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Observing America The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890—1950 Robert Frankel Studies in American Thought and Culture "Vivid sketches of how eminent English commentators both praised and criticized Americans." —Gerald W. McFarland, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, author of Inside Greenwich Village Beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville and Frances Trollope, visitors to America have written some of the most penetrating and, occasionally, scathing commentaries on U.S. politics and culture. Observing America focuses on four of the most insightful British commentators on America between 1890 and 1950. The colorful journalist W. T. Stead championed Anglo-American unity while plunging into reform efforts in Chicago. The versatile writer H. G. Wells fiercely criticized capitalist America but found reason for hope in the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. G. K. Chesterton, one of England's great men of letters, urged Americans to preserve the vestiges of Jeffersonian democracy that he still discerned in the small towns of the heartland. And the influential political theorist and activist Harold Laski assailed the business ethos that he believed dominated the nation, especially after Franklin Roosevelt's death. Robert Frankel examines the New World experiences of these commentators and the books they wrote about America. He also probes similar writings by other prominent observers from the British Isles, including Beatrice Webb, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. The result is a book that offers keen insights into America's national identity in a time of vast political and cultural change. "These visitors offer observations that are invariably interesting, often insightful, and sometimes quirkily idiosyncratic, reflecting the visitors' own agendas, ideological perspectives, political biases, and cultural orientation." —Paul S. Boyer, author of By the Bomb's Early Light, series editor Studies in American Thought and Culture Paul S. Boyer, Series Editor Robert Frankel is associate editor of The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800. Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@wwwtest.uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.) Of Related Interest Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity: Studies in Ethnoracial, Religious, and Professional Affiliation in the United States David A. Hollinger

January 2007 LC: 2006008622 E 328 pp.  6 x 9 Cloth $29.95 s ISBN 978-0-299-21880-5 ADD TO CART

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