Customer Reviews
"The British Empire wants your help" - By: Kurt A. Johnson, 22 Jun 2004 
At the very beginning of the twentieth century, retired General Robert Baden-Powell, the hero of the siege of Mafeking, coalesced his ideas for an organization to train young British boysin scouting for the British Empire. Not a very organized thinker, Baden-Powell borrowed heavily from all sorts of unrelated resources - newspaper articles, military dispatches, fiction, & much more - & produced this, his first book on scouting. Originally published as six separate books, this book brings all of them together, complete with original illustrations.
Now, as might be expected from its roots, this book reflects a lot of the biases & ways of thinking from Edwardian England. But, leaving that aside, this is a fun & interesting book that shows clearly the forms that have stayed with the Boy Scouts movement to this very day. The introduction was written by Elleke Boehmer, a professor of Colonial & Postcolonial literature, & is a fairly predictable deconstruction/analysis of B-P & his movement.
Now, as a newcomer to Scouting (my son is a Tenderfoot) did I find anything usefulin this book? I sure did. Robert Baden-Powell was very knowledgeable about the subject, & this book sure shows it. (I never thought of tying my shoes like that!) Of course some of the information is out of date, especially the first-aid information, so it isn't really usable by the boys "as is." But, this is a nice resource, one that shows you where Scouting started.
Oh, & I must say that I actually enjoyed the somewhat jumbled organization of this book. It isn't as scholarly & antiseptic as modern Boy Scout books, & the stories & tales laced throughout make the reading much more fun. Plus, I did find the focus on some subjects, such as logic & deductive reasoning, to be quite interesting. I loved this book, & highly recommend it to you!
INtriguing insight into early century salutary journal - By: , 09 Dec 1998 
I am hoping this is a verbatim reprint of the original title, a copy of which I once had but lost. Subjects covered include cleanlinessin the wild (bowel-movements) & avoidance of beastliness (I won't spoil it for you). It is not so much the subjects themselves which inspire our post-modern hilarity, rather the wayin which the author invites you to infer them from his language. A must for all afficionados of kitsch
