A 1951 review in the New York Herald Tribune pronounced this 1862 travel memoir "superb . . . Its effect today is that of an extraordinary newsreel of civilian life in 1861-62, vivid in its photography, literate in its running commentary, as fair as an honest, open-minded man could make it." Trollope recounts his adventures in Boston, Cambridge, Lowell, Washington, and more—along the way he learns about Congress, women's rights, abolition, education, and religion in America.