Ilf and Petrov’s travel notes, One-Storied America, were published in 1937. In the autumn of 1935, Ilf and Petrov were sent to the United States as correspondents for the newspaper Pravda. It is difficult to say what exactly the senior authorities had in mind when they sent two satirists into the very heart of capitalism. Most likely, they expected a harsh and devastating satire on the “land of Coca-Cola,” but what emerged instead was an intelligent, fair-minded, and sympathetic book. It aroused great interest among Soviet readers, who until then had not had even a vague idea of what the United States was like. The book’s subsequent history was far from simple: at times it was published, at times banned, removed from libraries, or issued with parts of the text cut out.