Scouting with Baden-Powell
by Freedman, Russell
pub. Holiday House Inc, New York - 1967 -       isbn -none- - - 223 p. B&W photos and a few sketches by Baden-Powell - Bibliographical Note - Index
This biography of Robert Baden-Powell, the man who started Boy Scouting, is a lightweight biography. That is not to say it is a bad one. It is an excellent short biography which portrays the most positive parts of Baden-Powells life in a good time framework. In some ways, perhaps because it is shorter, it portrays a better time-line than at least 2 other major biographies of BP. The timing of publication of some of his books related to other events in his life is particularly more clearly laid out than in some other biographies. It is interesting that this short book was published shortly after William Hillcourt's early definitive biography. Obviously there was a market for this book, even though the definitive one had just come out.
BPs early life and school days were given short treatment, and most of the book covers his military career. After his military life was over and he spent full-time developing Scouting the story picks up speed and for the most part skims over the rest of his life. The bits about honors afforded him and how he felt about them is fairly well done. (He would have preferred not to have the honors but was talked into receiving them.) The description of the last couple of years of his life is well done, with judicious use of long quotes from his writings.
~2011-06-06~

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