The year is 1919 and Charles Kenilworth ("C.K.") Shepherd, a former British Royal Air Force Captain and World War I veteran, has decided to travel to the United States to see the country from the back of a brand new Henderson 4-cylinder motorcycle. In this accounting of his adventures across the country, he has "endeavored to portray America and Americans exactly as I found them and as they appealed to me" in this "narrative of quite an ordinary, unaspiring, British motorcyclist". - Summary by Barry Eads