Unspeakable Awfulness ─ America Through the Eyes of European Travelers, 1865-1900

The late nineteenth century was a golden age for European travel in the United States. For prosperous Europeans, a journey to America was a fresh alternative to the more familiar ‘Grand Tour’ of their own continent, promising encounters with a vast, wild landscape, and with people whose culture was similar enough to their own to be intelligible, yet different enough to be interesting. Their observations of America and its inhabitants provide a striking lens on this era of American history, and a fascinating glimpse into how the people of the past perceived one another.

In Unspeakable Awfulness, Kenneth D. Rose gathers together a broad selection of the observations made by European travellers to the United States. European visitors remarked upon what they saw as a distinctly American approach to everything from class, politics, and race to language, food, and advertising. Their assessments of the ‘American character’ continue to echo today, and create a full portrait of late-nineteenth century America as seen through the eyes of its visitors.

Including vivid travellers’ tales and plentiful illustrations, Unspeakable Awfulness is a rich resource that will be useful to students and appeal to anyone interested in travel history and narratives.

Kenneth D. Rose teaches history at California State University, Chico. He is the author of Myth of the Greatest Generation: A Social History of Americans in World War II, One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture, and American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition.