Spirit of St Andrews text edited by Sleeping Bear

[Neil_Crafter]

Thanks Ken, that is what I was told so thanks for confirming it.
Look forward to seeing what you can find that is in the limited but not in the trade.
Neil

[Tony Ristola]

SOS was greatly a rehash of Golf Architecture, with the politics and instruction as additions. I really enjoyed his comments on politics. History has proven him to have a perfect batting average.

Having worked in a couple former communist countries, I'd find his writings about communism and its evils even more interesting. When he'd written the book communism was somewhat in vogue, hadn't been close to falling flat on its face.

Communism is a scourge. The most visible destruction is the physical; the structures, infrastructure. That's easy enough to fix. What will take longer is what it has done to the masses. They'll be recovering from that for generations.

[KBanks]

Neil,

Without warranting a definitive comparison, the only textual omissions in the trade edition I found are in the closing chapter "Some thoughts on Golf".

Four paragraphs about the approach of the Ladies Golf Union of Britain to handicapping are omitted from the "Handicapping" section. I have no idea why they were struck. Two paragraphs are missing from the middle portion of "Financing Golf courses". Finally, two paragraphs are missing from the section on "Camouflage".

The omissions from these latter two sections might be characterized as, respectively, purely political and military in nature. The editors may have felt MacKenzie strayed from gca in them. However, I agree with the comments that they should have stayed in, as these topics are germane to MacKenzie's conception of gca, and the writing gives you a bit more sense of the writer.

Certainly Sleeping Bear didn't mislead us with respect to the editing of the trade edition. In the Acknowledgements section, it says that "The book that you have is almost precisely as MacKenzie wrote it....", which on balance is a correct statement.

Ken

[Neil_Crafter]

Ken
really appreciate you checking this out, and it seems from what you are saying that there are perhaps 8 paragraphs or so that were edited out. In overall terms this might be one or two pages tops so surely they didn't do it for space saving reasons. I agree with your conclusions.
I've now read the acknowledgement section and yes, there is the "almost precisely" reference you mentioned. Whether this lets them off the hook I'm not so sure.
Neil

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