The very title of her book was a flash of inspiration.
To this group of notable autobiographies belongs _The Americanization of Edward Bok_, which received, from Columbia University, the Joseph Pulitzer Prize of one thousand dollars as "the best American biography teaching patriotic and unselfish service to the Nation and at the same time illustrating an eminent example." The judges who framed that decision could not have stated more aptly the scope and value of the book.

It is the story of an unusual education, a conspicuous achievement, and an ideal now in course of realization.
At the age of six Edward Bok was brought to America by his parents, who had met with financial reverses in their native country of the Netherlands.

He spent six years in the public schools of Brooklyn, but even while getting the rudiments of a formal education he had to work during his spare hours to bring home a few more dollars to aid his needy family.

His first job was cleaning the show-window of a small bakery for fifty cents a week.

At twelve he became an office boy in the Western Union Telegraph Company; at nineteen he was a stenographer; at twenty-six he became editor of _The Ladies' Home Journal_, which during the thirty years of his supervision achieved the remarkable circulation of two million copies and reached every month an audience of perhaps ten million persons.