Customer Reviews

Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920

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The University of Wisconsin 1983 1st edition in hardback. Cloth over hardback boards with a sewn binding.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
Statistical Tables

Part I: Anxious Adults
1. Growing Up: Boyhood, Social Class, and Social Change
2. Character Building

Part II: 19th Century Beginnings: Early Forms of Boys' Work
3. Keeping Lower Class Boys off the Street: The Mass Boys' Clubs
4. The Start of YMCA
5. Forerunners of Scouting: Temperance Orders and the Boys' Brigades

Part III: Reorientation and New Forms of Organization: 1900-1920
6. Adolescence and Gang-Age Boyhood
7. YMCA Boys' Work
8. The Invention of Boy Scouting
9. Expansion of Boy Scouts of America

Part IV: Winning Public Favor
10. Boyhood, God, and Country
11. Winning Institutional Support
12. Recruiting a "Fine Lot of Lads"

Part V: Character Building in Practice
13. Camping: An Organized Setting for the New Boyhood
14. Adult Instruction
15. Group Experience, Membership Turnover, and Age Stratification

Conclusion

80 pp of bibliographic information (End Notes)

Index

What I enjoyed most about this book is that it gives the real history of the early years of Boy Scouting - i.e., it includes both the "good" amd the "not so good" details. For example, I had long been interested to learn why Thomas-Seton left the BSA for about 10 years before coming back in the 1920's. Well this books explains it all very nicely. It also describes the powerful impact that James E. West had in forming the BSA as an organization, along with numerous other little known insights. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves Scouting and wants to learn more about it's early years and the men who contributed to giving us this worthwhile organization that is today too often just take for granted.