GIBBS, SIR PHILIP HAMILTON. People of destiny; Americans as I saw them at home and abroad. il *$2 (5c) Harper 917.3
20–17298
In describing the life in New York and the people he met in America the author records impressions that are much the same as those of other Europeans, vid., that there is too much vastness, bustle and hubbub, too little “art, beauty, leisure, the quiet pools of thought.” In summing up the characteristics of the people he finds them “filled with vital energy, kind in heart, sincere and simple in their ways of thought and speech, idealistic in emotion, practical in conduct and democratic by faith and upbringing”; and he expresses the hope that these characteristics will help them to steer free of the dangers that threaten our liberties since the war. In telling America what England thinks of it he is holding up a warning mirror to us. Contents: The adventure of life in New York; Some people I met in America; Things I like in the United States; America’s new place in the world; What England thinks of America; Americans in Europe.
“He expresses a number of opinions about America, but they are not all consistent with one another, they belong to different emotional registers, and we feel it would be a purely arbitrary proceeding to select any consistent set of them as representative.”
+ − Ath p648 N 12 ’20 700w Booklist 17:110 D ’20
“His first few chapters are so insistently laudatory that one feels his praise issues more from his will than from his judgment, that he is simply determined to see good, and one longs—perversely, no doubt—for more shading in the picture. In the closing chapters, however, he comes to grips with his subject and gives a more balanced verdict.”
+ − Cath World 112:537 Ja ’21 770w
“Sir Philip Gibbs met so many of the right people during his stay among us that it is curious he should have learned anything whatever about America. Sir Philip’s book is occupied largely with the conventional admirations of the casual European for the physical conveniences of our civilization, with the regulation amazements about wonder cities and their subways and skylines and palaces and bejewelled parasites.” Harold Kellock
− Freeman 2:309 D 8 ’20 1150w