to Asia and the Middle East, with other fine books growing out of them. Long periods spent in China and Japan brought him in contact with leading Asian artists. In 1921 he published A Chinese album, monotypes by Cyrus Leroy Baldridge in the journal Asia and later Baldridge and Singer together wrote A Turn to the East. The Baldridge style was considerably changed by his exposure to the spare lines of Asian, especially Japanese, art. For a short time in the 1920s he worked with Watanabe Shozaburo in Tokyo and the 1930s he used what he had learned to producing a number of fine woodblock prints, etchings and drypoints. This work in pure art, as contrasted with his work as an illustrator, was widely admired and in 1935 he given the annual award of the Prairie Printmakers of Chicago and at about the same time his etchings were exhibited in the Smithsonian. Baldridge's long and deep experience with the cultures of Asia, Africa and the Middle East put him in line for important commissions. He illustrated many books and articles with oriental themes the foremost of which were the stunning 1937 reissue of Hajji Baba of Isfahan by James Morier and the 1941 Translations from the Chinese by Arthur Waley. Both books were early Book-of-the-Month Club special editions and their illustrations, distributed separately by the Book of the Month Club, were framed and hung on walls in thousands of homes. In the early 1930s, Baldridge and a group of New York friends organized the Williard Straight American Legion Post to combat the dominant right-wing ideology of the Legion at that time. Baldridge was elected president of the Williard Straight Post five times and he was especially proud of a small booklet he wrote and illustrated for the Legion called Americanism: What is It. Released in 1936, the booklet was a simple restatement of American values, mostly quoted from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was distributed free by the Legion to thousands of schools, until the right wing leadership got wind that Thomas Jefferson was on the rise forced its withdrawal. In the 1940s, Cyrus Baldridge illustrated more than one hundred books and magazine articles and, in 1947, he wrote an autobiography: Time and Chance. The book is both splendidly written and lavishly illustrated. It was quite successful, being listed on the New York Times best seller list