This is an interesting and detailed journal of his trip to America and travels therein. Using Philadelphia as his base, Beck commented on the city's society and institutions, and mentions locals, including an interesting note on Titian R. Peale. Other areas visited included: Atlantic City, St. Louis, Colorado, Utah, California and New York, where he visited the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company and Washington D.C., where he met, and described, artist Henry Ulke. The volume is filled with memorabilia: advertisements, photographs, playbills, menus, original pencil and watercolor sketches, some of machinery.

This collection contains mostly entomological material, with much information on the description and identification of particular insects, entomological collections, and the study of entomology in Europe and the United States. In addition, there are materials on medicine and hospitals during the American Civil War, on the Corps of Topographical Engineers, the United States Army, on natural history in the United States, and on the LeConte's family. Some letters are written to President Rutherford B. Hayes and concern the Commissionership of Agriculture, for which LeConte was considered, but not appointed. Letters of John Eatton LeConte and Joseph LeConte are included.