The Ethics of Ambiguity
Simone de Beauvoir
The Ethics of Ambiguity
Beauvoir's clearest statement of an existentialist ethics based on freedom, limits, and responsibility to other people.
Read our takeAmerica Day by Day
Simone de Beauvoir
America Day by Day
A diary of Beauvoir's 1947 journey across the United States, observant about race and class but limited by a visiting European's viewpoint.
- 1948
- Atmospheric
- Wry
- political
- challenging
- voice-driven
About Simone de Beauvoir
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeBeauvoir records a four-month lecture trip through American cities, campuses, trains, bars, factories, and segregated public life. The book combines immediate travel notes with political interpretation and should be read as a dated encounter, not a complete account of the country.
The story, in more detail
The route runs from New York through other eastern cities, the Midwest, California, the Southwest, Texas, the South, and back north. Beauvoir pays close attention to consumer abundance, loneliness, labor, higher education, gender, and the violence of racial segregation.
Her meetings include writers and intellectuals, most importantly the novelist Nelson Algren in Chicago. The record is valuable because it preserves what she noticed and how she interpreted it; it also carries generalizations and blind spots that belong to a short visit by a privileged foreign observer.
The argument
The entries follow Beauvoir's travel dates rather than a retrospective theme-by-theme structure.
New York, Chicago, Hollywood, the Southwest, and the segregated South receive extended attention, with trains and lecture stops connecting them.
Personal encounters sit beside political observation, so the book moves between diary, reportage, and philosophical reflection.
Why we recommend it
Why it matters
It shows Beauvoir testing European assumptions against direct observation of the United States immediately after the Second World War.
Where it fits
Read it after The Ethics of Ambiguity and before The Second Sex to follow the movement from ethics into social description.
What this book explores
Timeline
1948
Paul Morihien publishes L'Amérique au jour le jour in Paris.
English editions
Translations publish the work under the title America Day by Day; dates and wording vary by edition.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Paul Morihien
- 1948
Reader reviews
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The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex
A two-volume study of how societies make woman the subordinate 'Other' and how that position is lived across a lifetime.
Read our takeAmerica Day by Day: frequently asked questions
What is America Day by Day by Simone de Beauvoir about?
Beauvoir records a four-month lecture trip through American cities, campuses, trains, bars, factories, and segregated public life. The book combines immediate travel notes with political interpretation and should be read as a dated encounter, not a complete account of the country.
When was America Day by Day published?
Paul Morihien first published L'Amérique au jour le jour in French in 1948.
Should I read America Day by Day first?
Usually not. Start with The Second Sex for Beauvoir's major argument, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter for her life, or The Mandarins for a novel, then return to America Day by Day.