American Notes: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

American Notes, credited to Rudyard Kipling, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of American Notes, by Rudyard Kipling. Read by Tim Bulkeley. In American Notes, Rudyard Kipling, the Nobel Prize-winning author of the Jungle Book, visits the USA. As the travel-diary of an Anglo-Indian Imperialist visiting the USA, these American Notes offer an interesting view of America in the 1880s. Kipling affects a wide-eyed innocence, and expresses astonishment at features of American life that differ from his own, not least the freedom (and attraction) of American women. However, he scorns the political machines that made a mockery of American democracy, and while exhibiting the racist attitudes that made him controversial in the 20th century concludes "It is not good to be a negro in the land of the free and the home of the brave." G. A. England of Harvard University (letter to The New York Times 10/11/1902) wrote: "To the American temperament, the gentleman who throws stones while himself living in a glass house cannot fail to be amusing; the more so if, as in Mr Kipling's case, he appears to be in a state of maiden innocence regarding the structure of his own domicile." Summary by Tim Bulkeley with Quotations from the Gutenberg edition of American Notes and the online version of The New York Times of October 11th 1902.

Recording facts

• Recording title: American Notes
• Author credits: Rudyard Kipling
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 8
• Listed recording duration: 2:47:34

Catalogue topics

• sarcasm
• American Life
• Kipling
• travel
• diary

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction — 5:16
2. 01 - At The Golden Gate — 31:44
3. 02 - American Politics — 27:55
4. 03 - American Salmon — 22:03
5. 04 - The Yellowstone — 22:35
6. 05 - Chicago — 23:15
7. 06 - The American Army — 11:45
8. 07 - America's Defenceless Coasts — 23:06

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.