{"product_id":"america-day-by-day-9780520210677","title":"America Day by Day","description":"Here is the ultimate American road book, one with a perspective unlike that of any other. In January 1947 Simone de Beauvoir landed at La Guardia airport and began a four-month journey that took her from one coast of the United States to the other, and back again. Embraced by the Condé Nast set in a swirl of cocktail parties in New York, where she was hailed as the \"prettiest existentialist\" by Janet Flanner in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, de Beauvoir traveled west by car, train, and Greyhound, immersing herself in the nation's culture, customs, people, and landscape. The detailed diary she kept of her trip became \u003ci\u003eAmerica Day by Day, \u003c\/i\u003e published in France in 1948 and offered here in a completely new translation. It is one of the most intimate, warm, and compulsively readable texts from the great writer's pen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFascinating passages are devoted to Hollywood, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and San Antonio. We see de Beauvoir gambling in a Reno casino, smoking her first marijuana cigarette in the Plaza Hotel, donning raingear to view Niagara Falls, lecturing at Vassar College, and learning firsthand about the Chicago underworld of morphine addicts and petty thieves with her lover Nelson Algren as her guide. This fresh, faithful translation superbly captures the essence of Simone de Beauvoir's distinctive voice. It demonstrates once again why she is one of the most profound, original, and influential writers and thinkers of the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOn New York: \u003c\/b\u003e\"I walk between the steep cliffs at the bottom of a canyon where no sun penetrates: it's permeated by a salt smell. Human history is not inscribed on these carefully calibrated buildings: They are closer to prehistoric caves than to the houses of Paris or Rome.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOn Los Angeles: \u003c\/b\u003e\"I watch the Mexican dances and eat chili con carne, which takes the roof off my mouth, I drink the tequila and I'm utterly dazed with pleasure.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSimone de Beauvoir\u003c\/b\u003e (1908-1986) is the author of many books, among them \u003ci\u003eThe Second Sex\u003c\/i\u003e (1949) and \u003ci\u003eThe Mandarins\u003c\/i\u003e (1954), which won the Prix Goncourt. \u003cb\u003eCarol Cosman\u003c\/b\u003e is a freelance translator who has also translated Jean-Paul Sartre's \u003ci\u003eThe Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1857\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cb\u003eDouglas Brinkley\u003c\/b\u003e is a Professor of History at the University of New Orleans and the author of a forthcoming biography of Jimmy Carter.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of California Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50514214093074,"sku":"9780520210677","price":35.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_1ae096a3-3986-40e2-a745-639a540c7306.jpg?v=1730975982","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/america-day-by-day-9780520210677","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}