GO TO IT, YOU DUTCHMAN: The Story of Edward Bok

How the great American success story as epitomized by Edward Bok would strike kids today is questionable, but in any case it's unlikely that they'll take to this slender, small-print volume or its exhortatory tone. Each episode in the remarkably fast rise of the young immigrant boy (via a clear hand and head and a ""nervy"" autograph collection) demonstrates some useful trait, the most instrumental being his belief that--in the words of his pen pal Longfellow--""The lives of great men all remind us/ We can make our lives sublime."" Neither is his later career as the crusading editor of the Ladies' Home Journal particularly telling, being overcast by hucksterism on the one hand, righteousness on the other. It's the wrong book, maybe the wrong time.