Selling the Sights

A fascinating journey through the origins of American tourismIn 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.

"Grounded in careful study of the travel literature of the times, Mackintosh's study will help all readers appreciate the anxieties surrounding travel in the 19th century—and how these issues still resonate today", "Lively and well-written, Selling the Sights is a rich manuscript that makes a vital contribution to the history of American travel and tourism.", "This well-written and engaging book traces important shifts in geographic understandings and representations of tourism as well as the development of a transportation infrastructure that transformed the manner in which Americans explored, travelled and wrote about their experiences. ... Eschewing recent approaches to American tourism history, Mackintosh shifts our focus away from questions about national identity and patriotism to focus very specifically on the commodification of human experience, and how travel has been represented in travel guides, textbooks and literature. This is a welcome and important contribution."

Will B. Mackintosh is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Mary Washington, where he teaches and writes about early American history, cultural and intellectual history, the history of travel and tourism, and the history of capitalism.