America’s physical and cultural landscape is captured in these two classics of American history. Letters provides an invaluable view of the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary eras; Sketches details in vivid prose the physical setting in which American settlers created their history. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

"Early in the twentieth century, drawing upon the hundreds of letters written to his father by immigrants from Mecklenburg, Germany, Johannes Gillhoff created the archetypal character of Jürnjakob Swehn: the upright, honest mench who personified the German immigrant. This farmer-hero--planting and harvesting his Iowa acres, joking with his neighbors during the snowy winters, building a church with his own hands--proved so popular with the German public that a million copies of Jürnjakob Swehn der Amerikafahrer are in print. Now for the first time this wise and endearing book is available in English." -- Page [4] cover.

Crevecoeur's Books Outline The Steps Through Which New Immigrants Passed, Analyze The Religious Problems Of The New World, Describe The Life Of The Whalers Of Nantucket, Reveal Much About The Indians And The Horrors Of The Revolution, And Present The Colonial Farmer - His Psychology And His Daily Existence. His Charming Style, Keen Eye, And Simple Philosophy Are Universally Admired.

Published in London just as the idea of an “American” was becoming a reality, Letters introduced Europeans to America’s landscape, customs, and then-new people. Moore’s reader’s edition situates these twelve letters, which shift from hope to disillusion, in the context of thirteen other essays representative of Crèvecoeur’s writings in English.

18th-century classic detailing seafaring life in New England and plantation culture in the South also provided Old World readers with first major impressions of American landscapes, people, and institutions.

Before storms that can destroy his crops in an instant, the farmer stands implacable. To fluctuations in temperature that can deprive his children of their future, the farmer pays no heed. Every day the elements remind him that his future is secure only through constant effort. Like the creepers and crawlers he seeks to eradicate, the farmer toils away in the lush anonymity of his grid of vines, his tradition one of impervious resolve.