerness. The creative hand has scarcely touched it yet.”
− Nation 111:276 S 4 ’20 340w
“This is an uncommonly fine bit of work, for a first novel. The working class type is a real one, not a caricature. Yet the chief protagonists, Pelham Judson in particular, do not come into the reader’s experience with that unerring finality which is always the mark of sure imaginative creation. They are not inconsistent; they are plausible; they are unfailingly interesting. But they are mere sketches, not realities.” H. S.
+ − New Repub 23:286 Ag 4 ’20 1250w
“With ‘Mountain’ Clement Wood has added 335 pages to the little heaps of worthwhile contemporary literature.” A. W. Welch
+ N Y Call p10 Ag 15 ’20 600w − N Y Times 25:21 Jl 11 ’20 330w
“The novel reflects truthfully and interestingly an ardent if not entirely substantial type of temperament.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a S 12 ’20 300w
WOOD, ERIC FISHER. Leonard Wood: conservator of Americanism. il *$2 (3c) Doran
20–3861
The author admires the subject of his biography as the conservator and champion of Americanism, for his work at Plattsburg, his pleas for preparedness and his dignified reticence about himself. His flawless record in the past the author hopes gives just grounds for predicting a still greater career for him in the future. “He has ever been a true prophet in all matters pertaining to the political and military welfare of his native land, its allies and dependencies. He has never had to make excuses, for although the administrative tasks successively allotted to him have been vast in scope, he has never in any one of them fallen short of exceptional success.” (Conclusion) Contents: Ancestry and boyhood; Personal characteristics; As a surgeon; The Geronimo campaign; The Spanish-American war; Governor of Santiago; The Wood method; Appointed governor of Cuba; Governor of Cuba; Turning their government over to Cubans; The conquest of yellow fever; The Rathbone case; Governor of the Moro province; Dato Ali; The military administrator; The conservator of Americanism; The world war; Illustrations, appendix and index.
Dial 68:540 Ap ’20 60w R Of Rs 61:444 Ap ’20 220w
“A most interesting and most readable book.”
+ Spec 124:48 Jl 10 ’20 1900w
“Although Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wood is an indifferent biographer, his book contains several oases of competent writing. Thus he gives a graphic sketch of the Geronimo campaign, and his account of the Cuban operations is soldierly and useful.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p382 Je 17 ’20 850w
WOOD, FREDERIC JAMES. Turnpikes of New England and evolution of the same through England, Virginia and Maryland. il $10 Jones, Marshall 386
20–1059
“A detailed history of each of the many turnpike companies, such as is here furnished, offers a great deal to interest the engineer, and, from one point of view, summarizes the economic development of the country from the close of the revolution to the middle of the nineteenth century.” (Review) “The author, an engineer, has included everything—engineering problems, history, finance, management, vehicles, description.” (Booklist)
+ Booklist 16:230 Ap ’20
“It is written in a fascinating style, full of good humor, replete with stories and historical incidents, and its enthusiastic verve carries the reader from start to finish.” N. H. D.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ja 28 ’20 1000W
“A handsome volume of which both author and publisher have reason to be proud.”
+ Review 2:311 Mr 27 ’20 300w
WOOD, IRVING FRANCIS.[[2]] Heroes of early Israel. il *$2 Macmillan 220.9
20–17159
“‘Heroes of early Israel’ is one of the Great leaders series. It seeks to tell in a popular manner the stories of the old Hebrew heroes whose lives are too often lost for the young in the more difficult portions of the Bible.”—N Y Times
Booklist 17:93 D ’20
“The book is intended especially for use in schools, but many will like to put it into the hands of their children as an introduction to Biblical study.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p9 D 12 ’20 70w
WOOD, LEONARD. Leonard Wood on national issues; comp. by Evan J. David. pa *$1.25 (8c) Doubleday 308
20–7495
“In compiling this book the object has been to collect representative statements from the speeches and writings of General Leonard Wood on national problems.” (Compiler’s introd.) Among the subjects covered are: How Cuba won self-determination; Capital, labor and the golden rule; American women—today and tomorrow; War and peace; The league of nations; The farmer—his rights and wrongs; Teachers, moulders of the future; Immigration without assimilation: Americanization. In addition to the compiler’s introduction there is a foreword by Edward S. Van Zile.
WOODBERRY, GEORGE EDWARD. Roamer, and other poems. *$1.75 Harcourt 811
20–7800
The greater part of the book is taken up by “The roamer,” a long poem in four books symbolizing the soul’s pilgrimage through the ages and its upward progress. A sonnet sequence, Ideal passion, Poems of the great war, and a group of Sonnets and lyrics complete the volume.
“For those who like conventional, idealistic poetry.”
+ Booklist 16:339 Jl ’20
“Mr Woodberry’s lines are penned with such precision, dignity, and grace, and express so noble an enterprise, that one feels they should not be allowed to perish without protest. And yet they fail to stir. Is it that Mr Woodberry is too much merely the inheritor of Victorian maladies and philosophies?” L. M. R.
+ − Freeman 2:21 S 15 ’20 320w
“As an occasional poet Mr Woodberry is not exciting after the occasion has passed; in the present period of enforced listlessness toward the war, his poems on that occasion, at least, seem good work thrown away, seem good words robbed of their right to ring. Mr Woodberry is more surely a poet when he is a Platonist, as in ‘Ideal passion,’ on the whole the most vibrant portion of his recent output.” Mark Van Doren
+ − Nation 111:sup415 O 13 ’20 220w
“Professor Woodberry’s book must be accounted one of the genuine poetical achievements of the year, but it will hardly make a wide appeal to this generation.” H. S. Gorman
+ N Y Times 25:18 Jl 25 ’20 380w
“‘Ideal passion’ is excellent, while the ‘Roamer’ is valuable only to specialists in literature or disciples of Mr Woodberry. The shorter poems in the volume are vastly better than the ‘Roamer,’ but attain no equality with ‘Ideal passion.’” O. W. Firkins
+ − Review 3:170 Ag 25 ’20 800w
WOODHOUSE, HENRY. Textbook of applied aeronautic engineering. il *$6 Century 629.1
20–5220
“The bulk of this book is devoted to a description of existing machines, but in the first chapter the author declares that for commercial success the aeroplane should be built to carry twenty tons of useful load, and considers how this can be done. Other chapters consist largely of reprints of papers and documents, many from American sources, relating to aeroplane and seaplane engineering in the U.S.A. navy, the theory of flight, rigging, alinement, maintenance and repairs, and the value of plywood in fuselage construction.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
+ Boston Transcript p6 S 1 ’20 400w The Times [London] Lit Sup p474 Jl 22 ’20 80w
WOODHOUSE, THOMAS, and KILGOUR, P. Cordage and cordage hemp and fibres. (Pitman’s common commodities and industries ser.) il $1 Pitman 677
20–7601
An introductory chapter suggesting something of the early history of cordage is followed by: Definition of cordage and sources of fibres; Classification of fibres; The cultivation of hemp; Retting, breaking and scutching; The cultivation of plants for hard fibres; The preparing and spinning machinery for hemp and other soft fibres; The preparing and spinning machinery for manila and other hard fibres; Twines, cords and lines; Ropes and rope-making; Yarn numbering; Marketing. There are 31 illustrations and an index. The authors are connected with the Dundee technical college and school of art.
N Y P L New Tech Bks p41 Ap ’20 50w
WOODS, ARTHUR. Policeman and public. *$1.35 Yale univ. press 352.2
20–1368
“‘The policeman and public,’ by Lieut.-Col. Arthur Woods, former police commissioner of New York city, places in book form the author’s lectures in the Dodge course at Yale on the ‘Responsibilities of citizenship.’ Points discussed are: The puzzling law; The policeman as Judge; The people’s advocate; Methods of law enforcement; Esprit de corps; Reward and punishment; Grafting; Influence; Police leadership; and The public’s part.”—Springf’d Republican
“Throughout the book is a sympathetic discussion of the problems from the standpoint of the policeman. At the same time Mr Woods appreciates the reasons for the sometimes hostile attitude of the public toward the police.” J. L. Gillin
+ Am J Soc 25:794 My ’20 600w
Reviewed by G. H. McCaffrey
+ Am Pol Sci R 14:527 Ag ’20 340w
“A popular and interesting presentation of the problems and methods of the police, and of the ways in which the public may cooperate to add effectiveness to the service.”
+ Booklist 16:190 Mr ’20
“Colonel Woods has done a great service to the policemen of the entire country by putting their case fairly before the public.”
+ Boston Transcript p4 Ap 21 ’20 120w
“The little book is instructive and intensely interesting.”
+ Cath World 111:118 Ap ’20 220w + Outlook 124:203 F 4 ’20 70w
“Entertaining and instructive, not only to those connected with an important branch of municipal government and to applicants for places therein but to the public generally.”
+ Springf’d Republican p6 D 30 ’19 300w
“They are made lively reading by a mass of illustrative anecdotes.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p287 My 6 ’20 100w
WOODS, GLENN H. Public school orchestras and bands. il $2 Ditson 785
20–9484
In realization of the growing importance of music in our educational curriculum this book is offered to meet in particular the needs of the teacher who has no knowledge of instrumental music. It emphasizes three essentials for the instrumental work in the public school system: that the instruments for the band and orchestra be supplied to the children; that the work begin in the lower grades of the elementary schools and be carried through the high school; and that the instruction be given by special teachers of instrumental music. Among the contents are: Importance of instrumental instruction; Preparation of teachers: How to organize instrumental instruction; Instruction in the elementary schools; Instruction in the high schools; Conducting; Suggestions about tuning; How to assemble an orchestra score; Transposition; List of band and orchestra music, and instruction books. There is an appendix and numerous illustrations.
“For music leaders who lack professional training this book will be most helpful. It is practical, concise, and is written by one who has first-hand knowledge of the problem.”
+ El School J 21:318 D ’20 220w
WOODWORTH, HERBERT G. In the shadow of Lantern street. *$1.75 (1½c) Small
20–3063
The hero of this story is a little boy in China when the story opens. He knows nothing of his parentage and believes himself to be Chinese. But he really is white and his American father, altho unwilling to recognize his son, still takes him, at sixteen, back to the United States and educates him. Most of the story is taken up with the tale of the young man’s striving to accommodate himself to American ideals, especially in relation to women. Two women come into his life, Bess and Barbara. To Bess he found marriage to mean the reversal of the Chinese idea—her husband was to become her chattel. Fortunately he found out in time and with Barbara is promised the happiness that comes with love that means partnership.
“It is apparent that Mr Woodworth knows China well, for he has framed in these early pages a picture that is very foreign and that contains a large number of realistic details. If Mr Woodworth had succeeded in keeping his entire novel as vivid as these early chapters it would have been no mean achievement.” D. L. M.
+ − Boston Transcript p9 My 8 ’20 1000w
“There is some good material in the book, but the treatment lacks color, and shows no sense either of dramatic values, of style or of character. Such faint interest as the story has flickers out entirely as soon as the hero leaves China, which he does on the sixty-third page.”
− + N Y Times 25:4 Mr 7 ’20 300w
“The early portions of the narrative are interesting because of an atmosphere of adventure and exploration; the later phases are speculative and analytical.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a S 5 ’20 250w
WOOLF, LEONARD SIDNEY. Empire and commerce in Africa; a study in economic imperialism. *$7 Macmillan 960
(Eng ed 20–3421)
“Omitting consideration of Egypt, Mr Woolf records in detail the history of those portions of Africa which fell under the influence of European imperialism. Separate chapters are devoted to Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, Abyssinia, Zanzibar, and the Belgian Congo. In all cases the sequence of events as disclosed by the narrative is much the same. The awakening of covetous desire in the hearts of European statesmen; the entering wedge of commercial or financial enterprize, ostensibly promoted by private initiative but in reality fostered by the state; the eventual declaration by the home government of its intention to guarantee the integrity of the economic advantages thus gained by its citizens; the marking out of spheres of influence; the friction aroused between the powers by the crossing of imperialistic purposes, and the threat of war; the adjustment of these international differences by the devious methods of diplomacy, and the final emergence of the victor secure in the possession of the spoils. No patriotic bias is shown in the record. France, Italy, England, Germany, and Belgium are accused impartially of sordid motives and heartless conduct. A generous equipment of maps illustrates the text, and a reproduction of the necessary documents lends support to the narrative of diplomatic intrigue.”—Am Econ R
“A high order of merit is shown by the writer in his skillful disentangling of the strands of intrigue in which the imperialistic aims of the rival states are involved, and in the accomplishment of his main intent: to set forth clearly the sequence of events which discloses the true purpose of Europe in its penetration into Africa. Even those readers who cannot agree that a single motive actuates the modern state in its imperial policy will find this study of the progress of empire in Africa illuminating and suggestive.” E. S. Furniss
+ − Am Econ R 10:575 S ’20 1100w
Reviewed by W. E. B. Du Bois
Nation 111:352 S 25 ’20 580w
“This is a book of great value and startling candor. It will remind some of a Veblen satire, but it is more concrete and human than that.” W. E. B. Du Bois
+ Survey 44:310 My 29 ’20 700w
“The merits of the book are that it bears evidence of much research, though always on the one side and directed to proving what the author wants to prove, and that it is not greatly disfigured by indiscriminate abuse or by anti-patriotic bias.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p75 F 5 ’20 1950w
WOOLF, VIRGINIA (STEPHEN) (MRS LEONARD WOOLF). Night and day. *$2.25 Doran
20–19042
A long and slow-moving story dealing with a criss-crossing of love affairs. Katharine Hilbery, granddaughter of the poet Alardyce, is engaged with her mother in writing the poet’s life. Her father is editor of a literary review and all her associations are of a literary character. In secret however her predilections are for mathematics and she spends lonely midnight hours with Euclid. She becomes engaged to William Rodney, author of poetic dramas, altho she feels herself drawn to Ralph Denham, a masterful young man of no family or position. Ralph maintains a platonic friendship with Mary Datchet, a suffrage worker, who loves him and refuses his lukewarm offer of marriage for that reason. Katharine’s cousin Cassandra comes to town and captivates William, setting Katharine free to marry Ralph. This leaves everyone provided for except Mary, who continues to devote her life to causes. Considerable care is devoted to the delineation of minor characters.
“It is impossible to refrain from comparing ‘Night and day’ with the novels of Miss Austen. There are moments, indeed, when one is almost tempted to cry it Miss Austen up-to-date. It is extremely cultivated, distinguished and brilliant, but above all—deliberate. There is not a chapter where one is unconscious of the writer, of her personality, her point of view, and her control of the situation.” K. M.
+ − Ath p1227 N 21 ’19 1350w
“The half expressed thought, the interrupted sentences by which the action of ‘Night and day’ proceeds, are baffling. Carry this sort of thing a few steps further and you have Maeterlinck. Yet even this intent study of a fragmentary and delicate thing strikes one as in the spirit of Tennyson’s ‘flower in the crannied wall’ whose complete comprehension means comprehension of what God and man is.” R. M. Underhill
+ − Bookm 51:685 Ag ’20 350w
“‘Night and day’ is perhaps less fine than ‘The voyage out’; it is not quite all of a piece as the other book almost miraculously is, or perhaps the ancient fact that comedy is less impressive than tragedy weighs in its effect. But it is an ample book.” C. M. Rourke
+ New Repub 22:320 My 5 ’20 350w
“This novel of Mrs Woolf’s is profoundly irritating. She has devoted such fine ability, such remarkable understanding, to the description of the doings of people profoundly unimportant and insignificant.”
− + N Y Evening Post p22 O 23 ’20 200w
“All of the characters are drawn with art; their thoughts and actions are minutely observed and dissected. In point of literary style the book is distinctive.”
+ N Y Times p20 D 5 ’20 450w
“The narrative moves tardily along, and to the story, as such, one becomes somewhat indifferent. But in fresh characterization of its people and in charming pictures of England, especially of London, the work never fails.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p8 D 7 ’20 200w
“Round each scene and round the tale as a whole sound sympathetic notes, that are not definitely struck, but respond to those which are. We feel the dignity of a love-story worthily told. We see much more than we are shown. ‘Night and day’ is a book full of wisdom.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p607 O 30 ’19 1250w
WOOLF, VIRGINIA (STEPHEN) (MRS LEONARD WOOLF). Voyage out. *$2.25 (1½c) Doran
20–8627
In this kaleidoscopic picture of real life, people come and go with all their commonplace attributes. They are natural people and act naturally without any dramatic high lights to throw them into relief. To make the events transpire in a little world of their own a shipboard is chosen and a tourist’s hotel on a South-American mountain side. Helen Ambrose, wife of a Greek scholar, is put in charge of a niece, twenty years her junior, who at the age of twenty-four is still a child in world wisdom and experience. Helen, with rare insight and good sense, undertakes to initiate her into a larger life. In South America they meet the tourists—a variety of types compressed into a miniature world. Here Rachel unfolds and the greatest of experiences, love, comes her way, and there it all ends. Rachel falls a victim to the treacherous climate.
“To the reviewer, the opportunity to read about people who are real, but intelligent, is an unusual delight. These people employ self-control and common sense, even as you and I, and the plot proceeds without misunderstanding or murder.” R. M. Underhill
+ Bookm 51:685 Ag ’20 350w
“The story is strangely lacking in construction. It has neither beginning nor end nor single point of view, but it is thoroly interesting, a distinctly unusual book.”
+ − Ind 103:53 Jl 10 ’20 250w
“For all its tragic interest ‘The voyage out’ is not low-keyed; it even has a slight buoyancy of tone, as if clear perception itself brought a continual zest to its writer. Mrs Woolf has the diversity of power which makes the great writer of narrative.” C. M. Rourke
+ New Repub 22:320 My 5 ’20 1150w
“This English novel gives promise in its opening chapters of much entertainment. Later, the reader is disappointed. That the author knows her London in its most interesting aspects there can be no doubt. But aside from a certain cleverness—which, being all in one key, palls on one after going through a hundred pages of it—there is little in this offering to make it stand out from the ruck of mediocre novels which make far less literary pretension.”
− + N Y Times 25:308 Je 13 ’20 450w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
+ Review 3:318 O 13 ’20 620w
“As a first novel, it shows promise but is not well-rounded. Portrayal of women and scholarly elderly men is keen and well handled; that of younger and ‘red-blooded’ young men somewhat unsatisfactory.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p9a Jl 4 ’20 380w
WOOLMAN, MRS MARY (SCHENCK). Clothing: choice, care, cost. (Lippincott’s family life ser.) il *$2 Lippincott 646
20–26997
“This book faces the every-day living conditions of the people and treats clothing in its selection, use, care and cost. It is the result of many years of personal experience in technical and popular instruction in textiles and clothing to college students, ... to women’s clubs, to young wage earners, ... to buyers and managers in the retail trade, and recently, during the war, as a textile specialist in the service of the government among home keepers and extension leaders.” (Preface) Contents: Thrift in clothing; Woolen and worsted clothing; Cotton clothing; Silk clothing; Linen for clothing and household; Clothing accessories; Clothing and health; Intelligent shopping; Serviceable clothing; The clothing budget and the wardrobe; The care, repair and renovation of clothing; Dyeing, laundry and spot removal; A clothing information bureau; Planning for clothing progress; Appendix—made-over garments, with charts, bibliography, glossary; Illustrations and index.
“Useful to students, housekeepers and retail dealers.”
+ Booklist 17:102 D ’20
WORKS, JOHN DOWNEY. Juridical reform. *$1.50 (3c) Neale 347
20–1529
“A critical comparison of pleading and practice under the common law and equity systems of practice, the English judicature acts, and codes of the several states of this country, with a view to greater efficiency and economy.” (Sub-title) “This little book is intended not only to point out some of the changes in the laws of pleading, practice, and procedure, necessary to mitigate present conditions resulting in interminable delays and enormous expense in maintaining the courts and the administration of justice, but also to show that a large part of the delays, and consequent unnecessary expense of litigation, is not brought about by defective laws alone but by the dilatory and faulty administration of the laws we have.” (Preface) Contents: Courts; Actions; Pleadings; The demurrer; Empaneling juries; Examination of witnesses; Taking cases under advisement; Briefs; Written opinions; Findings; Continuances; Appeals; Rules of court; Reports of decisions; Efficiency; Appendix.
“He writes with an apparent knowledge of his subject and with a high degree of common sense and authority.”
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ja 28 ’20 120w
“There is much in this little volume that entitles it to the attention of every voter, certainly of every public-spirited lawyer.” E: S. Corwin
+ Review 3:449 N 10 ’20 380w
WRAY, W. J., and FERGUSON, R. W., eds. Day continuation school at work. *$3 (*8s 6d) Longmans 374.8
20–18400
“The editors have brought together the discussions of twelve individual contributors, each paper constituting a chapter of the book and dealing with some more or less specific phase of the writer’s experience in organizing and conducting the scheme of training described. The introductory chapter, written by one of the editors, is a general discussion of the necessity for continued education and the relation of day continuation schools to the national educational system. The next chapter is a rather full description of the plan of administration of a girls’ continuation school, written by the head-mistress. This is followed by a similar account of a boys’ school by its head-master. In each case explicit statements are made concerning the curriculum, grading, discipline, and the usual problems of administration. The several chapters following, each written by an instructor in one or the other of these schools, take up such topics as Problems of class teaching in a boys’ day continuation school, The teaching of mathematics and science in a day continuation school for boys, Physical training in a girls’ school, and Arts and crafts. The last two chapters present the employers’ own statement of their attitude toward continuation education and their impressions of the value of the plan here described.”—School R
School R 28:714 N ’20 400w
“‘A day continuation school at work’ has particularly interesting sections dealing with camp and outdoor schools, but it does not achieve quite the modern spirit.”
+ − Spec 125:404 S 25 ’20 100w
Reviewed by M. C. Calkins
+ Survey 45:610 Ja 22 ’21 520w
WRIGHT, GEORGE E. Practical views on psychic phenomena. *$1.60 (4c) Harcourt 130
20–27481
There is still much confusion of thought, even among people of considerable general culture, on the subject of super-normal phenomena, says the author. In order to help the reader to steer clear, on the one hand, of illogical skepticism and, on the other, of unreasoning credulity, the book endeavors to lay down the broad lines on which an examination of the published records in the chief departments of psychical research should be carried out, and to summarize briefly the evidence and put forward the conclusions to which they have led the author. Contents: Evidence in general; Telepathy; Physical phenomena; Materialization and spirit photography; Communication with the disembodied: (1) the methods; (2) the evidence; Conclusion.
“This sensible and restrained introduction for the layman gives an unbiased summary of the evidence in the case for psychical research.”
+ Booklist 17:138 Ja ’21 + Outlook 125:507 Jl 14 ’20 30w
Reviewed by Joseph Jastrow
Review 3:42 Jl 14 ’20 950w
“He approaches the whole subject in a singularly cautious spirit; and his careful and candid examination of the nature of evidence in psychical research and of different theories is worth reading.”
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p175 Mr 11 ’20 160w
WRIGHT, HENRY PARKS. Young man and teaching. (Vocational ser.) *$1.50 Macmillan 371
20–2127
“In ‘The young man and teaching,’ by Henry Parks Wright, the author, who is dean of Yale college, discusses every aspect of the teaching profession, laying particular emphasis on the psychological qualifications of the man who would devote his life to teaching. Among the chapter headings are the following: Teaching as a profession; Objections to the vocation considered; Personal qualifications; Educational preparation; Instruction; Government; Rules and penalties; Teaching in college, and others.”—N Y Times
+ Booklist 16:332 Jl ’20
“His book is thorough and suggestive.”
+ Boston Transcript p11 Ap 3 ’20 130w + Cleveland p55 My ’20 50w N Y Times 25:296 Je 6 ’20 100w
“Some of the author’s sentiments are tinged with those of the ‘old school,’ but a majority of his thoughts about teaching are strictly up to date and unquestionably true.”
+ − School R 28:392 My ’20 400w
WRIGHT, ROWLAND. Disappearance of Kimball Webb. *$1.75 (3c) Dodd
20–819
Mystery and adventure story centering about a man who disappears as if by magic the night before his proposed wedding to a beautiful young heiress. All efforts to find him prove for weeks in vain. Some think him spirited away by ghosts. Elsie, the heiress, is implored by her relatives to marry some one else, for if she does not marry soon, by the conditions of the will, she loses her fortune. But for her there is no one but Webb. Finally after desperate efforts, and dreadful adventures, the mystery is solved at last. Webb is brought back in time to save the fortune, and the “master mind” who has spirited the bridegroom away and kept him basely hid is one least expected.
“The characters are the mere sketches which pass in most latter-day mystery fiction. The style is slipshod, the dialogue barren, the action forced. Mr Wright has a new idea, cleverly developed in its essential details. With this he stops short.” C. H.
− + Boston Transcript p9 Mr 20 ’20 320w
“A somewhat new idea is used as vehicle, showing that modern mystery fiction can be based on a single unsolved point. But the supporting material is inferior, in comparison, and causes the story to prove somewhat disappointing.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a My 16 ’20 220w
WYATT, EDWIN M.[[2]] Blue print reading. il $1 Bruce pub. co. 744
20–16615
“This book is the result of several years teaching of blueprint reading in night schools and several years teaching of drafting preceding it.... Essentially it is a tried text, one that has been used to teach the reading of drawings to one class of mixed trades, one class of ship carpenters, two classes of house carpenters, and one class of machinists. It has been designed to suit as wide a range of trades as possible. Usually each new principle is illustrated by both a machine and an architectural example.” (Preface) The book is illustrated with twenty-nine plates, and questions and problems follow the chapters.
Booklist 17:104 D ’20
“A valuable addition to the library of manual training teachers and craftsmen wishing to be fluently versed in the universal language of mechanical drawing.”
+ School Arts Magazine 20:244 D ’20 50w
WYLD, HENRY CECIL KENNEDY. History of modern colloquial English. *$8 Dutton 420.9
(Eng ed 20–9723)
“This book may be described, in one way, as a documented history of English pronunciation from Chaucer to the present day; in another, as an attempt to show that, ‘during the last two centuries at least, the modifications which have come about in the spoken language are the result of the influence not primarily of regional, but of class dialects,’ the final result being the ‘public school English’ which is now the normal spoken idiom of the educated classes. In chapter I the author surveys in broad outline the various problems dealt with in minute detail later in the book. Chapter II, dealing with ‘Dialect types in middle English, and their survival in the modern period,’ contains an elaborate phonetic description of the three main contributory dialects. Chapter IV, on ‘From Henry VIII to James I,’ shows us the English language arriving at the self-conscious period. With chapter V, ‘Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,’ we are on modern ground. Chapters VI to IX deal with the phonetic history of the modern language and the origin of inflections. The final chapter, on ‘Colloquial idiom,’ gives us examples of familiar speech from John Shillingford (1447) to Miss Austen; and there are some final sections on the trimmings of speech, such as greetings, epistolary formulas, expletives, compliments, etc.”—Ath
“Professor Wyld is to be congratulated on the accomplishment of a very valuable, and evidently laborious, piece of work. We would suggest that he should so far consider the intelligent layman as to publish an abridged edition, with a few characteristic examples replacing the ponderous mass of phonetic detail which concludes each chapter, and, above all, that he should add an index.” E. W.
+ − Ath p669 My 21 ’20 1350w
“It may be well to indicate what strikes one as its only defect—that he takes the insular attitude not uncommon among British scholars. This caveat once filed, it is only fair to say that Professor Wyld has done very well indeed what was well worth doing.” Brander Matthews
+ − N Y Times p7 Ag 29 ’20 2250w
“No matter how familiar the outlines of the story, no one can follow Professor Wyld’s version of it without finding his interest in it quickened and enlarged on every page.” H. M. Ayres
+ − Review 3:386 O 27 ’20 1250w The Times [London] Lit Sup p242 Ap 15 ’20 20w
“Professor Wyld commands a fluent style, but not of the highest order. Of minor errors and slips there is too large a number. To end on a fault-finding note would be to give a false impression of our appreciation of this notable book. We hasten to set down our tribute to the author’s courage and enthusiasm.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p415 Jl 1 ’20 2100w
WYLIE, IDA ALENA ROSS. Children of storm (Eng title, Brodie and the deep sea). *$2 (1½c) Lane
20–18388
The story of an unequal marriage. Ursula Seton, daughter of one of England’s wealthiest families, and Adam Brodie, son of an humble grocer, are married as the result of a brief wartime romance. After the war, and Adam’s return, they try to make the necessary adjustments. The first attempt is made in Ursula’s home. Although her family mean to be sympathetic and kind, Adam is independent and sensitive and the experiment fails. A second attempt is tried out in Adam’s humble circumstances. Here the pettiness of everyday drudgery wears upon Ursula until she can stand it no longer. The two seem to have come to a deadlock when a new element enters into their affairs. Ursula’s grandfather, who has confidence in Adam, leaves him the management of the steel industry which has brought the family their wealth. In grappling with the problems which this position brings, Adam grows and develops in mind and soul until Ursula sees again in him the man with whom she had fallen in love.
“The domestic scenes revealing their difficulties are perhaps the best in the book.”
+ Ath p80 Jl 16 ’20 110w + Booklist 17:162 Ja ’21
“Miss Wylie’s straightforward and felicitous style is an unmixed delight.”
+ N Y Evening Post p17 D 4 ’20 390w
“The author fails signally to answer the question she raises. ‘Children of storm’ contains some dramatic passages and some character-revealing dialogue, but the author cannot be said to meet satisfactorily the artistic demands of her self-imposed, ambitious theme.”
− + N Y Times p18 D 5 ’20 560w
“The final reconciliation of husband and wife through the husband’s endeavour to settle labour troubles is, however, not quite convincing. The writer obviously has fine but vague ideals at the back of her mind for the improvement of the life of the workers, but she does not quite succeed in imparting them to the reader.”
+ − Spec 124:53 Jl 10 ’20 110w
“In the first chapters Miss Wylie writes with truth and without partisanship, so that you see this struggle from every side, sympathize with every character and feel their inevitable sorrows. It is ... partly perhaps that Miss Wylie was in a hurry to bring her tale out of tragedy to a triumphant conclusion, which makes the end of the book melodrama. It is good melodrama, but by comparison with the first part of the book superficial and theatrical.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p422 Jl 1 ’20 600w
WYLIE, IDA ALENA ROSS. Holy fire, and other stories. *$1.75 (2c) Lane
20–8791
Michael Gregorovitch, of the title story, is a Russian priest. He was a man of peace, a non-resistant, he loved and prayed for his enemies and he kept the lamp burning before the altar of the little church—the light of God that had not gone out for two hundred years. The night the village was sacked the women implored him to give the signal from the belfry, to sound the tocsin, for the peasants to break forth from their hiding and kill the invaders. But the priest standing before the holy fire remained firm—although his house was burned, his wife and little grandson killed, he would not countenance killing. When the ruffians entered the church, he did not resent their insults—they put out the holy fire that had burned for two hundred years and the priest escaped to the belfry and gave the signal. The other stories are: Thirst; The bridge across; “Tinker—tailor—”; Colonel Tibbit comes home; “‘Melia, no good”; A gift for St Nicholas; John Prettyman’s fourth dimension; An Episcopal scherzo.
“Most of them are marked by tense emotion, but frequently there are gleams of humor.”
+ N Y Times 25:30 Je 27 ’20 300w
“Miss Wylie’s work is frankly colored with sentiment. She does not ignore the sensibility of the race which was not ashamed to sob over Colonel Newcome and even Little Nell.” H. W. Boynton
+ Review 3:253 S 22 ’20 160w
WYLLARDE, DOLF. Temperament: a romance of hero-worship. *$2 (½c) Lane
(Eng ed 20–12952)
Joan Delamere, of English parentage, was born in the tropics and had an exotic temperament. She was a musical genius, imaginative and romantic to a degree. She dreamt dreams and fashioned them in music. While still a child the personality of a certain Lord Oswald Lancaster fired her imagination and became her hero. Chance encounters with him at long intervals kept the fire burning, but not till the hero was sixty and Joan thirty did they come to know and love each other. As a child she had made a vow never to marry and her union with Lord Oswald remained an illicit one. When an older obligation claimed the latter, Joan hid herself from him and the world on her native Seychelles islands where she died a lonely death in giving birth to her son.
“The book is not quite as compact as the theme demands, and this diffuseness militates a bit against its complete success but in a large measure the theme, in its ample treatment, is developed in a surprisingly interesting manner. The reader will find much to satisfy him in the book by considering Joan as a feat in portraiture.”
+ − N Y Times p26 Ag 22 ’20 780w
“As usual with this author, we are attracted, half in our own despite, by the sheer cleverness often revealed in dialogue, characterisation and description.”
+ − Sat R 130:100 Jl 31 ’20 240w
“Her sentimental adventures are not completely convincing, and Lord Oswald Lancaster is of so commonplace and unattractive a type that the reader will have very little sympathy with Joan Delamere’s obsession.”
− Spec 125:216 Ag 14 ’20 50w
“The events of the tale are plausible, and the persons behave quite naturally and credibly. To that extent the book is a skilful and successful piece of fiction. Yet it is very far indeed from being a good novel in any more serious sense than that. The reason is that the persons, though carefully imitated from life, are only lay figures. They are the product not of an act of creative imagination, but of skilled and painstaking manufacture.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p426 Jl 1 ’20 360w