Les États-Unis en 1900
Paris: Société d'Éditions Scientifiques, 1896. First Edition. 8vo. xvi, 300 pp. Text in French. Contemporary three-quarter brown leather over dark green cloth boards, TEG, 5 raised bands, gilt lettering, marbled endpapers. Fading to spine; light, general wear; a very good copy. Item #23513
Auguste Joseph Lutaud (1847 – 1925) was a French physician-gynecologist, writer, cryptarch and world traveller. He first visited the United States in 1865 and returned in 1894, giving him firsthand experience of America both immediately after the Civil War and during the extraordinary industrial and economic expansion of the Gilded Age. Here is his uncommon and interesting French assessment of the United States at the close of the nineteenth century. Lutaud examines American political institutions, society, commerce, industry, immigration, cities, and the country's rapidly expanding economic influence, offering a revealing European perspective on the United States during the Gilded Age. Particularly interesting for its attempt to anticipate the character and position of the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century.
An interesting successor, nearly sixty years later, to the tradition of French observations of America exemplified by Tocqueville's "Democracy in America", Lutaud's work reflects the dramatically transformed United States of the Gilded Age.
Price: $200.00