Reviewed by: Boy Scouts of America: A Centennial History, and: The Scouting Party: Pioneering and Preservation, Progressivism and Preparedness in the Making of the Boy Scouts of America Ben Jordan Boy Scouts of America: A Centennial History. By Chuck Wills. New York: DK Publishing, 2009. 288 pp. $24.99 cloth. The Scouting Party: Pioneering and Preservation, Progressivism and Preparedness in the Making of the Boy Scouts of America. By David C. Scott and Brendan Murphy. Dallas: Red Honor Press, 2010. 285 pp. $24.95 cloth. The large number of popular and amateur history works on organized childhood, particularly schools and voluntary youth organizations, has produced a conundrum for professional historians. On the one hand, academic historians can benefit from the vast, often local primary source bases unearthed by amateur historians as well as the public enthusiasm generated for history and the particular topic. On the other hand, the presence of numerous popular, narrative histories might suggest that a subject has been overdone or will distract interested readers from professional historical analysis. Such complexities pervade American Boy Scouting and its history and bring to light fundamental questions about who should control the production of history and if some ways of engaging with history are more valid than others. Boy Scout teaching lessons, publications, and promotional efforts have for a century employed historical analogies and myths in the form of Native American, medieval knight, frontier pioneer, and soldier Scout "ancestors" as role models to attract members and to teach the organization's vision of good character and leading citizenship. A number of Scouters and alumni engage the past by collecting Boy Scout historical memorabilia such as honor and merit badges, uniforms, handbooks, fiction, and other items via well-attended swap meets and collectors' stores. Scouters and alumni have written many books and produced film documentaries and museum exhibits about troops, local councils, and the national organization. [End Page 343] Amateur historians have embraced the Internet to digitize primary sources and share their histories of Scouting. Doing a Boy Scout history is a popular project for teenagers working to earn the organization's top honor, the Eagle Scout badge. The murky and contested story of who originated Boy Scouting and who definitively shaped the American branch has led to multiple amateur histories of Scouting's birth. Critiques of Scouting in the last half-century have spurred supporters to revive the past in order to articulate and defend the organization's value while encouraging a broad range of academics inside and outside the discipline to engage with Boy Scout history.
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