Europe Revised

Mr. Cobb's commentary on traveling in Europe as an American around the turn of the previous century gives an interesting sense of the era, and is always at least mildly amusing. But the real joy of this book is that Cobb is forever side-swiping you with startlingly funny, burst-out-laughing descriptions and observations.

This book is amazingly valuable for a very simple reason. It was written and published almost immediately prior to the outbreak of the first world war, and details a Europe that just a few months later would no longer exist.

Cobb is remembered best for his humorous stories of Kentucky and is part of the American literary regionalism school. These stories were collected first in the book Old Judge Priest (1915), whose title character was based on a prominent West Kentucky judge named William Pitman Bishop. Writer Joel Harris wrote of these tales, "Cobb created a South peopled with honorable citizens, charming eccentrics, and loyal, subservient blacks, but at their best the Judge Priest stories are dramatic and compelling, using a wealth of precisely rendered detail to evoke a powerful mood."Among his other books are the humorous Speaking of Operations (1916), and anti-prohibition ode to bourbon, Red Likker (1929).