{"product_id":"9780253031228","title":"From New York to San Francisco: Travel Sketches from the Year 1869","description":"\u003cp\u003eWelcome 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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFull of marvelous tales and insightful observations, Ernst Mendelssohn-Barthody’s letters are a revealing window to a long-ago America.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Indiana University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47164156281072,"sku":"9780253031228","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780253031228_p0.jpg?v=1769915134","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780253031228","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}