The Americanization of Edward Bok is an autobiography, told in the third person, that shares the life of a little Dutch boy unceremoniously set down in America unable to make himself understood or even to know what persons were saying; his education extremely limited, practically negligible; and yet, by some curious decree of fate, he was destined to write, for a period of years, to the largest body of readers ever addressed by an American editor - the circulation of the magazine he edited running into figures previously unheard of in periodical literature. He made no pretense to style or even to composition: his grammar was faulty, as it was natural it should be, in a language not his own. His roots never went deep, for the intellectual soil had not been favorable to their growth; - yet, it must be confessed, he achieved.

But how all this came about, how such a boy, with every disadvantage to overcome, was able, apparently, to "make good" - this possesses an interest and for some, perhaps, a value which, after all, is the only reason for any book.