Scouting for Boys

The book that started the Scout movement: camp fires, tracking, knots, first aid, observation, and a set of yarns about scouts in war and peace. Baden-Powell wrote it in 1908 out of his army manual for reconnaissance, and boys began forming patrols before there was an organisation for them to join. It is a period document of enormous consequence and a practical handbook that still works. Sixty paintings from 1824 to 1905, among them Winslow Homer and Albert Bierstadt, picture the open-air world of camping, watching, and woodcraft that Baden-Powell turned into a movement.