A trained scout will see little signs and tracks,he puts them together in his mind and quickly reads a meaning from them such as an untrained man would never arrive at.'A startling amalgam of Zulu war-cry and imperial and urban myth,of borrowed tips on health and hygiene,and object lessons in woodcraft,Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys (1908) is the original blueprint and'self-instructor'of the Boy Scout Movement. An all-time bestseller in the English-speaking world,second only to the Bible,this primer of'yarns and pictures'constitutes probably the most influential manual for youth ever published. Yet the book is at the same time a roughly composed hodge-podge of jingoist lore and tracker legend,padded with lengthy quotations from adventure fiction and B-P's own autobiography,and seamed through with the multiple anxieties of its time: fears of degeneration,concerns about masculinity and self-restraint,invasion paranoia. Elleke Boehmer's edition of Scouting for Boys is the first to reprint the original text and illustrations,and her fine introduction investigates a book that has been cited as an authority by militarists and pacifists,capitalists and environmentalists alike.
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Publisher: Oxford University PressISBN: 9780192802460Weight: 328 gDimensions: 197 x 129 x 28 mm
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Baden-Powell's work is well worth reading and re-reading,and that researchers with various interests and theoretical persuasions may find in its pages a great deal of interesting and rewarding material.
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