[1] James Casada wrote in a review for Library Journal that it is "a balanced, definitive assessment which so far transcends previous treatments as to make them almost meaningless".

Several of their books and articles on Baden-Powell had become critical and negative since the 1960s, culminating in Michael Rosenthal's The Character Factory (1986), which added to the charge of militarism one of antisemitism.

[7] Paul Fussell in reviewing Jeal's book in The Times Literary Supplement wrote stressing the civic rather than the military motivation behind Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts and opining that Jeal had done "full justice to Baden-Powell's complexity and contradictions, his military delight and his pacifism, his fondness for groups and his stress on the individual...[and his dictum that] the real way to get happiness is giving out happiness to other people.

Nelson Block states: "While the professional history community generally considers Jeal's conclusions on this topic to be speculative, the mainstream press seems to have taken them as fact".

It has 19 chapters, covering Lord Baden-Powell's life from birth and home, to his Indian and African periods, the work he did on Scouting for boys, and his marriage.