The Americanization of Edward Bok The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

From the opening

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The Americanization of Edward Bok The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

To the American woman I owe much, but to two women I owe more, My mother and my wife. And to them I dedicate this account of the boy to whom one gave birth and brought to manhood and the other blessed with all a home and family may mean.

This book was to have been written in 1914, when I foresaw some leisure to write it, for I then intended to retire from active editorship. But the war came, an entirely new set of duties commanded, and the project was laid aside.

Its title and the form, however, were then chosen. By the form I refer particularly to the use of the third person. I had always felt the most effective method of writing an autobiography, for the sake of a better perspective, was mentally to separate the writer from his subject by this device.

Moreover, this method came to me very naturally in dealing with the Edward Bok, editor and publicist, whom I have tried to describe in this book, because, in many respects, he has had and has been a personality apart from my private self. I have again and again found myself watching with intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work. I have, in turn, applauded him and criticised him, as I do in this book. Not that I ever considered myself bigger or broader than this Edward Bok: simply that he was different. His tastes, his outlook, his manner of looking at things were totally at variance with my own.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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