Nostalgia for the Family Holiday Vacation

Nostalgia for the Family Holiday Vacation

by Alan A. Lew, Department of Geography, Planning and Recreation, Northern Arizona University, USA

A Literature Review of:

Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations by Susan Sessions Rugh (University of Kansas Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7006-1588-9)
- and -
Theme Park by Scott A. Lukas (Reaktion Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-86189-394-9)

One of the stories that I tell people about how and why I became a scholar of geography and tourism has to do with my childhood upbringing. Summer family vacations were an important part of my early experiences, and may have contributed to my adult interest in tourism and travel as both a vocation and an avocation. ...

Access the full article for free at InformaWorld 

Published in: Tourism Geographies, Volume 12, Issue 4 November 2010 , pages 568 - 571

A Review of “Tourism in the USA: A Spatial and Social Synthesis”

Tourism in the USA: A Spatial and Social Synthesis

by Dimitri Ioannides & Dallen J. Timothypublished by Routledge, London and New York, 2010, ISBN 0-415-95685-4 

Reviewed by Patrick Brouder, Department of Social & Economic Geography, Ume University, Sweden 

This 222-page book sets out to give a comprehensive overview of tourism in the USA. The title hints that the book is not only about tourism studies but includes many elements of geography, in particular, and social sciences, in general. Ioannides and Timothy state that their 'aim is to provide an overview and detailed account of the workings of tourism as a modern-day phenomenon in the United States of America' (p. 3). Their rationale is, at least in part, an attempt to address the fact that 'despite all the fuss about tourism in the USA, it is more than clear that it is a misunderstood phenomenon' (p. 3). In short, Tourism in the USA: A spatial and social synthesis offers an excellent overview of its subject and makes the phenomenon of one of the largest tourism economies in the world better understood. 


Access the full article for free at InformaWorld  


Published in Tourism Geographies, Volume 12, Issue 4 November 2010 , pages 575 - 577