20th Century Popular Works

Bill Bryson (b. 1951).

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America.  New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.

Notes from a Small Island.  New York: Morrow, 1995.

Bill Bryson is known for his humorous accounts of his travels in America and beyond. Born in Iowa, Bryson moved to England in 1973, before returning to America following the death of his father in 1986. The Lost Continent is a travelogue of his adventures driving across the United States in 1987-1988, visiting small towns and avoiding larger tourists sites.  Bryson describes travelling around his adopted country in Notes from a Small Island, completed before a second return to America.

Alistair Cooke (1908-2004).

Alistair Cooke's America.  New York:  Knopf, 1973.

Cooke, an English journalist who moved to America in 1937, was famous for his 15-minute weekly radio broadcasts on BBC, Letter from America, which he gave for fifty-eight years, up to a month before his death.  His audience, which extended beyond the British Isles to wherever BBC globally reached, was treated to insightful commentary on American society, culture, and politics from a British perspective.  In 1972, Cooke’s work was made into a successful 13-part television series, America: A Personal History of the United States, followed by the publication of this book, Alistair Cooke's America.  He was also known as host of Masterpiece Theatre.

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973).

Pearl Buck's America. New York: Bartholomew House, 1971.

“On Discovering America,” Survey Graphic, June 1937.

“I HAD LIVED ALL MY LIFE AN AMERICAN AWAY FROM AMERICA”- Pearl S. Buck, “On Discovering America,” 1937.

Pearl Buck lived in China until her return to America in 1934, where she worked to understand the problems of her native country, detailed in “On Discovering America.” Buck won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth (1931), which described family life in a Chinese village. Partly due to this work, Buck was awarded a Nobel Prize in literature in 1938, the first woman to achieve this honor.   Pearl Buck's America is her exploration of America and American life, written a few years before Buck’s death in 1973 and illustrated by photographs from Life magazine.

Henry James (1843-1916).

The American Scene. Introduction and notes by Leon Edel. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, [1968].

Henry James wrote The American Scene based on his impressions after a twenty years’ absence from America.  He traveled throughout the country from 1904-1905, and became critical of American materialism, racial issues, and environmental problems.  After serializing parts of the work, James published the entire travelogue in 1907.

National Geographic.

Volumes 37, no. 6, (June, 1920) and 46, no. 1 (July, 1924)


The official journal of the National Geographic Society has been in publication since 1888. National Geographic has explored nature, geography, and societies throughout the world, with a large focus on environmental conservation.  The volumes here, from our collection on the ground floor of Linderman, include beautiful illustrations of some of our national parks, such as Yosemite and Mt. Rainier.

Federal Writers Project. American Guide Series.

California; a Guide to the Golden State.  New York: Hastings House, 1939.

Florida; a Guide to the Southern-Most State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.

The Ohio Guide. New York: Oxford University Press, [1952].

The Federal Writers Project, under the Works Progress Administration, employed writers and supported their work during the Depression.  The 48 state guides written for the American Guide Series provided rich, detailed histories of each state, with descriptions of cities, and automobile tours.

These postcards, from the collection of Special Collections Curator Lois Black, are reduced-format reproductions of posters created by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) between 1935 and 1943. It is estimated that over 2,000 posters were produced by the Federal Art Project, approximately 900 of which survive in the Library of Congress today.

Many, such as the examples shown here, were designed to promote domestic tourism and to spotlight America’s natural resources.