ISBN Scouting for Boys ( A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship ) book English Paperback 464 pages

A scout must always be prepared at any moment to do his duty and to face danger in order to help his fellow-men.' 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. One of the all-time bestsellers in the English-speaking world 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 Baden-Powell'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 reprints 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.