Scouting for Boys

'A trained scout will see little signs and tracks, he puts them together in his mind and quickly reads a meaning from them such as an untrained man would never arrive at.' A startling amalgam of Zulu war-cry and imperial and urban myth, of borrowed tips on health and hygiene, and object lessons in woodcraft, Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys (1908) is the original blueprint and 'self-instructor' of the Boy Scout Movement. An all-time bestseller in the English-speaking world, second only to the Bible, this primer of 'yarns and pictures' constitutes probably the most influential manual for youth ever published. Yet the book is at the same time a roughly composed hodge-podge of jingoist lore and tracker legend, padded with lengthy quotations from adventure fiction and B-P's own autobiography, and seamed through with the multiple anxieties of its time: fears of degeneration, concerns about masculinity and self-restraint, invasion paranoia. Elleke Boehmer's edition of Scouting for Boys is the first to reprint the original text and illustrations, and her fine introduction investigates a book that has been cited as an authority by militarists and pacifists, capitalists and environmentalists alike.

Product details

• Authors: Robert Baden-Powell, Baden-Powell Robert
• Assisted by: Elleke Boehmer (Editor), Boehmer Elleke (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press Trade
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 9 to 12
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 22.02.2005
• EAN: 9780192802460
• ISBN: 978-0-19-280246-0
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 198 mm x 29 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > History; Camping, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Minority Studies, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, SPORTS & RECREATION / Camping, Camping & woodcraft, Social and cultural history, Social groups: clubs & societies, Social groups: clubs and societies