From New York to San Francisco: Travel Sketches from the Year 1869 (Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology)

By:

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis
A &“fresh, wonderful, captivating&” journey across 19th-century America through the letters of composer Felix Mendelssohn&’s nephew (alfemminile.blogspot.com). Welcome to an America you&’ve never seen. Where anyone can drop by the White House and visit the President between 10 a.m. and noon; where cowcatchers are bloodied daily on train tracks between New York and Boston; where spent bullets are strewn across Civil War battlefields, and Indians still roam Yosemite Valley; where pigs rut in the sand-and-clay streets of Washington, DC., and the weather-bleached skeletons of oxen and horses line the old mail roads across the West. For three hot summer months in 1869, Ernst Mendelssohn-Barthody, the nephew of famed composer Felix Mendelssohn, traveled by train across the United States accompanied by his older cousin. His letters back home to Prussia offer fascinating glimpses of a young, rapidly growing America. Unceasingly annoyed at the Americans&’ tendency to spit all the time, the Prussian aristocrats seemingly visited everyone and everywhere: meeting President Grant and Brigham Young; touring Niagara Falls, Mammoth Cave, the Redwoods, and Yosemite; taking in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Omaha, San Francisco, and the still war-ravaged city of Richmond; and crossing the continent by rail just two months after the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads had been joined at Promontory, Utah. Full of marvelous tales and insightful observations, Ernst Mendelssohn-Barthody&’s letters are a revealing window to a long-ago America. &“If you love epistolary genre and the USA and if you want to understand how Americans lived immediately after the Secession War, From New York to San Francisco is the book you were waiting for.&”—alfemminile.blogspot.com
Copyright:
2017

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
121 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780253031228
Related ISBNs:
9780253026316
Publisher:
Indiana University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Indiana University Press
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Travel, Biographies and Memoirs, Literature and Fiction
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.
Edited by:
Gertrud Graubart Champe
Translator:
Barbara Thiem

Reviews

No Rating Yet