Books That Form Us – #3.

Third in a Series of My Book Reviews.

 Good books do more than entertain; they shape the soul in ways that are subtle yet profound.  Here are the books I read between July through September 2026.

✒️.The Children’s Kraft Shop by Adelia Belle Beard (1914).

This illustrated book from 1914 is filled with fun and educational crafts for children.  It is written as a story, with a brother and sister having conversations as they figure out how to create pinwheels, trolleys, airships, cars, and the like using items found around the house. It took me about a half hour to run through it. The illustrations are clear and useful.  This is in the public domain.  (Project Gutenberg).

 ✒️ The Eighteen Nineties: A Review of Art and Ideas at the Close of the Nineteenth Century by Holbrook Jackson (1922).

Surprisingly, this was quite dry reading but interesting enough (there were pockets of interesting information here and there).  (Project Gutenberg).

✒️.The Facts About Rejuvenation by Max Fishbein (1926).

Well, this is wild thinking in this Blue Book, but it was entertaining to read.  I am not really sure what to make of it with its talk of glands, radium, light, glandular rejuvenations, animal experiments, and as I said, this was entertaining, but I took a lot of it with a grain of salt. (Project Gutenberg).

✒️ How to Become Mentally Superior: What Makes One Rise Above the Average by Henry M. La Chateliler (1929).

What moved me to pick up this book was the title; I just had to see what this was all about.  It started with the assertion that “The most striking characteristic of great men is their zeal for work. None of them observed the eight-hour day, no matter what the field of their activities. We may cite as examples great statesmen, such as Napoleon or Louis XIV; . . . Victor Hugo or Lamartine . . . Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci . . . Lavoisier or Pasteur . . . Bessemer or Siemens.”  The book goes on to state that besides becoming a slave to one’s worldly passions, also important are industry, imagination, judgment, and training.  In conclusion, the author asserts that “The family should set a good example to the younger children and inculcate a taste for toil; the secondary school must develop imagination and common sense; and finally the colleges and universities must impart training.”  This is a very short book, with about 32 pages.  (Project Gutenberg).

✒️ Dying to Be Beautiful: The Fight for Safe Cosmetics by Gwen Kay (2005).

Fascinating history of cosmetics in the twentieth century that reads like a college dissertation.  It was sort of interesting because I already knew much of what was written from reading elsewhere over the years.  (Internet Archive).