Interwoven with the history of the honeymoon is that of the tourist industry at Niagara Falls, an account that illuminates travel as part of the wider history of consumption. This book's greatest strengths are in its sheer scope, its sophisticated grounding of cultural analysis in social and economic history, and its thorough integration of race and ethnicity into the account. Thus, for example, sexual imaginings of the Falls are combined with the fact that by 1967 Niagara lay within 500 miles of three quarters of the North American population to create the phenomenon of Niagara Falls as a honeymoon capital. Dubinsky shows that the complaints about exploitation of tourists and about commercialism ruining the Falls, while phrased in terms of pastoralist visions of nature's purity, stemmed from objections by elites to the business success of racial and ethnic minorities who were profiting from the tourist trade. Government-managed parks shifted the balance of who could profit.
Abundant illustrations add pleasure and depth to the text.
At times, the narrative seems torn between the story of a particular place, Niagara Falls, and a cultural history of honeymoons and heterosexuality. Moving from a discussion of industrial pollution to an analysis of sexual advice literature can be a difficult leap. Nevertheless, this is an ambitious and important work of scholarship and a rich and fascinating account of both honeymoons and Niagara Falls. 6 Christina Simmons University of Windsor Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.