The Trip to America (1930)

Abstract

The weather in New York City is not good at all for ones health. In summer, it is too hot and too humid to the extent that it makes one totally frazzled; it is also too cold in winter to the extent that one’s blood almost freezes in one’s veins… as for its air, it is polluted by the exhaust from the hundreds of thousands of cars that are interminably, day and night, running about the city. And because it is so hot in New York, you often see shops that sell juices such as orange and pineapple; you also see this in groceries, restaurants, and even pharmacies.

Muhammad Labib al-Batanuni was a noted Egyptian agriculturist who visited the United States in 1927 upon the invitation of an American agricultural institution to participate in an international conference on the soil studies. He published his account of life in America first in the Egyptian daily al-Ahram, and then he collected the installments in a book that he published in 1935 under the title, The Trip to America. The book is illustrated throughout with maps and pictures of scenes from America. Some of the topics in the book are: New York City; the Stock Exchange; American men, their mentality and their ways; American women, their work, their rush to marry and their rush to ask for divorce; American universities; American hotels; The Ku Klux Klan; the Masons, and so on.