Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Selling the Sights
A fascinating journey through the origins of American tourism In the early nineteenth century, thanks to a booming transportation industry, Americans began to journey away from home simply for the sake of traveling, giving rise to a new cultural phenomenon —the tourist. In Selling the Sights, Will B. Mackintosh describes the origins and cultural significance of this new type of traveler and the moment in time when the emerging American market economy began to reshape the availability of geographical knowledge, the material conditions of travel, and the variety of destinations that sought to profit from visitors with money to spend. Entrepreneurs began to transform the critical steps of travel—deciding where to go and how to get there—into commodities that could be produced in volume and sold to a marketplace of consumers. The identities of Americans prosperous enough to afford such commodities were fundamentally changed as they came to define themselves through the consumption of experiences. Mackintosh ultimately demonstrates that the cultural values and market forces surrounding tourism in the early nineteenth century continue to shape our experience of travel to this day.
Doing the Town
Tourists and travelers in the early nineteenth century saw American cities as ugly spaces, lacking the art and history that attracted thousands to the great cities of Europe. By the turn of the century, however, city touring became popular in the United States, and the era saw the rise of elegant hotels, packaged tours, and train travel to cities for vacations that would entertain and edify. This fascinating cultural history, studded with vivid details bringing the experience of Victorian-era travel alive, explores the beginnings of urban tourism, and sets the phenomenon within a larger cultural transformation that encompassed fundamental changes in urban life and national identity. Focusing...
Charlevoix
If resort life is what you crave, the long ramble in the Charlevoix region of Quebec offered by Philippe Dubé's book provides the desired change of scene. Using many photographs and illustrations of the elegant resort homes of the area, the people who built and inhabited them, and the tourists who flocked there during the summer, Dubé captures both the untamed beauty and the unique history of this remote resort region. From the introduction: Charlevoix sits on the north shore of the St Lawrence River in a fertile valley first colonized by the merchanys of Québec. Its early development under the French Régime was sporadic, but in due course the commercial climate improved. In 1762 Messrs ...
Distant Revolutions
Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism is a study of American politics, culture, and foreign relations in the mid-nineteenth century, illuminated through the reactions of Americans to the European revolutions of 1848. Flush from the recent American military victory over Mexico, many Americans celebrated news of democratic revolutions breaking out across Europe as a further sign of divine providence. Others thought that the 1848 revolutions served only to highlight how America’s own revolution had not done enough in the way of reform. Still other Americans renounced the 1848 revolutions and the thought of trans-atlantic unity because they interpreted European...
The Confederate Yellow Fever Conspiracy
Defeat was looming for the South--as the Civil War continued, paths to possible victory were fast disappearing. Dr. Luke Pryor Blackburn, a Confederate physician and expert in infectious diseases, had an idea that might turn the tide: he would risk his own life and career to bring a yellow fever epidemic to the North. To carry out his mission, he would need some accomplices. Tracing the plans and movements of the conspirators, this thoroughly researched history describes in detail the yellow fever plot of 1864-1865.
Wars of the Mexican Gulf
In turbulent 1830s Mexico, Texas and Yucatán declared independence, leading to the U.S.-Mexican War and European intrigue. One nation in turmoil, another seeking aggrandizement, smaller states jostling for security, mercenary expeditions, and political and racial armed struggles breaking out. In 1835 the northern Mexican state of Texas declared its independence and won it after defeating General Santa Anna’s forces at the Battle of San Jacinto. A few years later, as a larger and looming war with the United States approached, the gulf state of Yucatan did the same by claiming itself a separate republic. For Mexican authorities, the existence of breakaway republics on its periphery represen...
California's Frontier Naturalists
"In California's Frontier Naturalists, Richard Beidleman has eloquently chronicled the history of explorations and discovery that revealed the grand legacy of California's biodiversity. More than just a series of scholarly essays about naturalists, collections, and species, this book provides lively insight into the motivation that lured diverse naturalists to California's 'natural cornucopia', their personalities, their remarkable experiences, and their lasting contributions."—Dieter Wilken, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
