What I Saw in America (Anthem Travel Classics) by G.K. Chesterton

What I Saw in America (Anthem Travel Classics) Reviews

• 
  Jim

  
  What I Saw in America is less about what
  G.K. Chesterton saw in America than what the idea of America meant to him as an Englishman. Not a word is said about whether GKC took the train or any Mississippi River steamboats, what he ate, whether he visited anyone at home, whether he saw any of the country's vaunted beauty spots, or anything of the sort that would appear in a Lonely Planet guidebook.
  
  What we have in this book are a series of essays on the subject of America. Chesterton was here on a lecture tour, so he really did not act the part of a tourist.
  
  One thing I found interesting is that the author thinks (from his vantage point during the Harding Administration) that lip service was paid to democracy, but that many Americans are being ground into wage slavery if not actual slavery:

  So far as democracy becomes or remains Catholic and Christian, that democracy will remain democratic. In so far as it does not, it will become wildly and wickedly undemocratic. Its rich will riot with a brutal indifference far beyond the feeble feudalism which retains some shadow of responsibility or at least of patronage. Its wage-slaves will either sink into heathen slavery, or seek relief in theories that are destructive not merely in method but in aim; since they are but the negation of the human appetites of property and personality.

  Given the 2016 Presidential Race now in progress, these seem prophetic words.
  
  One thing on which we can always rely on Chesterton for is his very genuine sense of democracy. It is possible to read on for page after page, only to be stopped dead in one's tracks with some truism expressed with style and verve.
  
• 
  Kathy

  I do enjoy Chesterton. That said, this book was somewhat more dated than some of his others. Some of his specific allusions were lost on me. But he had very good insights into how to understand others, particularly those of other cultures. "Nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; ... he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny." He discourses on hotels, jokes, neon signs, machinery, and even world government, all with his unique philosophy and flair.
• 
  Derric

  “We cannot be certain of being right about the future; but we can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.”
  
  I learned a lot from this book and though some of the issues he addressed, like Prohibition, were specific to what was happening during his life 100 years ago, the principled thinking is helpful in interpreting our own day and age. I look forward to reading more of Chesterton because I’m assuming that this is not the best of his writings. I give it 3 stars. To read, or not to read, that is the question.
• 
  Skylar Burris

  Did I mention I love Chesterton? In many ways this book is quite out of date (Chesterton toured American during prohibition), but, as always with Chesterton, many of his insights are timeless. What makes this book so interesting, however, is not what he has to say about the differences between the English and Americans, but what he has to say about cultural understanding and misunderstanding. It is these insights that remain very true today.
• 
  Don Incognito

  What I Saw In America was a delight, certainly the best and most interesting book I've read this year so far. Highly recommended--if you read any Chesterton, you must read this book.
  
  It's full of penetrating insight into both American psychology and British psychology. It's dated, having been published in 1922, but Chesterton's observations of the American character seem mostly still valid and, in any case, fascinating even if referring to an American character that existed ninety-three years ago. I haven't read Democracy in America yet, but clearly, What I Saw In America is an English counterpart to it. Chsterton probably isn't completely right in all is observations: for instance, he strongly suggests that Prohibition was a scheme cooked up by the rich to reserve alcohol to themselves, and completely ignores the huge and probably driving role played by temperance organizations. But even the opinions that are wrong are still fascinating for their outside perspective and for what they suggest about the English character.
  
  I suppose nobody's perfect, and so even a genius such as Chesterton and a book such as this has some sort of flaw. Here it's something I began to notice in Chesterton's The Everlasting Man: Chesterton's rhetoric and possibly attitude toward racial minorities is embarrassingly ignorant by 2015 standards. It's not just that Chesterton uses the n-word once (clearly because he doesn't know any better), but that he spent a full year traveling through America, evaluating it from his outside perspective, but had absolutely nothing to say about the Jim Crow system or more generally the condition of blacks at the time. If you read the book closely enough and reflect on it enough to discern Chesterton's attitude toward the brotherhood of man, you can figure out that actual racism is unlikely, but...like I said, ignorance. Disappointing for such a brilliant man.
  
  Chesterton's books tend to have many cheap, low-quality editions; avoid buying the one with ISBN 1533627606 (
  https://www.amazon.com/What-I-Saw-Ame...). The pages are not numbered; they all display "Page [x]" throughout. The text appears to be a printout of the Project Gutenberg file on this work. The clincher is that the publisher is "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform." Fly-by-night operator making a quick buck on the Gutenberg contributors' work.
• 
  David Murphy

  First off, 'What I saw in America' is not a travel commentary relating humorous anecdotes about his journeys in the style of, say, Twain. Chesterton tells only a handful of stories of his time in the States but then, in his inimitable manner, uses those as springboards to write about 'big ideas,' many of them relating to then-current political controversies but some on more general themes as well. I found it surprising how the 'then-current' political controversies are often still current. For instance, Chesterton warns against the trend of 'internationalism' in which differences between countries are papered over for the sake of political unity, a situation that just begs to be compared to the current meltdown in the EU. Also, I was quite surprised to find Chesterton railing against capitalism and unequal resource distribution; he sounded like an Occupy Wall Street type (he apparently yearns for a return to the peasantry of the Middle Ages).
  
  Overall, an enjoyable read with interesting insights, especially as he compares America and England. Chesterton's prose is so fluid that even the less interesting, more dated bits fly by.
• 
  Andrew

  Chesterton would have made an astonishingly good online troll, and in many ways that is essentially what he does here. But his target is not just the U.S.; it is Britain, it is women, it is Jews, it is his readers, it is the attendees of his lectures. And like most trolls, behind half of his trolling is real disgust: his open anti-semitism is cringe-inducing and not incidental.
  On the other hand, the book has numerous passages of penetrating insight which I would happily share with my class on "American civilization," only I fear someone might look the rest of the book up. It is a pity that there are indeed witty bigots and perspicacious cranks.
• 
  Amy Meyers

  #LitLife192021 Travel Book
  Sigh. 3.5 stars. I finally finished this for the Literary Life challenge. This was tough for me. I learned a lot, and it really made me think in many places. But I couldn't follow some of his arguments: some, because they depended on a knowledge of current events or figures being alluded to; some, because he is clearly an academic, and his intellectualism was sometimes over the top. I didn't agree with him on some common themes that kept popping up, most notably his throwing capitalism under the bus. Perhaps he meant something different by it, but since he never defined it, I have to just assume I understand him but disagree strongly. I also disagreed on some other common themes, but for the most part really grew in my ability to think about great principles. So many great quotes throughout that are worth thinking about.
• 
  Zach

  A long-winded view of America, its culture, and its place in the world in the 20s, with added commentary about the declining British empire and treatment of the Irish. Got me interested in this period of American history. It was a struggle at times, but there were definitely some gems that hammer home just how little has changed in America, for better or worse. For example:
  
  “The true philosophical defense of the modern oppression of the poor would be to say frankly that we have ruled them so badly that they are unfit to rule themselves. But no modern oligarch is enough of a man to say this.” (From the essay “Prohibition in Fact and Fancy”)
  
  Not as good as Trollope’s mom’s travelogue through the Midwest, but better than Dickens’.
• 
  Adam

  Read this years ago, so long ago the only thing I remember was his description of American hotels all looking alike. I think he also had in here a point about prohibition, which was the era in which he visited America, and he mentioned it was another one of those laws for the poor, because the rich were largely unaffected due to their large stores of alcohol. As an aside, I heard in a documentary about how prohibition most likely came about due to the efforts of John D. Rockefeller, who saw alcohol production, chiefly ethanol, as a competitor to his fuel, oil, for the growing car industry. Once upon a time there was a competition of what kind of fuel would be the main one for cars.
• 
  Abigail Lindner

  What I Saw in America is, as can be guessed, a series of essays by G.K. Chesterton on what he saw when he visited America in the the early 1920s. An appreciator of drink, he had much to say about Prohibition in America and what it said about the democracy in the country. In each chapter, drawing from one or two encounters, Chesterton launches into his characteristic mode of discourse, extrapolating or rooting out insights on and from the political, historical, and psychological backgrounds and states of America and Americans to better understand the country and people from an English point-of-view. There is much comparison between America and England, which is unsurprising and would likely have been helpful for Chesterton's English audience.
  
  Though reading it one hundred years after it was written and living in an America one hundred years older than what Chesterton visited, I enjoyed seeing the nation through a foreign traveler's perspective, though some of his conclusions may not be applicable today. I will say that, having read several of Chesterton's essay anthologies and acclimated to his style, What I Saw in America was particularly difficult to follow. Also, some comments he made on American chattel slavery and Black Americans I thought inappropriate, regardless of whether they were common in the time during which he was writing.
• 
  w gall

  Dated; train of thought hard to follow
  
  Clearly, Chesterton is an insightful man. I expected this to be a timpiece, revealing what life was like in the USA and England 100 years ago; how a thoughtful man looked at things then. That's what I got, but it was harder to grasp than I thought it would be. I have heard that Chesterton's style takes some getting used to, and as this is my first exposure to him, I would agree. A British person versed in his country's history would probably better understand his train of thought .
• 
  Mary Pat

  Some historical insights, good to compare to today
  
  Written about 100 years ago, GKC visited Prohibition-era America and had some thoughts. Interestingly, a lot of the thoughts were about England, which is hardly surprising - he was writing for an English audience. You need to have an idea of the political movements of the time - in the US and UK - to make sense of some remarks, but you find out many "modern" political issues still hold now.
• 
  Kanaria

  I decided to pick this book up during the Corona Quarantine. It was one that was difficult to get through because it just felt extremely out of date when compared to present day america-even if it is from the English perspective. I prefer "What's wrong with the world" as an alternative to this one. It is Chesterton's best work by far.
  
  This isn't a bad book, mind you. Chesterton is great. But his other works just appealed to me more.
• 
  Will Dole

  Definitely not my favorite Chesterton. Partly due to the Jewish comments and the opinions on slavery that left me very disappointed.
  
  That said, some wonderful insights on America in his time, some of which still hold true today. Also, his repeated point that we should feel no shame over laughing at those things we don't understand but other not mock the same is helpful. And needed today.
• 
  Nick

  "What I Saw In American" is classic Chesterton, with droves of seemingly paradoxical paragraphs about different sights and observation of both the America and England. This book doesn't follow one set idea, which makes it tougher to follow, but their are a number of chapters that give excellent insight into different ideas on both American life and a foreigner's viewpoint of this life.
• 
  Dayla

  Uneven. However, this book was meant for an audience of fellow Englishmen.
  
  The best time for the United States was the late 18th century. “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal . . .”
• 
  Stephen Kuntzman

  This book could be a treatise on the pedantic nature of certain authors and their obsession with escorting the unsuspecting reader to Snoresville.
• 
  Doug

  Utterly charming and insightful. A bit wordy. In other words, classic Chesterton from beginning to end. INCREDIBLY relevant, still.
• 
  Nathaniel Eggleston

  Cutting observations for consideration in our own times.
• 
  Astrid Stanciu

  interesting philosophical read - it's fun to count how many of the author's worst nightmares have become reality since.
• 
  Cecilia Geiger

  I'm not sure I agree with everything Chesterton says in this account, however, he makes some very poignant points and his writing had me audibly laughing out loud frequently while reading!