The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

110 The Educational Screen There is an intimate human quality to the volume which enlivens many a character and many an incident in this stirring aspect of American history and gives them a permanence they have lacked in the cursory treatment of the average historian heretofore. For the student of history, this volume is quite apt to be among the most popular of the series — there is action aplenty for the youngest reader and a stirring quality about the narrative which will not fail to attract the more mature. Volume 14 — "The American Stage," by Oral Sumner Coad and Edwin Mims, Jr. 362 pages, 1027 illustrations. The authors have obviously been interested not alone in the theatre itself, but the theatre as it has reflected the changing temper of life through the various stages of America's development, and as it has in turn been influenced by the forces of history since early colonial times. The volume is profuse in its pictorial material — in the face of Vol. 14. The American Stage Joseph Jefferson, I, 1774-1832, from an engraving by D. Edwin after the portrait of John Neagle, in the New York Public Library. what must have been difficulties in assembling a variety of such material dealing with matters of acting and stagecraft, famous figures and notable structures in theatrical history, a subject matter somewhat more limited in range, it would seem, than that covered by some of the other volumes of the series. The book is history to the minute — as current as today's playbills in its final chapters. The student of the theatre will delight in its treatment of famous personages of the stage of the present day and no less in the picture it gives of early theatrical history and its no less well-known characters. It is significant of the completeness with which the authors of The Pageant of America have treated their subject, that not only is the material progress of America chronicled, but her in Voi. . ,, . I J „..i Stadium at the tellectual and cul ^^^p^ ^^ Gg^.g, tural development as well. The first volume of the series takes its logical place in a well-rounded picture of national life. Volume 15 — "Annals of American Sport," by John Allen Krout. 360 pages, with 747 illustrations. Dedicated to Walter Camp, "whose faith and vision find fulfillment in these annals," the volume is a fitting addition to the series as a whole. Sport has made its significant contribution to American life, and its development, during the past half -century particularly, is an outcome of our increasingly complicated industrialism and the growth of city life. American sport, as revealed by the volume, reflects the forces at work in the new nation. To the pioneer his play was his work — his fishing, hunting and trapping were bound up in his every-day struggle for existence — and organized recreation as such was entirely unknown to him. From those early days to this, lies a most interesting transition which will be followed with equal ardor by the schoolboy sports enthusiast and the mature student of social life and social forces. Sport takes its place along with 15. Annals of American Sport University of California, from a photoStone, from Ewing Galloway, New York. other factors in national life and so, along with other forces which have shaped our national character, deserves consideration in a complete pictorial history of America. As the editor states it in his introduction : "Sport unquestionably aids the American people to conserve the ideal and carry on the practice of democracy. If industrialism warped democracy, it confined individualism within vast and intricate organizations. It harnassed men and women to automatic machines. On the playground and the athletic field the individualism of frontier America lives again as the narrow specialist of the industrial world finds new opportunities to develop his powers and express his personality. The evidence suggests that only a beginning has been made. In Amer{Concluded on page 122)