(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
What We Must Know About Communism: Its Beginnings, Its Growth, Its Present Status
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
(1954. First Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.., 333 p...)
1954. First Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.., 333 pages. 1 lb 6 oz. (Dark Green Hardcover with gold lettering spine).
The Mind Alive by Harry and Bonaro Overstreet, toward Emotional Well-being, Mental Health, Psychology.
Harry Allen Overstreet was an American psychologist, philosopher, educator, lecturer, and a popular author on modern psychology and sociology.
Background
Harry Allen Overstreet was born on October 25, 1875, in San Francisco, California, the son of William Franklin Overstreet, a printer who had fought in the Civil War, and Julia Maria Pauline Detje, a German immigrant. As a boy, Overstreet worked at odd menial jobs and helped his father in the composing room of the San Francisco Bulletin. When his father was stricken with paralysis. Overstreet became the sole support of his family.
Education
Harry recceived the B. A. degree from the University of California in 1899. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Theta Phi and received the Carnot Medal for excellence as an intercollegiate debater and the Mills Traveling Fellowship to the University of Oxford (1899 - 1901). While still a freshman, he was strongly influenced by his professor of philosophy, George Holmes Howison, whom he served as secretary during the summer in Europe before taking up residence at Balliol College. His early inclination was to study literature, but under Howison's influence Harry abandoned literature and the study of law in favor of philosophy. Overstreet's dissertation, "The Theory of Knowledge in Aristotle and Hegel, " earned him the B. S. degree in 1901.
Career
Overstreet's childhood memories of listening to street orators and observing the activities associated with the city jail, located in his neighborhood, influenced his philosophical outlook and his career. Ideologically, he was interested in the working poor; in the 1920's he took a year's leave from his academic job and worked in a shoe factory in Connecticut, polished bearings in California, made sacks for the Hawaiian Sugar Company, and spent some time as a traveling salesman. Problems in industrial relations, he concluded, were endemic not to the division of capital and labor but to the differences between the intelligent and the unintelligent. It followed that industrial conflict could be avoided by lifelong education. Overstreet began his career as an educator in philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley in 1901; he was promoted to associate professor early in 1911.
While at Berkeley, Overstreet published The American College Course (1904) and The Dialectic of Plotinus (1909). In the autumn of 1911, he left Berkeley to chair the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at the City College of New York, a position he held until his retirement in 1939. From 1924 to 1936 he also taught in the continuing-education program of the New School for Social Research, as well as adult-education courses for the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union; at the Labor Temple; and at the People's Institute. He was by midlife one of the nation's leading adult educators. In 1938, Overstreet lectured at Town Hall and was instrumental in the development of its educational radio program "America's Town Meeting of the Air. " This program is described in the book written by him and his wife Bonaro, Town Meeting Comes to Town (1938). With Bonaro, he directed Town Hall's Leadership School in 1940-1941 and served as one of its trustees from 1940 to 1950.
Overstreet's abiding interest in adult education, shared by Bonaro, is easily traced through his activities, publications, and associations. The need to develop one's individual mental capacities to cope with societal problems was the main thread of his philosophical-educational orientation. His concern for the industrial worker was later supplemented by a solicitude for black Americans, the victims of world hunger, and underprivileged children, among others. Because of this "liberal" orientation, his name, along with sixty-two others, including Jane Addams and Charles Beard, was listed by the Military Intelligence Service in a 1919 report to the Senate Judiciary Committee Investigating German Propaganda among those "who did not help the United States when the country was fighting the Central Powers. " The list was called a "Who's Who in Pacifism and Radicalism. " Overstreet denied that he was a pacifist, although he belonged to the Emergency Peace Federation, the Collegiate Anti-Militarism League, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, and the League of Free Nations Association.
Some twenty years later, at the outbreak of World War II, Overstreet publicly declared farewell to his "old self" and pledged "to help win the war and build a new world. " By the end of the 1950's, the Overstreets had become preoccupied with Communism as a domestic and foreign menace to American society and were writing persistently on the subject. Nevertheless, their fear of Communism did not prevent them from recognizing the threat posed by the radical Right. As if captured by their subject, extremism in the United States, they wrote a defense of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, albeit, in one reviewer's words, "not an unsophisticated apologia. "
Overstreet was a prolific author, alone and with Bonaro, and in general received favorable reviews. His first book, Influencing Human Behavior (1925), described as "a brilliant exposition of behaviorist philosophy, " attempted to explain, in response to requests by his students at the New School, "how human behavior can actually be changed, in light of the new knowledge gained through psychology. " This edited compendium of class lectures covers such topics as how to speak and write more effectively, how to mold personality, and how to control the public.
In About Ourselves (1927), he described in layman's terms concepts from the field of abnormal psychology as a guide for normal people who might be tempted to avoid everyday responsibilities. Overstreet followed his discussion of human frailties with an analysis of the positive contributions the arts can make to our personalities. Aimed at popular audiences, the book was designed to make the reader reflect on his or her own personal development. By 1941 he had changed his emphasis from a concern with the individual to an emphasis on the social context.
In Our Free Minds (1941), he argued that there are two threats to the American way of life - namely, the threat from without (such as totalitarianism) and the threat from within (social injustice, anti-Semitism, and the like). He then proceeded to explore the second. The pinnacle of his success was reached with The Mature Mind (1949), which was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club offering and within a year went through eighteen printings. Much praised, it also had its critics, professionals who thought the subject matter oversimplified. Overstreet used psychology and psychiatry as vehicles for the exploration of personal interrelationships. Those forces shaping us, according to him, include politics, economics, family life, and religion; how the mature individual copes with these forces is the theme of the book. In response to questions regarding his politics and religion, he responded, "A free American, " but it is alleged that he was a Democrat and attended the Congregational church. At the end of his life Harry had two residences, at Mt. Tamalpais, California, and a farm in Vermont. He died at Falls Church, Virginia.
Harry Overstreet was an avid reader of such authors as Herbert Spencer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, and Mrs. Humphry Ward (author of the socialist novel Robert Elsmere).
Connections
Harry Overstreet married Elsie Burr of San Francisco, the daughter of the chemist and financier Edmund Coffin Burr, on May 18, 1907; they had three children. Overstreet's first marriage ended in divorce in 1932. Bonaro Wilkinson, the daughter of a farmer, became his second wife in New York City on August 23, 1932; they had no children.