ABBOTT, MRS JANE LUDLOW (DRAKE). Happy House, il *$1.60 (2c) Lippincott
When Anne Leavitt is invited to spend the summer with some hitherto unknown relatives in Vermont, she is just starting to Russia to teach. But there is another Anne Leavitt in her college class, whom she persuades to take her place. So Nancy comes to Happy House, a misnomer for the gloomy old mansion where Miss Sabrina, Miss Milly and B’lindy spent their embittered lives. The story tells how Nancy brings happiness to them, but how her sense of guilt at the deception she is practising keeps her from perfect contentment herself, until finally unexpected events clear up the situation, and all are happy together. Meanwhile a part of Nancy’s joy has come from friendship with the “hired man” next door, who proves to have been sharing the general deception and to be a very desirable suitor.
“Girls from twelve to seventeen will like it as well as older women who like a sweet, pretty story.”
“Girls in their higher teens will enjoy this book.”
“We regret that deception plays such an important part in the plot. Nevertheless, and setting this aside, the story is well told and interesting, and will amply repay the reading.”
“It is possible that its maple-sugarish, sweet cake flavor may cloy the reader who enjoys more invigorating fare, but, as a sample of the ‘good’—‘goody-goody’ is perhaps a better word—style of story which has taken on added popularity of late, there is nothing to criticise in the offering.”
Reviewed by Marguerite Fellows
ABBOTT, MRS JANE LUDLOW (DRAKE). Highacres, il *$1.75 (2½c) Lippincott
The author of “Keineth” and “Larkspur,” etc., has written another story for girls. Jerry Travis is the heroine of “Highacres.” She is a little girl of the mountains, who finds John Westley when he has lost his way. He recognizes that she is a child who should have opportunities for education and offers to send her to school with his own nieces and nephew. Then follows an exciting year for Jerry, working and playing with Gyp and Graham and Isobel and Tibby, and going to school at Highacres. Jerry is an unspoiled little girl, and the end of the year does not find all the benefits on her side. There is an element of mystery in the story, which works out to Jerry’s advantage, and she looks forward to another year of school with her new friends.
“This new juvenile by the author of ‘Keineth’ is full as it can hold of the things dear to the heart of normal girlhood.” R. D. Moore
ABBOTT, KEENE. Wine o’ the winds. il *$1.75 (1½c) Doubleday
A story of the plains in the days of pioneer settlement and Indian warfare. Dr Harry North, because of a professional error, feels himself dishonored and goes West to hide his disgrace. He leaves behind him the girl he loves and is resolved never to practise medicine again. But the new country puts new life into him. He meets a typical daughter of the prairies who attracts him greatly and thereafter there is an unexpressed conflict between this girl and Alice Arden, who, still true to her old love, has come West to be near him. The scene changes from place to place and many glimpses are given of the varied aspects of life along the frontier.
“In subject matter and in treatment it differs from the large numbers of new books. There is a power in the author which allows him to mold his material and to invoke an atmosphere which stirs and interests us.” D. L. M.
“‘Wine o’ the winds’ possesses the worst of faults—it is dull. This is partly because the plot is neither well presented nor well put together and partly because the characters, with the single exception of the minor one of little Matt, the hunchback, lack that vitality which wins a reader’s interest, his liking or disliking. Now and then, it is true, there comes a moment which seems to hold out promise of better things in future, and the last scene of all is not without a certain degree of impressiveness.”
“Magic there is in this narrator’s vivid style, above all in the visual quality of his descriptions, which always remain a part of the narrative.” H. W. Boynton
ABDULLAH, ACHMED. Man on horseback. *$1.75 McCann
“A tale of a gold mine taken in exchange for a poker debt, and of results which bring the American cowboy owner of the mine into international complications and make him an actor in the great war.”—Outlook
“The excessive simple-mindedness of the hero, combined with the heroine’s complete failure to win the reader’s liking, does much to injure an otherwise interesting book.”
ABDULLAH, ACHMED, and others. Ten-foot chain. il *$1.50 Reynolds pub.
The sub-title, “Can love survive the shackles? a unique symposium,” indicates the trend of the book. The unnamed editor, in the introduction, states the circumstances of its writing. At a dinner where four distinguished writers were present, the question was raised, “What mental and emotional reaction would a man and a woman undergo, linked together by a ten-foot chain, for three days and nights?” The writers differed in their solution to this problem, according to their individual interpretation of human nature, and the result was that each consented to present his conclusions to the public in fiction form. This book comprises the four stories, which are: An Indian Jataka, by Achmed Abdullah; Out of the dark, by Max Brand; Plumb nauseated, by E. K. Means; and Princess or percheron, by Perley P. Sheehan.
“Interesting as an editorial jeu d’esprit, the experiment has also brought out four short stories of high quality.”
ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE.[2] Inflation and high prices; ed. by Henry Rogers Seager. pa $1.50 The academy 338.5
“A series of addresses and papers among which are: Causes and progress of inflation, by E. W. Kemmerer; Treasury methods of financing the war in relation to inflation, by R. C. Leffingwell; The relation of the federal reserve system to inflation, by H. P. Willis; Remedies for inflation with special reference to the French situation, by M. Casenave; Remedies for inflation with special reference to the Italian situation, by B. Attolico; Inflation as a world problem and our relation thereto, by P. M. Warburg.”—Am Econ R
ADAM, H. PEARL. Paris sees it through; a diary, 1914–1919. il *$4 (4c) Doran 940.344
Mrs Adam was an English resident in Paris before and throughout the war. Her book describes her Paris just before and at the outbreak of the war and follows its course in its reactions on the city until the signing of the peace. She gossips intimately about the effect of the war on the daily lives of the people and of the people’s interest or lack of interest in the political events. Among the contents are: The onslaught (1914); Endurance (1915); The distant guns (1916); The long wait (1917); Rationing (1917–1918); Boloism; Some war Parisians; Paris under fire (1918); Armistice; Paris in 1919: the making of peace. The appendix describes the Paris of today: a chapter for visitors. There are illustrations.
“This book by a lady who spent the period of the war in Paris writing for English newspapers is much better reading than many works of higher authority and greater importance.”
ADAM, WILLIAM AUGUSTUS. Whither? a human fragment of contemporary history. (1906–1919). *$5 Dutton 354
“‘Whither? or, The British Dreyfus case,’ by Maj. W. A. Adam, is the story of a British officer who fancies that his case parallels that of the unfortunate Capt. Dreyfus of the French army. Maj. W. A. Adam, a staff officer of the British army, is practically dismissed from the service on secret evidence, which is not shown to the accused. After vainly seeking to be reinstated the author finally sues various officials of the British war office in a civil court and is awarded damages. In spite of it all, during the great war this ‘British Dreyfus’ is relegated to obscure positions in the army. In his opinion, he should have been leading divisions and army corps. This volume throws light on the circumlocution and red tape of the British bureaucracy—and, it might be added, of most government officialdom the world over.”—Springf’d Republican
“Major Adam’s statements are carefully documented. The book, as Major Adam has framed it, is undoubtedly an absorbing fragment of human history.”
“Reading between the lines of his book, one gains the impression, that the gallant major is one of those unfortunate persons who ‘seize the hot end of the poker,’ or, in other words, are their own worst enemies. But this volume is interesting.”
ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS; ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS, jr., and ADAMS, HENRY. Cycle of Adams letters: 1861 to 1865; ed by Worthington Chauncey Ford. 2v il *$10 Houghton 973.7
The editor of these two volumes of family letters has selected them from many others for their description of social conditions, discussion of public questions and contribution to the social, military and diplomatic history of the War of secession. With the great conflict as a back-ground, they supply “no little new history, much untold detail, much discussion, many rumors and predictions, expressed with individuality and in a literary form.... It is an old story, but the manner of telling it is new, all the more remarkable because unstudied and spontaneous.” (Introd. note) The books are illustrated and indexed.
“The two volumes are not merely interesting, but fascinating. Of their contributions to history, aside from the personal views here quoted or described, there is not space to say anything, but they are important and valuable. No better book about the war of secession has come out in many a year.”
“The editor of these letters would have enhanced the value of the collection for the general reader if at certain points (not many) he had added a brief note indicating the event out of which the letter grew or to which it referred. The reader gets from these letters a much pleasanter portrait of Henry than from his autobiography.” Lyman Abbott
“It would be difficult for a master hand at fiction to devise for his own purpose a better stage setting, and a more ingenious relationship of leading characters to the end of developing the intricacies of a big international drama.” F: T. Cooper
“The ‘Cycle of Adams letters’ is all very interesting, if only as correspondence, and parts of them will add authentic material to the history of the Civil war—all the more so that the letters were probably written without idea of future publication.”
ADAMS, FRANKLIN PIERCE. Something else again. *$1.50 Doubleday 817
“The editor of the Conning Tower, New York Tribune, amuses himself writing verses in the styles of Horace, Longefellow, Amy Lowell and others and by writing desk copy for the tragedies which formed the subjects of some famous old ballads.”—Booklist
“Good fun.”
Reviewed by R. M. Weaver
ADAMS, HENRY. Degradation of the democratic dogma. *$2.50 (3½c) Macmillan 901
Brooks Adams has edited some of the literary remains of his brother Henry and published them with a long introductory essay on The heritage of Henry Adams. In introducing the work he writes: “I want to make it clear, once for all, that I am not proposing to write anything approaching to a memoir of my brother.... Nor do I suggest any criticism of his essays which are annexed.... I am seeking to tell the story of a movement in thought which has, for the last century, been developing in my family, and which closes with the ‘Essay on phase,’ which ends this volume.” The essay in which this purpose is embodied is devoted to the principle of democracy which John Quincy Adams upheld and which in the estimation of himself and his descendants received its death blow with the triumph of Jackson. The writings of Henry Adams included in the volume are: The tendency of history (1894); A letter to American teachers of history (1910); and The rule of phase applied to history (1909).
“The title seems ill suited to the papers that make the substance of the volume. The degradation of the democratic dogma which is here in question is thus far from being a general movement of thought; it is a movement within the Adams family, exemplified chiefly in Brooks and Henry.” Carl Becker
“Readers of this volume are advised to omit the essay at the end, entitled ‘The rule of phase applied to history.’ Henry Adams had all the virtues of the great amateur—penetration, aloofness, style. It is sad to record that in the end he did not escape the pitfall of most amateurs. He began taking himself seriously, and that as a prophet!” E: S. Corwin
“Whoever takes up this book in the expectation that he has been invited to a sort of second table of the wondrous banquet spread before the readers of ‘The education of Henry Adams’ will soon learn his mistake. Not that it is not as marvellous in its way, but that it is a separate and distinct production of a mind as varied as it was powerful.” L. S.
“Of interest to historians, scientists, and educationists.”
Reviewed by C: A. Beard
“Why have they been resurrected, and why are they published at the present time, with this preposterous introduction and with a misfit title? The uninitiated will say that the popularity of Henry Adams’s ‘Education’ furnishes the answer.”
“We took it up anticipating pleasure if not profit in getting Henry Adams’s views on democracy. We have been disappointed. Whatever views on this subject Henry Adams may have elsewhere expressed, he expresses none here. He discourses on views of the universe in general, and the philosophy of history in particular, but he has nothing to say of the degradation of the democratic dogma, or of the democratic dogma itself. Nor do we find that Mr Brooks Adams increases our knowledge of these subjects.” D. McG. Means
“A curiously interesting and depressing series of historical papers, which serves to explain some of the author’s pessimism. Henry Adams makes some rather unwarranted historical generalizations. His papers are a remarkable example of the method by which an unscientific mind may apply scientific conclusions to unrelated data.”
“‘A letter to American teachers of history’ is a brilliant achievement. It is single and swift and passionate, as an exclamation or a command. Nervous and mordant in style, it rises often to eloquence and is illuminated by flashes of ironical humor.” C: A. Bennett
ADAMS, HENRY. Letters to a niece and Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres; with A niece’s memories by Mabel La Farge. *$2.50 Houghton
These letters are introduced by “A niece’s memories” which together with the letters, reveals a side of the heart and mind of Henry Adams veiled to the world and to the readers of the “Education,” but poured forth to the young. “To them all he was the generic Uncle, the best friend—to whom they not only could confide their innermost secrets, their perplexities, hopes and aspirations, but also at whose feet they could sit endlessly, listening to the most thrilling talk they had ever heard, or were likely to hear again.” The table of contents is: Henry Adams: a niece’s memories; Letters to a niece; Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres. Under the last heading is included: Prayer to the dynamo.
“A book of undeniable savor. The Adams pickle is everywhere. They are very kind letters—lazily, unconcernedly, uncommittedly kind. That he writes very good English will surprise nobody, and his faculty is brought out by a certain waywardness in its exercise.”
ADAMS, KATHARINE. Mehitable. il *$2.50 Macmillan
To Mehitable in her Vermont home comes the opportunity to go to school in Paris. Mehitable has just passed her sixteenth birthday and it all seems to her like a dream, so quickly is she whisked away from familiar scenes to find herself in a strange land. In spite of the little home-made frocks with which Aunt Comfort and the village dressmaker have fitted her out and which make her look old fashioned and quaint to the other girls, she makes a place for herself in the Chateau d’Estes and finds friends. Irish Una is the dearest of them and Mehitable spends a happy vacation at her home. The story ends with the outbreak of the war.
“The book is singularly pleasing, the heroine a living creature good to know, and there are many interesting characters and situations. A book all girls in their late teens will delight in.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
“Her school life near Paris, her trips to other lands, and her fine love story form a superior kind of story for older girls.”
ADAMS, SAMUEL HOPKINS. Wanted: a husband. il *$1.75 (4c) Houghton
This story falls into two parts. The first tells of the transformation of Darcy Cole from a peevish, spoiled, unhealthy, unhappy girl into a radiant and captivating bit of womanhood. Physical culture plus grit does the trick. In the old days Darcy had been so unattractive that she had had to invent a fiancé and the second part of the story is taken up with the adventures into which this mythical person leads her. He is a certain Sir Montrose Veyze, selected from Burke’s Peerage. Fortunately he never appears in person and the attractive American lover who acts as his substitute proves perfectly satisfactory as a permanent feature.
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
“Of course he does the thing well, but it hardly seems worth the doing when the author is capable of so much better things.”
“It is by no means as good an example of its type as his earlier book, ‘The unspeakable Perk,’ but it is entertaining in its way, and presents a fervent plea for athletics.”
“Its humor and gaiety compensate to some extent for the lack of plausibility.”
ADE, GEORGE. Hand-made fables. il *$1.60 (2½c) Doubleday 817
“The studies in American vernacular which comprise this volume first appeared in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.... Although the period in which these fables appeared enveloped the great war and lapped over on the great unrest, the author has proceeded upon the theory that old human nature continues to do business, even during a cataclysm.” With this introduction Mr Ade proceeds to his fables, which are in his old manner and are accompanied by John McCutcheon’s pictures.
“Barring his treatment of this arid topic [prohibition], the rest of the book is sheer delight.” G. M. Purcell
“Here Mr Ade once more demonstrates that the American slang vernacular has capacities for clearness, force, and (yes!) elegance that quite escape the base-ball reporter.”
“Isolated and perused at the rate of one a month, they yield a sharp and pungent flavour; bunched thus for permanence, they are flat.” L. B.
“A great deal of it is amusing, poking fun in a way provocative of chuckles, and giving new point to the old saying that there is many a true word spoken in jest.”
ADLAM, GEORGE HENRY JOSEPH. Acids, alkalis and salts. il $1 Pitman 661
In this volume of Pitman’s common commodities and industries series, the author has endeavored “to give prominence to the commercial and domestic importance of the substances dealt with.” He has also “included some considerations of a theoretical nature which may well be taken as a first step towards the continuation of the study of chemistry.” (Preface) Contents: Introduction; Sulphuric acid and sulphates; Nitric acid and nitrates; The halogen acids; Carbonic acid and carbonates; Phosphoric, boric, and silicic acids; Organic acids; Mild alkali; Caustic alkalis; Electrolytic methods. There are diagrams and other illustrations and an index.
“This book aims at being not only instructive, but also interesting.” C. S.
AGATE, JAMES E. Responsibility. *$1.90 (2½c) Doran
An English novel in which the author discourses at large on matters of art, morals and life. The scene is laid in one of the northern industrial towns and it follows the hero’s story from childhood on, depicting his escape from business into letters as a profession. In his early manhood he has a love affair with a young dancer, who when she sees that his love is waning writes to tell him she is to bear a child and disappears out of his life. Twenty years later he is confronted by his son, who is on the point of enlisting for the war. Both recognize that the usual parental relation is not to be looked for, but they become friends. The son is totally disabled in the war, the father partially so.
“It is a brave theme, but the author’s treatment of it is a deal too confident to be successful. He cannot resist his hero’s passion for display. And this passion is so ungoverned that we cannot see the stars for the fireworks.” K. M.
“Not for the average reader. Good work but not remarkably good.”
“The novel as a whole is excessively chaotic and immature, an obvious attempt at a youthful smartness which seems incapable of artistic restraint. Mr Agate has been a wide reader, but he shows at the present moment little power of assimilation.” E. F. E.
“A first and promising novel.”
“Undoubtedly Mr Agate has both talent and promise. Today he is not an ageless portent but a beginner with very much to learn.”
“It is a sober-minded book, this novel of Mr Agate’s. But it is also a very rich book, rich in character, in thought, in understanding, in comment upon life and art, original in style and treatment. We are much mistaken if Mr James E. Agate has not definitely ‘arrived.’”
“The book is a hodge-podge.” H. W. Boynton
“The genius of the book might as well be a grown man’s as a boy’s—it is ageless as genius always is. But the faults—and they are grave—are a young man’s or at any rate a young writer’s, faults. We should plump for Mr Agate being, say, in the early thirties. We profoundly hope that we are right, because we want many more books from him. We do not ask for them to confirm our judgment, but because English literature is starvingly in need of a new and still young first-rate performer.”
“A novel which bears clear traces of models so diverse as Wells and James and, perhaps, even the author of ‘Tristram Shandy.’ But such strength as the novel possesses lies in what is simple and straightforward. There are good glimpses of character.”
“The great quality of the book is a manly and vigorous brilliance, which is enough to supply ten ordinary novels; the chief faults are a rhetorical exuberance of style and an inability to see that the reader wants time to appreciate the really good passages, such as the page where Edward’s father sends him to school or the illegitimate son’s explanation of what moved him to join the army.”
AIKEN, CONRAD POTTER. House of dust; a symphony. *$2 Four seas co. 811
A series of poems defining the delicate shadings of sense perceptions. They correspond to the so-called “tone poems” of music. Among the titles given to individual pieces are: The fulfilled dream; Interlude; Nightmare; Retrospect; The box with silver handles; Haunted chambers; Porcelain; Clairvoyant. Parts of the book have appeared in the North American Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie and the Yale Review.
“Mr Aiken possesses many poetical merits. He has a flow of language that is refreshing in this age of meagrely trickling springs. He has vivid sensations and a felicitous ease in exactly expressing them. But he has the defects of his qualities. His facility is his undoing; for he is content to go on pouring out melodious language—content to go on linking image to bright image almost indefinitely. One begins to long for clarity and firmness, for a glimpse of something definite outside this golden haze.” A. L. H.
“He is not easy to understand, and some minds would doubt whether a drift of phenomena so irrational as this, however delicately and imaginatively it is described, can be worth describing, except from the point of view of scientific interest. That Mr Aiken’s work is both delicate and imaginative, there is no question.”
AIKEN, CONRAD POTTER. Scepticisms; notes on contemporary poetry. *$2 (3c) Knopf 809.1
For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.
“Mr Aiken is not quite a good enough talker; his gossip is entertaining, but he has not the knack of telling a story well, of putting an idea into a forcible and convincing form. A certain diffuseness—it is noticeable, but to a lesser degree, in his poetry—takes the edge and point off what he says; a fact that is the more regrettable, since we believe his psychological methods of criticism to be fundamentally sound and fruitful.” A. L. H.
“At times rather technical for the lay reader but worth while for all interested in contemporary poetry.”
“It makes good sedative reading after you have got tired of Mencken, Cabell, Powys and some few others of the real brains of America—in the matter of the essay, I mean.” Mary Terrill
“The poets and the books that he makes an intellectual flourish of judging in the re-printed reviews which make up this volume have, for the most part, their fundamental purposes and qualities befogged and perverted by such critical charlatanry, no matter how brilliant the execution may be. Often Mr Aiken makes a most convincing case for or against a poet, but the average reader will be inclined to discount his own agreement because he cannot be sure of the critic’s motives.” W. S. B.
“One’s quarrel with Mr Aiken will be with his limits, not with his accomplishment within his limits. What in most instances he sets out to do, namely, to particularize (he says illuminate) with a careful casualness, he certainly does well. It is because he has done so much carefully that dissatisfaction arises at the incomplete significance of the whole work.” C: K. Trueblood
“In so far as Mr Aiken’s lucid and discriminating opinions may offset the mawkish and meaningless eulogy of ‘poeteering’ journalists, we may be unqualifiedly grateful to him. He does, however, invite disagreement with his critical principles by announcing them with excessive candor.” G: F. Whicher
“Mr Aiken’s book shows a nicely adjusted intellect at work, weighing and measuring contemporary achievements, with whatever degree of bias human nature can never escape, as he admits himself, but with some degree of impartiality. He is chiefly interested in aesthetic values. His style is adroit and sharp and restrained.” Marguerite Wilkinson
ALBERTSON, RALPH. Fighting without a war. il *$1.50 (7c) Harcourt, Brace & Howe 947
This “account of military intervention in north Russia” (Sub-title) is given by a Y. M. C. A. secretary assigned to work with the army landing at Murmansk, November 1918. He took part in every phase of the campaign from the northernmost to the southernmost points of the expedition and was the last American to leave. He is scrupulously careful in handling army rumors and most of his matter is based on his own personal observation and knowledge. On the whole he considers intervention as a “bad job” on the part of the governments who undertook it. “We organized civil war in Russia. The Russians were not fighting the Bolsheviki—not our way. They did not want to fight them—in our way. We made them. We conscripted them to fight for their own freedom. It was difficult, but we had our army there and the army made the peasant patriotic—our way.” Contents: The expedition; The Archangel government; Management; The fall campaign; The winter campaign; Kitsa; Fighting without a flag; “America dobra”; America exit; The new British army; The new Russian army; Making Bolsheviki; The white man’s burden; Atrocities; The mutinies; The debâcle; Military intervention finance; Propaganda; Concerning military intervention; Concerning Russian peasants.
“Settles any lingering doubt about military intervention in Russia.”
“So amazing is the story of British arrogance, tactlessness, and brutality in northern Russia, revealed by Ralph Albertson that it would be well nigh impossible to accept it, if the trustworthiness of the writer was not in a striking manner vouched for by the two citations which he gained from the British.”
Reviewed by A. C. Freeman
“This little book of 140 pages, read at a sitting, but unforgettable for many a day, is full of valuable information, all the most vital of which was from his own personal and careful observation.” W. H. Crook
Reviewed by Reed Lewis
“The reading of the book helps to an understanding not only of the Russian problem but of what British imperialism—or American—always means in countries where a foreign army is in control.”
ALDERSON, VICTOR CLIFTON. Oil shale industry. il *$4 Stokes 622