The Americanization of Edward Bok. The 
Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty 
Years After. New York: Charles Scrib- 
ner’s Sons. 
Edward Bok has been the Boswell of Ed- 
ward Bok, the editorial Johnson,. From 
long association Mr. Bok, the man, has an 
intimate acquaintance with Mr. Bok, the 
editor. Mr. Bok, the author of this book, 
intimately describes Mr. Bok, the former 
editor of “The Ladies’ Home Journal.” He 
says that during his years of directorship 
of the magazine he had great difficulty in 
abstaining from breaking through the editor 
and revealing his real self, and he has had 
much fun in watching the Edward Bok of 
this book at work. This thinking of him- 
self as distinct from himself as editor is a 
commendable arrangement, especially when 
the editor as an editor has ceased to exist. 
He speaks thus of the last of the editorial 
Bok: 
“The Edward Bok of whom I have writ- 
ten has passed out of my being as com- 
pletely as if he had never been there, save 
for the records and files on my library 
shelves. It is easy, therefore, for me to 
write of him as a personality apart: in fact, 
I could not depict him from any other point 
of view. To write of him in the first per- 
son. as if he were myself, is impossible, for 
he is not.” 
The reader will enjoy this biography not 
only because of the personality there so in- 
tmiately depicted, but because of Mr. Bok’s 
vivid portrayal of the prominent persons 
whom that editor met. The entire book is 
a verbal “moving picture” of a great editor’s 
dealings with famous persons with whose 
aid he built up a great magazine. 
Viewed as a biography it is unquestion- 
ably the greatest that has been produced in 
recent years. It tells plainly that Edward 
Bok, the editor, accomplished great things 
and was a skilled and able man, but the 
telling is done with a lucid frankness that 
is refreshing, and that in no way detracts 
from the importance of the man and editor. 
The book is a record of deeds done and 
labors accomplished but there is not a sen- 
tence in it that makes one feel that Mr. 
Bok is a conceited man or that he has 
mentioned a single fact about himself that 
should not have been said. On the con- 
trary, the effect is a feeling of gratitude to 
Mr. Bok for so freely and kindly taking 
the reader into his confidence. He tells 
the reader what the reader wants to know. 
The development of “The Ladies’ Home 
Journal,” which the writer of this review 
has followed carefully, is an astonishing 
accomplishment of editorial good sense. No 
one will withhold a full measure of credit 
to the publisher, Mr. Curtis, and to many 
of his associates, but the center of the effi- 
ciency, the pivot on which it moved, was 
Mr. Bok. The reviewer has read every 
number of the magazine and carefully 
watched the new measures introduced by 
Mr. Bok in its early days when the maga- 
zine was entering upon a new era. There 
is only one regret, one perhaps in which 
Mr. Bok shares. He was never able to 
make successful a nature department nor 
even an occasional article on the subject, 
although he faithfully tried. At one time 
Mr. Bok presented an interesting depart- 
ment by Dr. Samuel Christian Schmucker, 
one of the most skilful portrayers of na- 
ture in this country, but even that depart- 
ment was short lived. An occasional na- 
ture article appeared, and sometimes puzzled 
naturalists even to guess why it was ever 
accepted. 
We cordially commend this autobiography 
to every class in English literature and to 
every home in America. There is one place 
to which we especially commend it, hoping 
that a chapter will there be read daily and, 
if necessary, committed to memory. We 
hope that it will be discussed and redis- 
cussed in that one place where we feel it 
has become an absolute necessity- — and that 
is the present office of “The Ladies’ Home 
Journal.” A big magazine like a big rail- 
road train will move for a long time by its 
own momentum even after the power has 
been shut off. Mr. Edward Bok supplied a 
tremendous momentum to “The Ladies’ 
Home Journal” and he did much good. We 
are fearful lest in the present demands for 
fiction that fiction shall become too great a 
factor in the magazine. It is to be noted 
that Mr. Bok in his biography lays little if 
any stress on that factor in the upbuilding 
of the journal. “The Ladies’ Home Jour- 
nal” has exerted a tremendous power for 
good, and it may continue to do so if the 
present editors will daily read at least a 
chapter of “The Americanization of Edward 
Bok,” and faithfully emulate his example. 
Animal Ingenuity of To-day. By C. A. 
Ealand, M. A. Philadelphia: T. B. Lip- 
pincott Company. 
Here is another of the many books whose 
authors are trying to raise a corner of the 
veil that shrouds the secrets of nature. 
“Animal Ingenuity,” an English work, is 
along lines similar to those of our own 
Ingersoll’s “The Wit of the Wild,” but is 
more distinctly literary and with less of 
direct observation. The author has culled 
from all the standard works but has supplied 
no great amount of his own studies. 
