Notions of the Americans, Volume 1 (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor

In this work, Cooper adopts the perspective of a European traveling through the United States for the first time, revealing his impressions of Americans to fellow Europeans. Though lighthearted, this epistolary narrative draws deep comparisons between his “home country” and America—noting that he may be comparing an “unfortunate tavern” to “not the worst, nor the middling, but the best similar object” in Europe.