The book is intended for use in universities and colleges and is an outgrowth of the author’s long experience in giving introductory courses in botany to students. “The author’s aim in writing the book has been to furnish the student with clear statements, properly related, of the essential biological facts and principles which should be included in a first course in college botany or plant biology.” (Preface) Emphasis is placed throughout the book on the plant as a “living, active organism, comparable to animals and with similar general physiological life functions.” The contents fall into three parts of which the first is subdivided into the sections: Plants and the environment; Cell structure and anatomy; Physiology; Reproduction. Part 2, dealing with the morphology, life histories, and evolution of the main plant groups, contains: The algæ; The fungi; Bryophytes (Liverworts and mosses); Pteridophytes (ferns, equiseta, and club mosses); Gymnosperms; Angiosperms (dicotyledons). Part 3, Representative families and species of the spring flora, is intended to serve as an introduction to field work and contains: Descriptive terms; Trees, shrubs, and forests; Herbaceous and woody dicotyledons; Monocotyledons; Plant associations. There is an index.
DESCHANEL, PAUL EUGENE LOUIS. Gambetta. *$4.50 (3½c) Dodd
It was Gambetta, says the author, president of the French republic, “who launched me on the life of politics” and it is from a certain sense of gratitude that the book was written. “I disregarded all panegyrics, all pamphlets, all legends, whether flattering or not: I sought the truth alone—and no homage could be greater.... In this book, only one passion is to be found: the passion for France.” (Foreword) The contents are in four parts: Before the war (1838–1870); The war (1870–1871); The national assembly and the establishment of the republic (1871–1875); The early stages of the parliamentary republic (1876–1882). There is a bibliography and an index.
“This volume is full-blooded and vital in every chapter and in every paragraph. It is no fulsome panegyric, no noisy advertisement, but a balanced and critical, a knowing and a sympathetic portrait. There is here no hushing-up of mistakes and contradictions but also no over-emphasis of them.” C: D. Hazen
“Ex-President Deschanel writes with the blend of lucidity and enthusiasm characteristic of the best French political literature.”
“Apart from a few questionable statements apropos of Germany and Alsace-Lorraine, the book is substantially what it would have been if written before 1914—that is to say, an admirably well-informed, well-constructed, and convincing account of the public life of Gambetta and of the political history of the times in which he played his part.” Carl Becker
“There was plenty of room for such a full, intimate, and appreciative biography as this by M. Deschanel, who is well qualified, temperamentally, to interpret his great leader. He does so with a Gallic exuberance, a gesticulatory eloquence that is not suited to the theme, but also he preserves a balance of judgment that saves the book from being mere laudation, and he has painstakingly examined his documents.” H. L. Pangborn
“The anonymous translator has evidently a bilingual gift of great precision and scope, but his rendering should be carefully reviewed with the original in order to correct several mistakes, all of which, however, appear to be careless omissions or verbal distractions due to hasty writing.” Walter Littlefield
“On all this human personal side of his subject M. Deschanel’s book is as rich as on the political.”
“The work of the anonymous translator is extremely well done.”
DESMOND, SHAW. Passion. *$2 Scribner
“The title may be a little misleading. Mr Desmond’s story deals with ‘the nervous, combative passion of the end of the nineteenth century,’ and particularly with the conflict between big business, the passion to get, and art, the passion to create. A good deal of effort is spent on the depiction of big business in London at the turn of the century, and particularly of one Mandrill, the embodiment of its spirit.”—N Y Times
“‘Passion’ fails for the reason that so many of these novels of confession fail. Our curiosity about human beings, our longing to know the story of their lives springs from the desire to ‘place’ them, to see them in their relation to life as we know it. But Mr Shaw Desmond and his fellows are under the illusion that they must isolate the subject and play perpetual showman.” K. M.
“It is a novel without even novelty to redeem it. Its bravery is bombastic, its stupidity heroic, its mediocrity passionate, its passion impotent.”
“Mr Desmond tries to crowd all the modern forces into his conflict, and frequently neutralizes his effects by the nicety with which one violence is banged against another. His picture of London life, in its meannesses and poverty, has touches of Dickens, and touches, also, of the Dickens sentimentality. His purposes grow weak through sheer over-analysis.” L. B.
“We know of no exacter study of childhood and adolescence nor of any less steeped in traditional idealisms. Young Tempest at home and at school is immensely genuine and instructive. After that the fine veracity of the book breaks down.”
“The hero’s revolt against finance of the most frenzied character is plausible enough, but somehow the entire latter half of the book fails to carry very much conviction. One feels that Mr Desmond is not devoid of the divine fire, but he needs a better boiler under which to build it.”
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
“The most accurate description that can be applied to the work is that it is a vivid and startling piece of impressionism, despite its grotesqueness.”
“A remarkable novel, notwithstanding the author’s habit of parodying his own literary peculiarities. Primal and melodramatic Mr Shaw Desmond’s prose certainly is, but it sweeps us along so rapidly as to make a pause for criticism difficult. The book, in spite of its grotesqueness, is a vivid and startling piece of impressionism.”
DEWEY, JOHN. Reconstruction in philosophy. *$1.60 (3c) Holt 191
In these lectures delivered at the Imperial university of Japan in Tokyo, the author attempts “an interpretation of the reconstruction of ideas and ways of thought now going on in philosophy.” (Prefatory note) He shows that the task of future philosophy is to clarify men’s ideas as to the social and moral strifes of their own day and, instead of dealing with “ultimate and absolute reality,” will consider the moral forces which move mankind towards a more ordered and intelligent happiness. Contents: Changing conceptions of philosophy; Some historical factors in philosophical reconstruction; The scientific factor in reconstruction of philosophy; Changed conceptions of experience and reason; Changed conceptions of the ideal and the real; The significance of logical reconstruction; Reconstruction in moral conceptions; Reconstruction as affecting social philosophy. Index.
“Concrete, clearly written and unusually free from abstruse reasoning and technical diction.”
“The simplicity and penetration of the statement gives to this little book an importance considerably out of proportion to its size. Although the name pragmatism scarcely occurs on its pages, the book is the most comprehensive and enlightening pragmatic document that has yet appeared.” B. H. Bode
“One may agree heartily with Professor Dewey’s polemic against fixed and final aims and yet believe that the most urgent need of ethics now is to work out a science of values. The lack of some such criticism of values makes itself felt in Professor Dewey’s book.” A. S. McDowall
“The book is written with the accustomed fluency and piquancy of the pragmatic school, and it forms a piece of the most interesting reading.”
DEWEY, JOHN, and DEWEY, HATTIE ALICE (CHIPMAN) (MRS JOHN DEWEY). Letters from China and Japan; ed. by Evelyn Dewey. *$2.50 Dutton 915
“The Deweys, man and wife, are ‘professorial’ people. Mr Dewey is professor of philosophy in Columbia university and Mrs Dewey is a woman of great cultivation and deep interest in the things of the mind. The letters included in this book are written under the spur of first impressions. They have not either been revised or touched up in any way. You are never expected to remember that Mr Dewey is really a Ph.D. or that his wife reads ‘deep books.’ They make you see the cherry trees in bloom, the Mikado passing with his symbols, the chrysanthemums on the panels of his carriage; the Chinese women of the middle classes at home and the panorama of Chinese villages and streets. At the same time you feel that there is a serious purpose in the minds and the hearts of the two persons who write these letters.”—N Y Times
Reviewed by R. M. Weaver
“It is quite evident that Professor Dewey has enjoyed visiting countries ‘where the scholar is looked up to and not down upon.’ He writes with all the zest of a boy on his first trip abroad. Most striking is their revelation of Professor Dewey’s responsiveness to the æsthetic aspects of China and Japan.”
“It is not difficult to guess the authorship of most of the letters, and Mrs Dewey’s interest in the more pictorial aspects of the countries, in the women, and in their educational and domestic problems, admirably supplements Professor Dewey’s more historical and speculative observations.” Irita Van Doren
“They are full of delightful descriptions of small events not usually described so sympathetically by travelers in the East.” M. F. Egan
DICKSON, HARRIS. Old Reliable in Africa. *$1.90 (2c) Stokes
Zack Foster, otherwise known as “Old Reliable,” is the colored valet of Colonel Beverly Spottiswoode, and when the colonel makes a trip to the Sudan, to see if the climate there is suitable for cotton culture, he takes Zack along with him. Zack’s presence guarantees him against ennui, for where Zack is, there is excitement. At one spot in Africa, he is hailed as “The Expected One,” by an Arab tribe, at another he rescues the most important donkey of the Sultan of Bong from crocodiles, and is suitably rewarded. But perhaps his most worthy exploit is the establishment of a “Hot cat eating house.” He reasons the labor problem out and comes to the conclusion that the natives refuse to work on the cotton plantation because they don’t need anything. He proposes to put within their reach some thing that they will be willing to work for, in the shape of hot fried catfish. This application of the law of supply and demand proves eminently satisfactory. But on the whole neither Zack nor the colonel are reluctant to return to Vicksburg in time for Christmas.
“Like most sequels, a falling off from the original.”
“An amusing book for an idle hour.”
“A series of adventures, many of which are of a startling dramatic character but always informed with the dry humor which is the very essence of Old Reliable’s irresistible personality.”
“His adventures are as queer as they are funny.”
DILLISTONE, GEORGE. Planning and planting of little gardens: with notes and criticisms by Lawrence Weaver. il *$2.25 Scribner 712
“Competitive schemes for planting for different kinds of lots are criticized from the architectural point of view. Incidentally, there are discussions on sundials, rock gardens, water-lily ponds, rose gardens, garden steps and pathways, climbers for the little garden, etc. Altho written for England, will be useful in this country where climate permits like vegetation.”—Booklist
“The author [is] as sound on the architectural aspect of garden-making as upon matters of pure horticulture.”
DILLON, EMILE JOSEPH. Inside story of the peace conference. *$2.25 (1½c) Harper 940.314
“This is only a sketch—a sketch of the problems which the war created or rendered pressing—of the conditions under which they cropped up; of the simplicist ways in which they were conceived by the distinguished politicians who volunteered to solve them; of the delegates’ natural limitations and electioneering commitments and of the secret influences by which they were swayed, of the peoples’ needs and expectations; of the unwonted procedure adopted by the conference and of the fateful consequences of its decisions to the world.” (Foreword) These fateful consequences, in the author’s final summing up, are that future war is now universally looked upon as an unavoidable outcome of the Versailles peace. “Prussianism, instead of being destroyed, has been openly adopted by its ostensible enemies, and the huge sacrifices offered up by the heroic armies of the foremost nations are being misused to give one-half of the world just cause to rise up against the other half.” Contents: The city of the conference; Signs of the times; The delegates; Censorship and secrecy; Aims and methods; The lesser states; Poland’s outlook in the future; Italy; Japan; Attitude toward Russia; Bolshevism: How Bolshevism was fostered; Sidelights treaty with Bulgaria; The covenant and on the treaty; The treaty with Germany; The minorities.
“The title of this book is singularly non-descriptive. It has none of the qualities of narrative and every page betrays the fact that the author remained entirely outside the real workings of the conference. With all respect to Mr Dillon’s experience, he has written a misleading book.” C: Seymour
“Dr Dillon’s main intimacies in Paris seem to have been with those delegates [of small states]. That fact, which is not unconnected with his own nationality, has enabled him, thanks to his really wide knowledge of international problems, to get inside the skin of the Paris tragedy in a way which would be impossible to the ordinary advanced radical writer. There are faults of proportion. Not enough is made of the economic aspects of the failure, and many judgments are questionable.”
“Interesting but not easy to read, perhaps too detailed. No index.”
Reviewed by Sganarelle
“From ‘The inside story of the peace conference’ the reader takes away the impression of a stubborn and somewhat sour honesty, and also of a vacillating bias that the author intended as little as he suspected. A ripe scholarship, a keen observation, an adequate sweep, but—it is impossible to avoid its conclusion—a decidedly jaundiced personality.”
“Dr Dillon does not write without bias. On the other hand, his scathing indictment of the ignorance and inefficiency, the cynicism, the bad faith, and the remorseless pride of power of the big five and four and three is only equaled, but not excelled, by the now well-known criticism of Professor Keynes. The two books, indeed, supplement one another admirably.” W: MacDonald
“By virtue of his inside knowledge, his ruthless uncovering of weaknesses, his keenness in criticism, he well deserves to be called the Junius of the peace conference.”
“It is not a history of the conference: it is an account of the way things were done at Paris, written by a man of wide outlook, who knows his way about the diplomatic world. Doubtless there will be many volumes written on the peace conference, but few are likely to be so valuable to the historian as this.”
“This book does not add to Dr Dillon’s reputation. The allied statesmen, being only human and fallible, made mistakes, notably in regard to Italy and Rumania. But the wonder is that they did so well as they have done. Dr Dillon emphasizes and exaggerates all their blunders. He has taken the scandalous gossip of embassies, clubs, and newspapers a little too seriously.”
“The whole volume is a bold and dashing and highly fascinating presentation.” A. J. Lien
“Our criticisms of this book are severe, but we believe they are just. Dr Dillon has had a great opportunity and he has failed to use it. He has failed because there is no evidence in the book of any consecutive thought, of any firm ideas, of any help for reconstruction in the future. Dr Dillon’s analysis of what happened at the conference is always biassed and often incorrect; he has chosen to make himself merely the mouthpiece of the complaints of the smaller states without helping his readers in the least to discriminate as to their justice.”
DILLON, MRS MARY C. (JOHNSON). Farmer of Roaring Run. il *$1.75 (1c) Century
John McClure, a wealthy Philadelphian of Scottish birth, has created a large farm in West Virginia, more or less as a rich man’s toy, which is not even self-supporting. After five years his managing farmer dies, and McClure is astounded when the farmer’s pretty, girlish-looking widow asks to be allowed to run the farm. Reluctantly he consents. He soon finds that Mrs Sinclair is not only quite a capable farmer but also a very lovable woman; quite incidentally too he discovers that it is necessary to spend more time on his farm and—its manager. All sorts of improvements are put into immediate action: forest conservation, careful selection of the best cattle only, clubs for the isolated young people, a church, and other things that spring from Mrs Sinclair’s energetic, fertile brain. Being very young and beautiful, and of gentle birth, she attracts several potential lovers, but McClure, after many heated misunderstandings, and several romantic adventures, eventually wins her. Other minor love stories run through the book, also a mystery.
“Good descriptions of the country. Women will like it.”
“A pleasant, thoroughly conventional and rather sugary little story, the conclusion of which is perfectly obvious by the time one has finished the first chapter, is Mary Dillon’s new novel.”
DILNOT, FRANK. England after the war. *$3 Doubleday 914.2
England, says the author, is in a stage of transition and is entering upon a new epoch. What this new epoch is likely to be does not enter into the speculations of the writer who confines himself to sketching the main features of England in their present state of transformation. Among the contents are: The mood of the people; The governance of England; The women; Business the keystone; Labour battling for enthronement; Ireland; Britain overseas; From Lord Northcliffe to Bernard Shaw; Where England leads; New programmes of life.
“The American reader will find much to instruct him in the chapters dealing with the new leaders in politics and economics who have arisen in England since the war.” J. C. Grey
“If he is not profound nor subtle nor concise, he is never dull and seldom altogether commonplace.” C. R. H.
“Mr Dilnot has produced a book entertaining and, in the main, thoughtful.”
DIMMOCK, F. HAYDN, ed.[2] Scouts’ book of heroes; with foreword by Sir Robert Baden Powell. il *$2.50 Stokes 940.3
“A record of scouts’ work in the great war.” (Sub-title) Contents: 1914; Famous scouts in the war; Scout heroes of the army; Scout heroes of the navy; Heroes of the air service; The heroes at home; Just—a scout; Called to higher service. In addition sixty pages are devoted to records of those who received medals, etc.
DINGLE, A. E. Gold out of Celebes. il *$1.75 (2½c) Little
Jack Barry, an American seaman out of a job, is loafing about Batavia, in the Dutch East Indies, when Tom Little, a traveling salesman tired of the typewriter business, puts him on the track of adventure. Little has undertaken to go into the interior in the interests of Cornelius Houten, a Dutch trader, who has reason to suspect one of his agents. Houten is looking for a skipper and Barry meets his needs. The two Americans scent mystery from the outset. In the first place there is the strange lady, Mrs Goring, who claims acquaintance with them and asks passage on their ship. In the second place there is something puzzling about the big soft-voiced Dutch mate. There is also the relation between Leyden, the man they are after, and Natalie Sheldon, the charming young missionary. And the last is the point that matters most to Barry. On some of these points the two are in doubt to the end, working often in the dark, but fully deserving the rewards that finally come to them.
“The plot of ‘Gold out of Celebes’ reveals nothing particularly new. The love interest is slight, but pleasing. It is the breezy way in which this novel is written that carries it. The plot is a secondary matter entirely, while the ‘red blood’ element, vivid enough at times, is always kept discreetly within bounds.”
DINNING, HECTOR W. Nile to Aleppo. il *$7.50 Macmillan 940.42
“The author of this book is a captain in the Australian forces which fought in the great war. Mr McBey was the official artist which followed the army of the Egyptian expeditionary force and the two together, the soldier and the painter, collaborated to produce a volume which is not a book of the war, nor yet a book of travel, but a combination of the two. The story begins at Taranto, away down in far southern Italy. Here the force was simply in camp near the town, and presumably a transport appeared in the harbor, her nose pointing eastward and business opened up. Thence through Palestine and Syria. The trail leads around the hills of Judea, through its ravines and past its straggling orchards, and, at length, to the Holy City. He takes us through the valley of the Jordan to Ludd; and from Ludd to Damascus and thence to Homs; and from Homs to Aleppo, where the train traversed the burning sands to Beyrouth.”—Boston Transcript
“Captain Dinning is a born observer. He always contrives to see what is worth seeing and to record it vividly, sometimes in the slangy style of his diary, sometimes in the finished manner of his later chapters. Occasionally his judgments are open to criticism.”
“The whole is an intensely breezy narrative, written by a man who understands well the use of his eyes and of the English language to interpret what he sees.” E. J. C.
“Mr McBey’s pen sketches deserve more than passing mention, for he is no mere illustrator. His economy of line and his ability to convey an indelible impression of these arid stretches of Palestinian landscape, their undeniable color and beauty, are more than fortuitous.”
DIXON, THOMAS. Man of the people. *$1.75 Appleton 812
This drama of Abraham Lincoln has one purpose: to show Lincoln’s fight to save the Union. We see Lincoln on the one hand as the friend of the oppressed and dispensing pardons according to a deeper sense of justice than is apparent on the surface. On the other hand we see him deal with implacable firmness to carry through his great conviction that the Union must be saved. The whole is divided into a prologue, three acts, and an epilogue.
“Melodramatic and inferior to Drinkwater’s play.”
DOBIE, CHARLES CALDWELL. Blood red dawn. *$1.75 (2c) Harper
A story of San Francisco following the fortunes of a girl who has her own living and her own way to make in the world. She is in turn a stenographer in a business office, accompanist for a singer at fashionable at-homes and Red cross concerts, and entertainer in a Greek restaurant. The latter occupation takes her “south of Market” and into a new social world where she meets the foreign born and has a glimpse of the alien point of view on American life. Two men have a part in her story, Ned Stillman, descendant of native stock, and Dr Danilo, a Serbian doctor. The war is in progress at the time.
“Although it has merit, it is a rather tepid performance. Mr Dobie’s faults, the faults of the novice, grow less noticeable as he warms to his theme. But he fails to warm sufficiently. He handles all his situations and incidents with the indifferent care of a man following a recipe. In spite of its riotous title, ‘The blood red dawn’ is distressingly smug.” M. A.
“Well constructed romance. The author knows his San Francisco. This story—his first full length book—gives a graphic and colorful picture of intrigue in the foreign quarter of that city of lights.”
“The characters fail to transcend or to sublimate the type; are all, by a shade, a little second-rate or common; and the result is a disappointing effect, in a book containing so much veracious detail of confused mediocrity. The opening chapters give us hope of creative realism, and we seem to have received, when all is done, a disconcerting blend of naturalism and romance.” H. W. Boynton
DODD, MRS ANNA BOWMAN (BLAKE). Up the Seine to the battlefields. il *$3 (3c) Harper 914.4
“Why is it that not one traveler in a thousand, no, nor in tens of thousands has known the Seine shores as the shores of the Hudson are known—as the Rhine, for so many years, has been known and sung? Few Frenchmen even are fully aware of the wonders and beauties which a trip up the Seine will yield.” (Introd.) As one of the effects of the war has been the discovery of the Seine’s commercial possibilities the author fears that in a few short years the Seine will no longer be “the lovely river of beauty.” She therefore proposes to immortalize its many surprises in scenic and architectural splendors in a book which is profusely illustrated from engravings and paintings.
“The book is intensely interesting both for its geography and its history.”
“The book is an amiable introduction to modern French history; and if Mrs Dodd’s manner is a trifle too intense for her subjects, there is at least not a tiresome page in the whole volume.” M. F. Egan
“Such a volume as the present will be grateful reading to all those who love France and who feel the force of the old days, no matter how modern some parts of new France have become.”
“Unfortunately Mrs Dodd’s style is too hasty—at points it is positively slipshod—to carry the finer effects that would make for complete success in such work as this.”
DODD, LEE WILSON. Book of Susan. *$2 Dutton
“Susan is frankly a phenomenal child. After her stupid, bestial father murders the woman with whom he is living, Susan is adopted by a wealthy and cultured bachelor, and grows up to be a brilliant woman who holds her own in his circle of scholarly and fashionable friends.” (Outlook) “She is now old enough to be in love with [her] guardian, who is, of course, in love with her. But Ambo’s two special friends, a Yale professor and a New York radical, also love Susan. Finally it takes a bomb from a Gotha in the streets of Paris to bring Susan to the point of letting Ambo know that she loves him alone.” (Bookman)
“The reason why one reader is unimpressed by this plot, and even finds it absurd, is because he is unimpressed by Susan. She is over-clever, over-sprightly. So, for that matter, is the whole book.” H. W. Boynton
“For all its Stevensonesque touches, for all the moments when one glimpses a mind like Pater’s, or a glimmer of Ibsen, through the palings of the back fence, as it were, one has nothing, except a couple of characters—say five—to take away with one. The first part of the story is delightful.”
“The book is much above the average novel, and the author’s insight into feminine psychology quite remarkable. Moreover, it has the great quality of interest.”
“Mr Dodd’s style is in another world from the gritty slovenliness of the average story; the earlier part of his book is filled with ripe and intense characterizations; the interpolated passages of criticism and verse are mellow and delightful. But the fable of the book is the fable of ‘Daddy Longlegs,’ not only in fact but, beneath all appearances of intellectual subtlety and integrity, in tendency and spirit. We can only hope that Mr Dodd will soon give us another novel in which his grace of style and temper shall serve to express an austerer strain of thought and imagination—austerer because it is truer and truer because it does not compromise.”
“The people in this narrative are the genuine variety. The character of Susan is a well rounded one. There is nothing commonplace about ‘The book of Susan.’ Mr Dodd writes in a fresh, entertaining style and has shaped his materials with no little skill.”
“In character depiction, in the give and take of dialogue, and in the incidents, the novel is more arresting than the majority of the American novels of the season.”
DODD, WILLIAM EDWARD. Woodrow Wilson and his work. *$3 (4c) Doubleday
“This portrait of Woodrow Wilson is designed to be a brief history of recent times as well as a chronicle of a great career. It aims to set the man in his historical background and to explain the trend of American life during a momentous period of world history.” (Introd.) “It is surely a record unsurpassed; and the fame of the man ... can never be forgotten, the ideals he has set and the movement he has pressed so long and so ably can not fail.” Contents: Youth and early environment; The new road to leadership; New wine in old bottles; The great stage; From Princeton to the presidency; The problem; The great reforms; Wars and rumours of wars; The election of 1916; The United States enters the war: “We are provincials no longer”; Roosevelt or Wilson; The great adventure; The day of reckoning; The treaty and the League; Index.
“It is fair to admit that Mr Dodd does his work with knowledge, skill, and an independent judgment in details.” J. A. Hobson
“Although I am seldom in complete agreement with Professor Dodd, and often a horizon’s distance away from him, I find myself forced to the conviction that this book offers the fullest and fairest amount of Wilson and his work that I have seen, or am likely to see in many a day.” Alvin Johnson
“Quite the most discriminating, comprehensive and just appraisement of Woodrow Wilson that has yet been made.”
“As fairly as seems humanly possible, Prof. Dodd has maintained the historical point of view, endeavoring to weigh all evidence impartially, and taking counsel from friends and foes alike, and from the president himself on various occasions.”
Reviewed by W: L. Chenery
DODGE, HENRY IRVING. Skinner makes it fashionable. il *$1 (5c) Harper