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Word count: 1046. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Proud to be an American
Edward Bok emigrated from the Netherlands with his family at the age of 6 in 1870 (5 years after the Civil War). He had to learn English and the way of this new country. With the lunch money and bus fare he saved, Edward bought a set of encyclopedias to study famous Americans. He began writing letters asking questions and getting autographed replies from famous figures like Lincoln, Sherman, Grant, Longfellow, Tennyson.... When his father read the reply from General Early as to why he burned Chambersburg and not Frederick, he had the letter published in the New York Tribune.

From the news story about young Edward, prominent people contacted him to read these letters. He was invited to dinner by General Grant, began writing President Garfield and many who later became US Presidents... and upon whom he called on at NY hotels when they visited NY City. When Bok became a stenographer as a teenager, the step to newspaper writer wasn't far behind as he was known by these famous Americans and could easily obtain interviews.

Against all logic, Edward Bok left NY, his status at Scribner's and Son's and Curtis Publishing, to fulfill his vision and destiny of influencing the positive development of the US as the editor of The Ladies Home Journal from 1889 until he retired in 1919 when WWI ended. Bok then focussed full time on improving his new homeland and the city of Philadelphia. Bok wrote several book, established and financed several educational endowments along with The American Peace Award (to name just a few).

The Americanization of Edward Bok (his autobiography) is required reading in many schools...probably at Harvard as his grandson, Derek Bok, was president of Harvard in recent years! Read alone or aloud to older children, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll stand in disbelief about Bok's encounters with about every famous person of his time (including Twain, Kipling, Beecher, Lewis Carroll and his beloved Teddy Roosevelt). This book was a favorite read for me at 14 and again at 40. Take off your shoes and wear Bok's for a mile, or two...or more. You will come away a better person, with greater appreciation for this country, inspired to create your own vision to contribute more as a citizen of the US and the world!

excellent book
this is a great book, easy reading, and some of the lessons (management style, on own life) I got out of it are still appropriate, even today. Though one has to read sometimes between the lines to figure out what Edward Bok's management style and view on life was. A great story how he helped build the Ladies Home Journal into such a success, and how he shaped life and public opinion at that time. Keeping things simple; stick to your principals; presistance in achieving your goals; small steps toward a big vision; review obstacles and lessons learned; letting people do their job, having their instructions clear.
you'll read this book quite quickly. ... Read more

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CONTENTS

An Explanation
An Introduction of Two Persons
I. The First Days in America
II. The First Job: Fifty Cents a Week
III. The Hunger for Self-Education
IV. A Presidential Friend and a Boston Pilgrimage
V. Going to the Theatre with Longfellow
VI. Phillips Brooks's Books and Emerson's Mental Mist
VII. A Plunge into Wall Street
VIII. Starting a Newspaper Syndicate
IX. Association with Henry Ward Beecher
X. The First "Woman's Page," "Literary Leaves," and Entering Scribner's
XI. The Chances for Success
XII. Baptism Under Fire
XIII. Publishing Incidents and Anecdotes
XIV. Last Years in New York
XV. Successful Editorship
XVI. First Years as a Woman's Editor
XVII. Eugene Field's Practical Jokes
XVIII. Building Up a Magazine
XIX. Personality Letters
XX. Meeting a Reverse or Two
XXI. A Signal Piece of Constructive Work
XXII. An Adventure in Civic and Private Art
XXIII. Theodore Roosevelt's Influence
XXIV. Theodore Roosevelt's Anonymous Editorial Work
XXV. The President and the Boy
XXVI. The Literary Back-Stairs
XXVII. Women's Clubs and Woman Suffrage
XXVIII. Going Home with Kipling, and as a Lecturer
XXIX. An Excursion into the Feminine Nature
XXX. Cleaning Up the Patent-Medicine and Other Evils
XXXI. Adventures in Civics
XXXII. A Bewildered Bok
XXXIII. How Millions of People Are Reached
XXXIV. A War Magazine and War Activities
XXXV. At the Battle-Fronts in the Great War
XXXVI. The End of Thirty Years' Editorship
XXXVII. The Third Period
XXXVIII. Where America Fell Short with Me
XXXIX. What I Owe to America
Edward William Bok: Biographical Data
The Expression of a Personal Pleasure
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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the text that can both be accessed online and used to create new print copies. This book and thousands of others can be found in the digital collections of the University of Michigan Library. The University Library also understands and values the utility of print, and makes reprints available through its Scholarly Publishing Office. ... Read more

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excerpt from the book..
In recent years American literature has been enriched by certain
autobiographies of men and women who had been born abroad, but who had
been brought to this country, where they grew up as loyal citizens of
our great nation.Such assimilated Americans had to face not only the
usual conditions confronting a stranger in a strange land, but had to
develop within themselves the noble conception of Americanism that was
later to become for them a flaming gospel.Andrew Carnegie, the canny
Scotch lad who began as a cotton weaver's assistant, became a steel
magnate and an eminent constructive philanthropist.Jacob Riis, the
ambitious Dane, told in _The Making of an American_ the story of his
rise to prominence as a social and civic worker in New York.Mary
Antin, who was brought from a Russian ghetto at the age of thirteen,
gave us in _The Promised Land_ a most impressive interpretation of
America's significance to the foreign-born.The very title of her book
was a flash of inspiration.
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for best autobiography, The Americanization of Edward Bok is now available through Buki Editions! With a fully-functioning table of contents of ease of navigation. ... Read more