(I) Edison, his Life, his Work, his Genius (2)Partners in Progress (3)Outposts of Science

Abstract

THE technique of biography has sometimes seemed to change rapidly in a changing world. The god-like and disembodied abstractions of one phase vanished before the painfully concrete and over-bodied victims of the ‘de-bunker’, now happily retiring from his brief tenure of the stage. But one aim of the biographer has never, in any worthy practice of the art, varied or failed. The merely superficial account of what a man did never was real biography; the mainspring of action, the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, must always be the centre of interest hi any work of value. The three works before us are all mainly biographical in intent, and must be tested principally for depth of penetration. One of them passes the test triumphantly, the other two are, relatively, insignificant and superficial.

(I) Edison, his Life, his Work, his Genius

By W. A. Simonds. Pp. 364 + 12 plates. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1935.) 10s. 6d. net.

(2)Partners in Progress

By Esse V. Hathaway. Pp. vii + 303 + 12 plates. (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1935.) 15s. net.

(3)Outposts of Science:

a Journey to the Workshops of our Leading Men of Science. By B. Jaffe. Pp. xxvi + 547 + 32 plates. (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1935.) 3.75 dollars.