Book Description
Focusing mainly on New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Catherine Cocks describes what it was like to ride on Pullman cars, stay in the grand hotels, and take in the sights of the cities. Her evocative narrative draws on innovative readings of sources such as guidebooks, travel accounts, tourist magazines, and the journalism of the era. Exploring the full cultural context in which city touring became popular, Cocks ties together many themes in urban and cultural history for the first time, such as the relationships among class, gender, leisure, and the uses and perceptions of urban space. Offering especially lively reading, Doing the Town provides a memorable journey into the experience of the new urban tourist at the same time as it makes a sophisticated contribution to our understanding of the urban and cultural development of the United States.
Back Cover copy
"Doing the Town is a major contribution to the history of urban recreational travel and sightseeing in the United States. It provides richly detailed accounts of the ways tourism shaped American cities in the second half of the 19th century. "ÑDean MacCannell, author of The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class
"Cock's study of the rise of commericalized urban tourism throws light upon a long neglected chapter in the social history of travel; but more importantly, in the course of charting the emergence of a new style of 'spatial practice,' Cocks has new and interesting tales to tell on the history of American cities, consumer cultures, nationalist ideologies, and ethnicities."ÑJudith Adler, author of "Travel as a Performed Art," American Journal of Sociology
