“His book should be as useful to the college student of political science as to the voter.”
“The book is not a homily, but a sober recital of cold facts, which it behooves every one who would retain his faith in popular government to ponder deeply.”
“Where the course of the organization became particularly spectacular, as under the leadership of ‘Boss’ Tweed, Croker, Murphy and others, the narrative is particularly copious, but eminently fair as a recital of fact. ... It is not a recital of ‘original sin’ or ‘inherent depravity,’ though most of the acts chronicled will of course bear that bourgeois interpretation. What we can perceive is the workings of ‘economic determinism,’ the constant struggles of an organization to adapt itself to its environment.” J. W.
“Mr Myers, not being a politician, has gone at his job like a historian. He has gone to his sources, old newspapers, city hall records, not forgetting criminal court minutes, with no more partisan passion than would be expected of a man getting ready to write a history of the dynasty that built the pyramids.”
NADAL, EHRMAN SYME.Virginian village, and other papers; together with some autobiographical notes.*$1.75 (2c) Macmillan 814 17-7187
The author has collected a number of papers and essays originally contributed to magazines. The one from which the book takes its title, “A Virginian mountain village,” appeared in Scribner’s Magazine in 1909. At the request of the publishers he has prefaced the whole with some autobiographical notes. “They say the book represents me as being in so many places and doing so many things that the effect upon the reader is confusing,” he explains. This autobiographical sketch, discursive and enriched with anecdotes, forms a pleasant introduction to the papers that follow. Among these are: Southern literature; A horse-fair pilgrimage; Impressions of Lincoln; Impressions of Lowell; Contrasts of English and American scenery; Cumberland Gap; Lincoln and Stanton; Virginia women.
“Although so very much has been written of Lincoln, it still remains true that the impressions of Lincoln incorporated into this book are likely to be read with more interest than almost any of the other pages. Mr Nadal’s style is interesting and he presents his impressions so well that they are likely to be remembered.” D. L. M.
“Seldom indeed does one pick up a more seductive volume for an idle hour.”
“He laments that he spent so much of his youth sitting on a fence-rail looking at the landscape, but this occupation seems to have borne its literary fruit: he has a genial responsiveness to the moods of nature. Then he has humor, and what is even more essentialto an essayist, a keen observation of men and manners which expresses itself in both portraiture and social analysis. The chapters that analyze southern society and literature are particularly interesting.” E. S. S.
“These papers of Mr Nadal’s have appeared in leading American magazines and newspapers, but are well worth reprinting. They make a charming, readable and informing volume.”
“A variety of reminiscent sketches, some of them charming in themselves, others of general interest. The author, though a Virginian born and bred, as a cosmopolitan of the outer world sees the South as it really was and is.”
NAIDU, SAROJINI.Broken wing; songs of love, death and destiny, 1915-1916.*$1.25 Lane 891.4 17-6890
“The bird of time” and “The golden threshold,” two earlier books of verse, have introduced this Hindu woman poet to western readers. The third volume is made up of poems grouped together as Songs of life and death, Memorial verses, The flowering year, The peacock-lute: songs for music, and The temple: a pilgrimage of love.
“As a whole the volume shows that the Indian woman of to-day is conscious how large her share is destined to be in the guardianship and interpretation of the triune vision of love, faith, and patriotism.”
“If we seek the material India in her verses we shall find it as truly as we do the India of the spirit. ... Her love songs are delicately beautiful. The rhythms are western, but the spirit is all of the east, a spirit of tropical intensities, mingling with brooding certainty of eternal things which is so truly eastern.” D. L. M.
“Songs of love, death, and destiny. They are saturated with the magic of the East, exquisite in verbal beauty and eloquent with spiritual comprehension.”
“It is the fourth division of Mrs Naidu’s book, her love songs, which perhaps best illustrates the difference between occidental and eastern verse. In these love songs she permits herself an abandonment that is truly oriental, and that to an Anglo-Saxon reader contrasts rather unpleasantly with the elevation of thought and charm of such poems as Mrs Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese.’”
NANDIKESVARA.Mirror of gesture; tr. by Ananda Coomaraswamy and G. K. Duggirala. il*$1.50 Harvard univ. press 792
“This translation is based upon a Nagari transcript of the second Telugu edition of Nandikesvara’s ‘Abhinaya darpana.’ ... Among the gestures dealt with are movements of the head, the brows, and the hands. The last-named receive elaborate treatment. Numerous illustrations and a bibliography follow the text.”—Ath
“Will be useful as an introduction to Indian dramatic technique and to oriental acting in general.”
“The little book is dedicated ‘to all actors and actresses,’ but it will interest as well (or more) all students of the drama.”
“Easy, graceful English. ... The translator would have helped us more if he had done two things, if he had supplied an index, and had commented on some one complete picture.”
NATHAN, GEORGE JEAN.Mr George Jean Nathan presents.*$1.50 (2½c) Knopf 792 17-24680
A collection of papers on the theater. Mr Nathan is a dramatic critic in New York city, and plays recently produced on the New York stage give him the starting point for discursions on the art of the theater, play making and producing, the shortcomings of American audiences, etc. He is a very sophisticated person, with a cynical outlook and not much hope for the future of American drama, but for much of the sham and sentimentality of current theatrical production he offers an effective antidote. He writes of The Hawkshavian drama; The American music show; The commercial theatrical mismanager; The case for bad manners; America’s most intellectual actress, etc.
“A volume as gay and impudent as its title.” Algernon Tassin
“A man cannot live—live exclusively and consciously—in a realm of unworthy make-believe without suffering for it; and Mr George Jean Nathan, in some of his phases, is calculated to cause regrets. He opens up some wonderful, sudden vistas for the playgoer, and shoots a number of penetrating epigrams; but his taste and discretion are not equal to his brilliancy.”
“This is a book of serious criticism of the New York theatre. Mr Nathan is self-possessed, cynical, urbane, smart and sometimes flippant. He confounds one with his knowledge of the drama of the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany. He gives us facts running over. He loves to shatter legends. His book is refreshingly honest because refreshingly severe.”
National year book, 1917. maps 50c Hammond & co. 317.3
“A book of facts, figures and general information, together with a new and complete gazetteer of the United States and non-contiguous territories.” The book contains nearly 150 pages of useful information on miscellaneous subjects, with many statistical tables, maps, etc.
NAUMANN, FRIEDRICH.Central Europe; a tr. by Christabel M. Meredith from the original German.*$3 Knopf 327 17-8207
A translation of “Mittel-Europa,” a German work outlining a plan for a permanent union of the Central European nations. “The nucleus of the organization is to consist of the German empire and Austria-Hungary. To this nucleus will be added the Balkans, Turkey, and the present neutral states to the north of the empire. Thus a combination will be effected that comprises a great stretch of territory through the heart of Europe, binding the members together with ties of common interest. At the same time the enemies of the empire will be separated. The major part of the book is taken up with discussion of the difficulties in the way of a union of the empire and the dual monarchy. The author realizes that the sovereignty of each state must be preserved; and that that may be done, works out a scheme of joint commissions which shall carry out the wishes of the several governments. The tariff problem is recognized also.” (J Pol Econ)
“Important because it expresses imperial Germany’s political and economic claims with fervid enthusiasm, but with authority. Classed bibliography(17p.) of German and Austro-Hungarian books designed to further a mutual understanding: does not list translations.”
“The author, who is well known on the continent for various earlier books on political questions began his career as a Lutheran pastor and evangelist of socialism. He sprang into notice through several publications of radical propaganda, and entered journalism and politics. In the Reichstag, under the wing of the Liberal Socialist party, he has been long an exponent of Christian socialism and the world-wide mission of German kultur. In the present instance, Naumann does not view the war with the optimism of the German-American press. For him it is a cause of reflection.” R. W.
“His book, which has had the good fortune of finding a translator whose version reads like an English original, is indispensable to all who would form a concrete idea of the present working of the German mind, and it is a mine of information for everyone who wishes to gain an insight into the intricate problems of German economics and politics at the hand of a guide who has them at his fingers’ ends, and who is imbued with a living knowledge of German history.” Vindex
“It should be read by all who want to see for themselves, rather than thru enemy glasses, just what Germany is striving for.”
“All the oratory and the enthusiasm that have marked his rise to his present position as one of the most-read political authors of Germany today have been brought by Herr Naumann to his present task.”
“As a ‘formulation of current German thought’ the volume deserves the closest reading. And that reading will, by the way, illumine one of the Allies’ exprest conditions of peace—the partition of the Dual empire.”
“His book is really a long pamphlet summoning the people of middle Europe to union. It is argumentative, amiable, painfully tactful, shrewd, sentimental. It is skilful journalism, wheedling, exhorting, threatening, appealing to pride, to vanity, to historical tradition, to economic interest, to fear, to ambition. ... Naumann’s real effort is to establish the idea, rather than to solve the problem. ... The lesson for those of us who are, I think, justly suspicious of the mid-European project is fairly evident. Its most powerful support is external pressure. The more Central Europe is isolated and boycotted the easier will it be to create Mid-Europe.” W. L.
“It must be remembered that the economic questions inherent in the doctrine of ‘Central Europe’ come up automatically for some sort of settlement at the end of this year. Then the commercial treaties, not only between Germany and Austria-Hungary, but between Austria and Hungary, will lapse, and if there should merely be a continuance of the present arrangements so long as the war lasts there will nevertheless be indications of what the new economic policy is to be. ... It is not astonishing that Herr Naumann’s book should have made a deeper impression on Germany than any book of recent times. The author writes for everybody; he has enough learning and distinction to satisfy the well-educated and enough clearness and breeziness to attract the common mind. As an old Social Democrat, he understands how to make the most cunning kind of democratic appeal when he is in fact exalting Kaiserism.”
“The most famous book to which the war has given birth.”
Reviewed by Bruno Lasker
“Naumann says that he conceived the plan of his book in April, 1915. Fortune favored him in the great eastern offensive that followed; and his book had its great vogue in the full flood of success against Russia which encouraged Berlin to lose no time in opening fiscal negotiations with Austria and Hungary, and even attempting to ‘solve’ the problem of Poland. The English reader who now sees the book for the first time should bear the conditions of its production in mind.”
Reviewed by W. C. Abbott
NEILL, ALEXANDER SUTHERLAND.Dominie dismissed.*$1.25 (3c) McBride 828 E17-785
A sequel to “A dominie’s log.” The school master whose original experiments in education were described in that book is dismissed from his position and a representative of the old type of teacher is put in his place. The dismissed dominie goes to work on a near-by farm and watches his successor break down all that he has built up. A small group of the children, however, cling to him, and there are many delightful out-of-school conversations recorded. The educational questions discussed are pertinent to the times. The author warns against the danger of over-emphasis on technical education after the war, and, in a conversation with an American visitor, comments on some of our educational experiments.
“We may justly complain of the careless statements, the false premises, the disputable facts which mar the argument. These help to make Mr Neill’s views on education and sociology unconvincing. All the same, the reader can count on an extremely agreeable picture of school life in a Scottish village, uncompromising in its attitude, but absolutely without malice; and a handbook on socialism into the bargain.” J. F. S.
“However we may dissent from many of the author’s opinions, he has written a most original and suggestive volume, filled with sayings racy and to the point: a humorous story as well as one packed with theories which make the reader ‘sit up.’”
NEILSON, WILLIAM ALLAN.Robert Burns: how to know him.il*$1.50 Bobbs 17-13543
Chapters on: Biography; Inheritance: language and literature; Burns and Scottish song; Satires and epistles; Descriptive and narrative poetry, make up this study of Burns. The author wisely recognizes that the best way to know Burns is to read him and quotes over one hundred of the poems. The author is professor of English at Harvard university.
“He gives us an interesting and truthful sketch of the poet’s life.”
“William Allan Neilson has a trifle too much subtlety and coolness in his method to ‘do’ Burns, the romantic poet, drinker, and lover, with any great amount of enthusiasm; it is Burns the Scotchman whom he really warms to.”
“William Allan Neilson, to judge just from his ‘Burns, how to know him,’ is, first of all, a man of breadth, and only secondly a digger in booklore. Humor of word, as well as humor in a critical sense and understanding of the poet’s and the man’s heart, pervades these well-printed pages. A first class practical idea is that of the glossary. Properly limited to just the really troublesome Scottish dialectwords it runs along the margins, instead of being tucked away off somewhere in the back of the book.”
“Will delight every lover of poetry.”
“It is certainly saying nothing against the book to say that the firm impression it makes is mainly produced by the poems, well chosen and well arranged and, with the marginal glossary, easily read. Their effect, however, is reinforced by a skilful, compact biography, a clear, thoroughly informed chapter on Burns’s language and his literary antecedents, a running commentary on the selections, and a critical summary.”
“An excellent introduction to Burns, giving a very sympathetic yet just view, both of the biographical and analytical sections.”
“There is one perfectly obvious duty, a duty which cannot be too carefully performed, which Mr Neilson—like almost all his predecessors in the editing of Burns—has scanted. We refer to the elucidation of Burns’s dialect. Mr Neilson follows the method of the centenary edition of the poet. He gives fairly numerous glosses in the margin. He does this rather more freely than the centenary editors, and occasionally his gloss is more correct than theirs. Nevertheless he leaves a good deal undone which might easily have been done. The selections from Burns are very judiciously made, and give an exceptionally adequate idea of the poet’s quality and value.” H: B. Hinckley
NEKRASOV, NIKOLAI ALEXEIEVICH.Who can be happy and free in Russia?tr. by Juliet M. Soskice; with an introd. by Dr D: Soskice. (World’s classics)*45c Oxford 891.7 17-23320
Nicholas Nekrassov was born in 1821 and died in 1877. In Russia he is called “the poet of the people’s sorrow” and in the introduction to this first English translation of his greatest work he is pronounced “the sole and rightful heir of his two great predecessors, Pushkin and Lermontov.” The prolog to the poem describes the meeting on the road of seven peasants who dispute over the question that forms the title, Who can be happy and free in Russia? One says only the priest, one says the landowner, another thinks the tsar’s chief adviser may be the happy man, while another declares that only the tsar himself has the right to freedom and happiness. To find the answer to their own question they wander about the country, and in the tale of their adventures we are given a picture of the tragedy and comedy, the sorrows and joys of Russian life.
“It will be very acceptable to English readers as the magnum opus of one of the foremost Russians of his time, ‘the poet of the people’s sorrow.’ The Oxford press deserves thanks for making such a work accessible at a price within the reach of every one.”
“It is a veritable peasant Odyssey. ... In spite of the fact that the English version of the poem does not preserve the peculiar musical and stylistic quality of the original, the translator has made every lover of good literature her debtor.” Abraham Yarmolinsky
“No one is likely to forget Nekrassov who reads Juliet M. Soskice’s translation, the first into English, of ‘Who can be happy and free in Russia?’ ... No extracts can give more than a hazy notion of the freshness and abundance of Nekrassov’s pictures of Russian life. The poor verse of the translation cannot spoil them.” P. L.
“It differs sharply from all other national epics. ... It might be the joint product of the Russian parallels of Burns, Villon, Synge; it is native, kin to the earth, endemic. It is full of simple vices and virtues, problems and passions; and this very simplicity makes it universal and of eternal importance.”
“Mrs Soskice’s metrical version, mostly in an easy unrhymed measure, is fluent and readable. Dr Soskice prefixes a short Life of the poet—a picturesque and attractive figure.”
“Nekrassov may now be claimed as chief and most beloved of Russian poets; popular and national, devotedly singing the sorrows and social wrongs of the humble multitude with such vigour and fire that his influence upon the youth of the last generation and of this is unbounded, and singing with such simplicity of concealed art that the poorest of schoolchildren learn page after page of him by heart.”
“Full of vivid pictures of peasant life in village and country, this long poem, if taken in small doses, not more than a chapter at a time, is bound to produce a powerful impression.”
NEVINS, JOSEPH ALLAN.Illinois. (American college and university ser.) il*$2 (2c) Oxford 378 17-13973
“This is the first history of the University of Illinois, and the first volume on a state institution in Professor Krapp’s American college and university series.” (Nation) The author tells us in his preface that it has “seemed necessary to throw a much greater emphasis upon the record of the past than upon the tendencies or characteristics of the present, and that even in the four final chapters, nominally not historical at all, will be found much historical matter.” There are eight appendices.
“This book has a special significance only for those interested in the educational development of a middle western state. It contains more information than the other volumes in the series but lacks to a large degree the literary charm of most of its predecessors.”
“The book, pleasingly written, has also the more substantial merits of careful historical detail and a comprehensive grasp of its subject. It is a needed and useful contribution to our educational history.”
“Portraying his alma mater with the insight of a son and the dispassionateness of a stranger, Mr Nevins has made a book, which, while of peculiar interest, no doubt, to Illinoisians, holds its subject steadily at the level of all who are concerned with higher public education. ... He seizes upon the development of the institution in relation to the state as the unique and commanding aspect of his subject, and he collects and arranges his material to illustrate it.”
NEVINSON, CHRISTOPHER RICHARD WYNNE.[2]Modern war; paintings by C. R. W. Nevinson; with an essay by P. G: Konody.*$3.50 McBride 940.91 17-8608
Mr Nevinson interprets the war thru the medium of one of the newer forms of art. He has found it “impossible to express the scenic and mechanical spirit of this twentieth century war with the languishing or obsolete symbolism of mediaeval or classic art.” “As you look at these paintings of Nevinson’s you reach a very obvious conclusion about modern war, namely that the individual soldier does not exist. All the actors on the scene, the soldiers serving the machine guns, or marching on in endless columns, the wounded writhing in pain, are not men but mannikins, gaunt conventionalized creatures, veritable slaves to routine and machines. ... The subject, forinstance, of the painting of the field hospital ‘La patrie’ is not so much wounded soldiers as it is gestures of agony.” (Masses)
“The only way to reflect this war truthfully in all its baleful manifestations, is to intellectualize it, to sublimate it, as it were, to transform its macabre into organized graphic representation. It is only through symbols that man can play with infinitudes. Just because he has attacked the problem in this way, C. R. W. Nevinson has been one of the first to react creatively to the reality of modern war.” Carl Zigrosser
“Mr Nevinson is a cubist, though, as we understand from the essay introducing him, a cubist who wears his cubes with a difference. For ourselves, we should not care if he were ten times more the child of the T-square than he is so long as he can produce pictures like those we are criticizing.”
“His pictures are pictures not because they represent what he has seen, but because they give us ocular experience of his emotions.”
New manual of bayonet training and practical bayonet fighting. il*75c National military pub. co. 355
The publishers state that this little book is compiled from the regulations in force in the new armies of the Entente Allies, adopted at Plattsburg and other American camps. The first part “Bayonet training, 1916 (Provisional) gives reasons for and practical lessons in bayonet fighting.” The second part “Practical bayonet fighting” “does not purpose to be of assistance in training men for competition fighting, although it may be of some use for individual instruction, but it is hoped that it will be of service to officers and N. C. O.’s when training a squad or a company.” (Foreword)
NEW REPUBLIC.New Republic book; selections from the first hundred issues. $1.50 Republic pub. co., 421 W. 21st st., N.Y. 320.4 17-4463
“Sixty-seven of the best articles which have appeared in the New Republic for the last two years are brought together in this convenient and attractive volume. According to the preface, ‘it is a collaboration and makes no attempt at complete unanimity or logical consistency. It aims to give in compact and available form a sample of the liberal opinion in the United States as expressed from 1914 to 1916 at the suggestion of events.’”—Am Pol Sci R
“Bound in boards; will not last.”
“As an aid in developing a responsible, well-informed public opinion ‘The New Republic book’ should render considerable service.”
“‘The New Republic book’ shows physically, a tendency to go to pieces under close examination. ... ‘Spiritually’ it exhibits as much coherence as could fairly be expected in a numerous group of men and women animated by a desire to destroy ‘the old crusted folkways’ and to break up ‘the cake of intellectual custom.’ ... Their jaunty attitude towards the past—it is neverau revoirbut alwaysadios—produces an exhilarating impression of timeliness. One with less spacious faith in the promise of the future might say—the timeliness of sailors who, to profit by a spanking breeze, throw the cargo overboard.”
“The solid political articles based on broadly democratic principles, and expressing a true aspiration after social progress and international security, have given a leading to many minds and became of much value in the recent political campaign. In the literary articles the paper has been less satisfactory.”
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY. COMMITTEE OF ONE HUNDRED.Newark anniversary poems; winners in the poetry competition. $1.25 Gomme 811.08 17-23312
This volume is published under the auspices of the Committee of one hundred on the 250th anniversary celebration of the founding of the city of Newark, New Jersey, May to October, 1916. It includes introductory chapters on Newark, on “Early Puritan poetry,” on “Civic celebrations as a community force,” and “A plan for a national anthology of American poetry,” by Henry Wellington Wack, editor of the Newarker; the official “Celebration ode,” by Lyman Whitney Allen; the poetry of the Newark pageant and masque, by Thomas Wood Stevens; the thirteen Newark prize poems; and “Other Newark anniversary poems, grave and gay,” which appeared in the Newarker, the Committee’s official journal, published from November, 1915 to November, 1916, as a record of anniversary events. Appendices give biographies of prize winners, names of the Committee of one hundred, etc.
“The poetry included in this anthology of Newark is much above the average level of anniversary verse and forms a worthy tribute to the great city. Our chief criticism is that so many of the bards celebrant found it necessary to apologize for their task.”
“Competitions in the arts are noteworthy for the fact that little good work is produced by them. This rule was not broken in the Newark contest. Nine hundred entries were submitted, and of all those published in the collection at hand only one touches greatness. By a coincidence not often met with in competitions, this great poem was awarded first prize. We refer to Clement Woods’ ringing glorification, indictment and prophecy!” D: P. Berenberg
NEWBERRY, PERRY.Castaway Island. il*$1.75 (2c) Penn 17-23974
The Galapagos islands, cut by the equator, lie out from the coast of Equador. They have never had a native population, and altho the Panama canal has increased their value, they are still sparsely settled. The island on which Bob Trevlin and Jeffers Stimson are wrecked is quite uninhabited. Bob Trevlin is a young San Francisco boy who is about to take passage for home when he meets Stimson, a soldier of fortune. The two plan to travel together, but a tropical storm drives them out to sea. The island on which they are landed has no human inhabitants, but they find on it a strange collection of wild domestic animals, the descendants, they suppose, of the animals left by earlier colonists. Chickens, dogs, cows and horses are among these, and their re-domestication is one of the occupations of the two castaways. Their adventures on the island cover about six months and include very real perils.
“Brimful of exciting adventure.”
“It is a story full of interest. Attractive illustrations by F. A. Anderson, some of them in color, add much to the book.”
NEWBOLT, SIR HENRY JOHN.Book of the happy warrior. il*$1.75 (2c) Longmans 18-300
The author has retold some of the old heroic tales for boys, with two final chapters linking the past with the present. Contents: The song of Roland; Richard Cœur de Lion; St Louis, king of France; Robin Hood; Bertrand du Guesclin and the Black prince; News from Poitiers, 1356; France v. Gentlemen of England; The Chevalier Bayard; The old English school;Chivalry of to-day. The illustrations by Henry J. Ford include a frontispiece and several colored plates.
“A book of scholarship and charm by a lover of the classics of chivalry.”
“Good reading, particularly in these days, a book from which older as well as younger readers may get a thrill, is ‘The book of the happy warrior.’”
“He has a fine sense of the chivalries of the past as well as the present. He spares no pains with his excellent prose; he shuns alike the modern preciosity which spoils the old stories and the slipshod sentimentality which distorts virtue, a word which in older days meant the essential qualities of manhood. The title of the book in itself is a specimen of his felicitous taste.”
“Sir Henry Newbolt has written another excellent book for boys—and for their sisters too.”
“The stories are told in clear, simple language and as far as possible in that of the original chroniclers.”
NEWCOMER, ALPHONSO GERALD, and others, eds. Three centuries of American poetry and prose.*$1.75 Scott 810.8 17-24531
A book of selections intended to meet the same need as that filled by “Twelve centuries of English poetry and prose.” In their selection of poetry the aim of the editors has been “to place between the covers of a single volume the greater part of what will remain permanent in American poetry from its beginnings down to the end of the first great production period in American literature.” With regard to prose, so comprehensive an aim was out of the question, but the editors say, “Whenever possible we have used wholes; when this was not possible we have made selections that would show the author’s purpose in the whole, and have above all tried to avoid the scrappiness and ineffectiveness of mere fragments.” Historically American literature is divided into two periods: the Colonial period and the National period, the latter closing about 1890. Chronological table, Index to notes and glossary, and Index to authors, titles and first lines are provided at the close.
NEWMAN, HORATIO HACKETT.Biology of twins (mammals). (Univ. of Chicago science ser.) il*$1.25 Univ. of Chicago press 575 17-11116
“Dr Newman has made a serious study of the problem of twins among mammals—especially armadillos, which have a way of producing multiple offspring as a regular thing. He has also gathered up the results of other people’s studies and has presented them in a very interesting way. ... Newman’s studies introduce several new factors into the speculations and interpretations of the problems. ... The bulk of the book is devoted to the armadillos, first because the author has made an extensive study of this group of animals, and second because these studies furnish the largest mass of direct evidence on the problems.”—Ind
“Brief, concise résumé of present knowledge.”
“The book is necessarily technical in parts, but the portions of concern to the general reader only can be read by a judicious skipper with great interest.”
“The essential points obtained by investigators to date have been placed in a single small volume where, appearing in a not too technical dress, they are readily and conveniently available, not to zoologists alone, but to the thinking public in general.” H. H. W.
Newspaper press directory and advertisers’ guide; seventy-second annual issue, 1917.*2s Mitchell, London 072
“This directory contains particulars of every newspaper, magazine, review, and periodical published in the United Kingdom and the British Isles; the newspaper map of the United Kingdom; the press of the British dominions overseas, the Indian empire, the continent of Europe, America, and the Far East; and a directory of the class papers and periodicals. During the past twelve months 69 newspapers suspended publication in the British Isles, and 165 increased their price. In view of such changes as these, it will be evident that the seventy-second annual edition of Messrs Mitchell’s well-known and valuable work of reference must be particularly useful and important. The volume contains special articles dealing with the trend of the modern press, the legal year in its relation to the press, the commercial opportunities offered by the overseas dominions, and other topics.”—Ath
“The old-established trade record is a guide to the world’s press that we have always found to be accurate.”
NEWTON, JOSEPH FORT.Ambassador; City Temple sermons.*$1 Revell 252 17-293
“Dr Newton’s call to the City Temple, London, from his pastorate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has called general attention to him as a preacher. This volume contains fifteen sermons, eleven of which were preached at the City Temple while he was visiting there, before his final call and acceptance. The remaining sermons were delivered in America. The dominant note in the sermons preached in England is Christian good-will. The subjects are concerned with the Christian life and doctrine in their general relations, emphasizing the fundamental problems of God and the relations of men to Christ.”—Bib World
“He does not make his sermons from the last book he has read, but great books often give him his suggestion and point of contact and the most telling illustrations of truth. He is a fine example of what noble literature, especially poetry, may do for the preacher. The sermons speak especially to cultivated minds, yet through their simplicity and naturalness and humanness they make the universal appeal. Here is their real power.” A. S. Hoyt
“Dr Newton has a message for the age. It is strongly put, but there are too many blemishes in its form.”
“Though the sermons deal with different themes, they have a unity of spirit, as they have one passion and purpose, to make vivid the truth as it is in Jesus, deeper than all dogmas, larger than all creeds, equal to every emergency, whether in peace or war.”
“It is hard to discover in them just what appealed to the audience in that great center of English nonconformity. They are hardly original in conception and at times are very discursive, being chiefly distinguished by an ornate rhetoric which garnishes many platitudes.”
NEXÖ, MARTIN ANDERSEN.Pelle the conqueror: daybreak; tr. from the Danish by Jessie Muir.*$1.50 (2c) Holt 17-16731
For descriptive note see Annual for 1916.
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
“There is a simplicity and a steady focusing of the main issues in ‘Pelle.’ There is also—and this is one of the most admirable qualities of the book—a right proportion between the personal and the social; the two strands are kept going back and forth and wrought firmly into a unified design. I except the last volume, and it is curious to see how the pressure of social fact squeezes out there much of the reality. In the last volume there is a suggestion of externality. ... Taken all in all, ‘Pelle’ is a fine achievement in democratic art, the most satisfying novel of the labor movement that I have read.” G: B. Donlin
“To this final volume is appended a note about the author by Professor Jespersen of the University of Copenhagen. It seems that Nexö was very little known in Denmark when the first part of ‘Pelle the conqueror’ appeared, some ten years ago. He was a teacher in Copenhagen who had done a little travelling and a little writing—chiefly some short stories which a few people had recognized as exceptional. Copenhagen was the place of his birth (1869); its circumstances were of the humblest. ... Such a work of imagination as this, with its deep humor, its deep humanity, brings home to us, as nothing else can, the artificial nature of those boundaries which language and custom set between one race and another. It is a book for the world; one cannot lay it down without a sense of quickened emotion and enlarged vision.”
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
“To Nexö there are no reticences; there is nothing clean or unclean. Brought up himself in the poorest quarters of Copenhagen, and working, like his own Pelle, as a shoemaker’s apprentice on the secluded island of Bornholm, he relives that elemental life through this book. There is in him something of the old Rabelaisian flavor, which we are now far too sophisticated to get pleasantly from that old literature. He brings to our sympathy that rich, earthy, immemorial strain of sex and hunger and primitive necessities, gives it a modern embodiment that is all charm and sincere feeling. ... Surely ‘Pelle’ is one of the great novels of the world.” Randolph Bourne
“The book is international; it might have been written of Berlin, or Naples or London, or Calumet, as well as of Copenhagen. We can recall no American labor novel which begins to have its sweep and effectiveness; ‘The jungle,’ perhaps, comes closest, although it did not make the differentiation which this book (and the progress of industry) has made between the unskilled and the skilled laborer. It may be that we have the answer here at hand; the subject is being considered by all Socialists and labor leaders. Whether or not the future development of the strife follows the main outlines mapped out in this book, the story will have played its large part in the result.” Clement Wood
“Side by side with Pelle is the portrait of his wife Ellen, a portrait of charm, which has a certain intimate symbolism which Mr Andersen Nexö handles with grace; and around them are the children and the old librarian Brun who are conceived with something of that simplicity which we associate with another Andersen, and which is the more lovable for that.”
NICHOLSON, DANIEL HOWARD SINCLAIR, and LEE, A. H. E., eds. Oxford book of English mystical verse.*$2.50 Oxford 821.08 17-17649
“From Richard Rolle of Hampole to Mr Harold E. Goad some 150 poets are represented, the most prominent being Herbert, Crashaw, Traherne, Blake, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Swinburne, Francis Thompson, A. E. Waite, and Bliss Carman.” (Ath) There is an index of authors and one of first lines.
“‘The Oxford book of English mystical verse’ maintains the standards set by its predecessors. ... The distribution of the poems in point of time is interesting. Five-sixths of them—more than five-sixths, if we count Blake among the nineteenth century poets—are the product of that nineteenth century which its own prophets denounced as materialistic and skeptical beyond all previous epochs, of this twentieth century which, we were told before the war, was wholly given over to fads and superficiality. ... The most remarkable feature of most of the poems in this collection is their clarity. Their mystical quality is due to elevation of thought, not to woolly-mindedness.” J. DeL. Ferguson
“In spite of laxities, however, the novelty of the enterprise gives the book a real value.” O. W. Firkins
“When we come to Matthew Arnold we find some variations from his proper text, due, perhaps, to slips in transcribing or to the use of earlier editions. Whatever the reason, we expect to find a great poet in the form which he chose to be remembered. ... The editors have a deficient sense of proportion: that is clear. Their volume, well over 600 pages, includes some examples unworthy of preservation in a first-rate anthology. It might have been a smaller one, more definitely mystic, or, in view of its wide scope, they might have gathered for their posy some lasting flowers which are not of yesterday.”