Francis A. Miniter wrote:
I have no idea where the book came from. It might have been my mother's
and I may have simply overlooked it until now, 15 years after her death,
but then again, I keep discovering books she collected. This one was on
a bookcase of cheap detective novels.

The spine identifies it as "Keystone World Cruise". The title page
calls it: *A Trip Around the World Through the Telebinocular in Three
Dimension Pictures* selected and edited by Burton Holmes and other
distinguished authorities for the Keystone Travel Club (Meadville PA,
Keystone View Co. 1936). It has a hard leather binding and yellowing
pages.

It is the accompanying text of 1200 binocular photographs. Alas, the
photos are missing. But commentaries about spectrographic viewing and
related subjects by Carl Sandburg, Ernest Thompson Seton and others
spice up the text, a text which at some times lapses into unhistorical,
unscientific descriptions based more on bias and religion, as when the
comment is made, "The Masai are a mixed people, probably of Hamitic
stock." This in 1936. No wonder so much superstition still abounds.

Or of the Australian Aborigines: "[They] belong to the black race. They
are descendants of the old warriors and huntsmen of Australia and are
among the most primitive people of the earth." So much for the
commentator's ability to appreciate the superb adaptation of the
Aborigine to his or her environment. If humanity destroys itself, we
will not have to heap any blame on the Australian Aborigines.

An obsession with race dominates much of the commentary, viz., "Only the
highland Scotch [sic] are Celtic. The lowlanders are Teutonic." And
usually such comments show a very limited knowledge of the history of
these places.

In short, the book tells you more about the people who wrote it and the
times in which it was written than about the peoples and places it
attempts to explain.


Books that contain archaic "information" are so interesting. Too
bad it doesn't have its photos.

--
Jean B.