Outward Bound
LONG before adults think of the question as any- thing but a joke, children start asking themselves: 'What am I going to be when I grow up?' They are serious-about it, and properly so. A contented man is one who is realising his own potentiali- ties, and the first step towards doing this is acquiring a thorough knowledge of what the world has to offer. Up to about ten, children ignore their own talents and limitations, the future is a dream world in which anything 0.1 everything can be accomplished. Once into their teens, the quest for a way of life becomes real. All the books under review are designed for teenagers up to about fifth-form level, and the first two, The Teacher and his World and The Lawyer and his World, arc specifically 'career books.' The belong to a series, published by, Gollancz at 12s. 6d., of 'young person's guides which includes, or will include, the worlds of the Actor, the Doctor, the Nurse, the Musician and the Probation Officer. This is a most useful idea' and the two examples I've read, by Walter James and Ewan Mitchell respectively, both approach their subjects with heart-warming and infectious enthusiasm, though neither omits to point out the snags and warn off the unsuitable. This series, if it can keep up the high standard, will be invaluable for school libraries. Archaeology is one of those enthusiasms that often strike young, and stick—it's amazing hold many famous archaeologists began digging In their teens. Leonard Cottrell, in Land of the, Pharaohs (Brockhampton, 16s.), tells the story 01 Howard Carter, whose youthful passion for Egyptology took him, at eighteen, to the Valley of the Kings where, thirty years later, he at last uncovered Tutankhamen's tomb. The story of the discovery is itself an exciting romance; Mr, Cot trell goes on, using the evidence found in the tomb, to reconstruct the life of a young scribe in the King's court, thirty centuries ago. Voices from the Past, by Azriel Eisenburg (Abelard-Schuman, 12s. 6d.), which tells the stories of seventeen different Biblical discoveries, is equally exciting, and provides a fascinating gloss on the Old Testament. Somewhere, some time, there'll be a boy or girl whose imagination
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will be fired by one or other of these books. and there will be another 'digger' in the world. Hamish Hamilton have an excellent series of school biographies, at 12s. 6d. each called, 'The "Six Great" Series'—the newest one (among twenty-six, so far) is Six Great Nurses, by Frarice.1; Wilkins, a really enchanting book which wl" surely bring a flock of young recruits to the hos- pitals. Biography, in fact, is an excellent vehicle for demonstrating the scope and 'feel' of a Pro- fession. James Watt, by Ivor B. Hart, and Ithe",,e.. Faraday, by David Gunston, belong to the finder Biographies' which Weidenfeld and Ni'a t° son publish at 10s. 6d. each; both manage f convey the continuous suppressed excitement 01 men whose lives have been shaped by an obse'r. sive intellectual idea; there is something wonde
fully satisfying about watching a man stumble, step by painful step, towards truths which have become unnoticed parts of our everyday lives.
ELEANOR NEVILE
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