Introducing America [antikvár]

Introduction America is different. It is not in the least like England, although many of its roots are English. It is not in the least like any other country in Europe, nor is it at all like other places where Europeans have settled. Unless a traveller goes prepared to find a foreign country, he will miss or misunderstand half of the United States. Many things are done differently in America, and one must not immediately assume that this is a sign of inadequacy or lack of sophistication. Different challenges evoke different responses; what was esteemed a virtue in Boston, Lincolnshire, would perhaps have proved a considerable liability in Boston, Massachusetts. Americans therefore developed an entirely new hierarchy of public virtues and vices, in a manner either Utopian or materialistic, as you choose. And Americans still are either mad idealists or ruthless pragmatists, depending on how you look at them. You may agree with Compton Mackenzie and Mrs Trollope that it was appalling effrontery for nineteenth-century Americans to have caUed their totally uncivilized frontier outposts 'Athens', 'Syracuse', 'Paris'. Or you may be moved by the dream behind the deed. In any case, Americans are different, sometimes to an infuriating degree. America is enormous. Into the single state of Texas you could fit the British Isles, Norway, Belgium, and Portugal, and still have room in the corner for Andorra and Lichtenstein. It took wagon trains four months to go to California from the rallying points in Missouri, already a third of the way across the continent; they had to cross almost two thousand miles, including a mountain range vaster than the Alps and day after day of trackless desert. Even now it takes longer to go from New York to California by train than from London to Moscow, or Copenhagen to Athens. This book is therefore selective. We have tried to include all the most interesting places in the United States, but have had to bypass entire regions as well as several states which lie too far off the beaten path. We make no mention of Alaska or Hawaii, for ix