The chapter on slavery is worth rereading over and over again.

If I haven't been introduced to the Travel Writing genre at school, I would find it hard to understand the aim of publishing such a book.
What I liked the most in this book is how Americans reacted to it. They got offended at first, but then they could easily accept it and the criticism that is imbedded in it.
Lastly! I wonder whether this book had any impact on the diplomatic relations between UK and the US back then!

American Notes what can you say about Charles Dickens but the man is incredible, awesome, abiding in abounding in Faith, abundant in love, addictive, deceitfully enjoyable, fabulously decadent in stories that are out of this world if you love Charles Dickens. Getting to see a glimpse into his life and love is full of humility for me. He was immensely talented. I have a Christmas Carol that I read every Christmas. What a talent that He knows where the gift comes from. I love his other books as well, they are so enjoyable,"David Copperfield," "Great Expectations,"A Tale of Two Cities."just to name a few. You should read them all, they are a true find. I received a copy of this book by the Publisher and Netgalley; all the opinions expressed in this review are all my own.

if you would like to read more of my Christian book reviews go to christianlybookreviewers.blogspot.com

I hadn’t read any Dickens for years, having disliked his style when forced to read it as a young student. Nor had I read any of his nonfiction, so I was pleasantly surprised by the wit and humor in this travelogue. As always, he gets into granular detail on anything - from boat accommodation to prison practices - that interests him, but his wry observations of American mannerisms and the physical discomforts of 19th century travel are hilarious.

Typical of many writers of his time, the book ranges from humor to pathos to righteous indignation from one chapter to the next. It culminates in a chapter condemning slavery that is utterly uncompromising, earning him the wrath of many Americans, and the admiration of some, including this reviewer.

Not a simple read, in fact, very confusing and not exactly straightforward. But it was on my list!

Strange to think that 170 years ago this day, Charles Dickens and his wife boarded a ship to sail to the United States for a six-month vacation. Even stranger for me to have been reading this book for approximately 17 months (off and on) - nearly three times as long as their journey through the States and Canada. I should add that I was on a journey, having just started my Masters, with lots of coincidences between the Dickens' path and my own. The most striking is seeing the excellent film The Fighter (set in a fast-fading Lowell, Massachusetts) and then to read Chapter the Fourth, and his visit to the same factory town at its height. Like many travelers far from home, Dickens fell victim to disenchantment, the honeymoon soon was over, and all he could see were tobacco-stained carpets, argumentative bores, and traces of history tinged by slavery and hostility. The climax came with his visit to the Shaker village, summed up in his sea change that would produce A Christmas Carol and more of his most memorable stories: "I so abhor, and from my soul detest that bad spirit, no matter by what class or sect it may be entertained, which would strip life of its healthful graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures, pluck from maturity and old age their pleasant ornaments, and make existence but a narrow path towards the grave..." (p. 238) I can't wait to read how this experience was fictionalized in Martin Chuzzlewit, hopefully a quicker read for me with a protagonist present to focus upon, rather than Dickens there-but-not-there presence throughout American Notes.

It is a universal truth that the more things change, the more they stay the same.( It is also a universal truth that we speak and write in cliches.) The traveler's view of America, written in 1842 has many uncomfortable truths to say to us in the America of 2013. That this traveler was Charles Dickens, already a critic of his country's poverty laws, government institutions, and the darker aspects of its culture, means that the US was about to face a reckoning--a literary one eighteen years before the real one. Dickens is well aware of the problem that that apocalyptic bloodletting will address. He writes almost all of the book as an account by train, carriage and ship through Eastern and Midwest America, in chronological order, and then he changes the structure and has a chapter called "Slavery." His feelings are not equivocal and he makes no attempt to hide them. When the comic travails of his journeys pass, he has some sober and harsh words for the country he saw.

In short, he laments slavery, the obsession with business, the dearth of imagination and playfulness, the terrible press, the trade, and the psychological American condition of distrusting everything. Who will read these concluding remarks and not think of our own problems now? We in our era have: racism, the obsession with business, the dearth of the creative in generating new ideas, the terrible press, the exports from China, and still, like an immortal weed, the American condition of distrusting everything--so much so that about 60% of eligible voters voted in the last election. And then we wonder why our government is so bad. Dickens actually talks about this. He speaks about the erosion of American public office from these corrosive influences.

And because he is Dickens, he has to visit the prisons and the mental wards of this country. Being a international best-selling author, he is allowed access, and boy, does he use his influence and prodigious verbal gifts to describe them. There is the justly famous, sympathetic and empathetic account of the horrors of solitary confinement. The Americans don't seem to put themselves in each others shoes, so they can't imagine they are doing a terrible thing to their fellow men. There is the opposite and bright story of Laura Bridgman, a blind and deaf girl who manages to learn and navigate the horrors of her darkness as Helen Keller did. There is a visit to the Lowell factories, that social experiment Dickens approves of. There are comical tales of the city featuring itinerant pigs. He does his best to record the essence of the country he sees--the good and the bad--and not to be diplomatic or use false words in that description, but to be honest, direct, moral, and true. In this time of national criticism being equated with and dismissed as national hate, this book is an important reminder that the highest form of patriotism is in fact looking with clear eyes at your country's flaws, writing down what you see so that you can begin to change them.

One person has identity, character and personality. A country is after all a group of millions of people and in the collective, a country, like the individual, has identity, character and personality. As with a man, a country can admit mistakes, learn from them, and grow. The sad truth of this book being read today is that America is in a state of arrested development and has been for a time.

Quieres viajar al siglo XIX, pero todavía no han inventado la máquina del tiempo? Sumérgete en las deliciosas páginas de este libro y gracias al genio de Dickens, te parecerá estar andando por la América decimonónica

To the modern reader, Dickens’ writing often meanders into dense and foggy habitats although a pause and re-read, sometimes more than once, usually gets one back on track. I read a simple reprint of the book but an edition (if there is such a beast) with explanatory notes and some private correspondence about the 1842 trip would now be my choice to save me the effort of searching the internet for background information and insights. Obituaries described Dickens as a comic writer and the book is packed with amusing sketches and anecdotes, he travelled as a celebrity but made efforts to elude that veil, enduring discomforts beyond the imagination of twenty first century tourists, some truly shocking. This travelogue has a postscript containing a speech given by Dickens in 1868 on the occasion of his second trip to the US which references the beneficial changes of the previous 26 years without mentioning the recent Civil War which had ended the institution of slavery he had witnessed on his first trip and detested so much for it’s inhuman suppression of the enslaved and the corruption of humanity in the slavers. I only wish Dickens had written a book about his second trip but maybe his decision not to was influenced by the continued failure of the United States to give copyright protection to foreign authors such as himself, something which greatly aggrieved him.

First time I've read the whole thing.
--Man, he visits a lot of prisons. And a lot of this book depends on sketches, as with early journalistic work, and that can get a bit dull; just not a genre that we're familiar with or value much any more
--He doesn't offer as much commentary on "the American character" as I thought he would have (last chapter excepted, where the big problem with Americans is "Universal Distrust," which we use to tear down leaders; there's something to be said for this argument).
--He really hates tobacco spitting.
--Much less about money ("American Notes") than I thought it would be.
--The disgust with Cairo, IL, really is kind of amazing. But boy does he love Cincy and, esp, Niagra Falls
--The introduction to the Penguin Classics edition gives a good context, esp on how it's part of the 19th-century travelogue to see America as an offshoot of England and one that went wrong; his disappointment in the (relative) lack of social class is palpable and kind of amazing.
--His arguments against slavery are interesting though not novel; a real focus on humanitarian reasoning vs thinking about equality. Also, this book could potentially help my students think through the different obsessions of class (British) vs race (American)
--Can't stop thinking about that article from some semi-conservative source that proposes this as a first-year book in place of the sorts of novels and non-fiction that promote a particular (progressive) worldview that most places choose. What a terrible choice this would be for a first-year book. How many students would possibly finish it?

This is a travelogue documenting Dickens' experiences in America. I can see why this book lost him some friends. He is pretty brutal in his criticism of American customs, manners and ambitions. I do have to say, though, that there are parts of the book that I found extremely amusing- laugh-out-loud funny. So I enjoyed it. I think any fan of Dickens would enjoy this book, although I wouldn't read this first before his other, more famous novels, because part of the charm is recognizing his trademark way of writing.

Get this as an ebook so you can search for what interests you most--Dickens's descriptions of Congress? Niagara Falls? Prisons? Institutes for the blind? Trains? Ferries? New York? Columbus? The Mississippi? Slavery? The Shakers? I did read it cover to cover as I slowly make my way through all of Dickens's works but it struck me that everyone might benefit from a dose of seeing how something they are familiar with was described 160 years ago by a celebrity of the times who made it his business to find out how the downtrodden were treated in his own society and abroad. The descriptions, characterizations of those he meets, and details of things that, thank goodness, are gone such as spittoons everywhere, are well worth it!