Successward

If a young man will look around him a bit, he will find that the most successful men of the day are always the most quiet dressers. Their clothes are never conspicuous; they detract rather than attract attention. It is only the fop of shallow mind who invites attention by his dress.
-from "In Matters of Dress"

Edward Bok wielded enormous influence during his three-decade tenure as editor of the
Ladies Home Journal, a pulpit from which he advocated numerous progressive causes,
from women's suffrage and environmental preservation to public sex education and pacifism.

Here, though, in this 1895 book, written just a few years after he took up the Journal's editorship, Bok spoke directly to young men about matters of gentlemanliness and good citizenship.

Still a young man himself, and a highly successful one, Bok uses a sympathetic, comradely voice-never a stern or strict one-to convey useful advice on how a young man should comport himself in business, in romance, and in society at large.

It's advice that is still relevant today.


Also available from Cosimo Classics: Bok's Dollars Only and his autobiography, The Americanization of Edward Bok.

American Pulitzer Prize-winning author EDWARD W. BOK (1863-1930) also wrote Two Persons: An Incident and an Epilogue and America Give Me a Chance, among other books.