Book Review: Great Women Travel Writers From 1750 to the Present

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    Chapter 7 concerns the responsibilities of the tourism industry and thus shouldcontain the books most challenging ideas. Given the difference between tourism-provider aspirations and their reality, this chapter is left to expose how responsibilitybecomes diffused. Lack of response can be blamed on such factors as industry struc-ture, market advantage and cost savings. With a global code of ethics, response canremain slow because an equally responsible approach needs to be pursued by others,including actual tourists. Besides summarizing Chapters 17, the concluding chapter taunts us with the impacts of anthropogenic (e.g. terrorist) and natural (e.g. tsunami)disasters, giving particular attention to climate change requiring greener forms of transport; mercifully it is recognized that carbon offsetting alone is futile. As a nalconclusion the authors make eight recommendations for the benet of global welfare.

    In summary, this timely compendium provides a perceptive analysis of tourism andwelfare but there is much scope for these ethical concerns to be addressed in other industries, especially manufacturing. Hopefully, the authors will use other outlets toapply these well-substantiated deliberations.

    Cecilia Hegarty c 2008 Faculty of Business and Management

    University of Ulster, Ireland Email: [email protected]

    Great Women Travel Writers: From 1750 to the Present

    Alba Amoia & Bettina L. Knapp (Eds) NewYork, The ContinuumInternational PublishingGroup,2005 ,ISBN0826416837

    This book is an edited collection of articles proling twenty-two women noted for their writing and travels. The chapters are stand-alone essays, one for each woman,that probe the pages andpaths of these remarkable literary and life journeys.Arrangedchronologically, seven to seventeen pages in length, the chapters constitute but a brief introduction to a selection of author-travellers of truly extraordinary imagination, ex-pressiveness and courage. There are thirteen chapter contributors, of which, all buttwo are women; book editors Amoia and Knapp contribute three and six chapters re-spectively. Thoughdisparatein time andspace, theentries areunited by a biographicalapproach focusing on the womens startling experiences, their sorrows, loves, andhatreds, [and] their visceral and cerebral reactions to the ever-changing landscapesand seascapes they faced and traversed (p. 9).

    Following an all-too-brief one page book introduction, Amoias prole of PrincessEkaterina Romanovna Vorontsova Dashkova (17431810), however, adeptly sets thebooks agenda. She shows that the meaning of the term travel writer of the bookstitle extends well beyond typical holiday fare; rather, Dashkovas writing and travelreect her concern with people, power and politics. Indeed, she explicitly avoids

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    descriptions of pastoral scenes and leisurely pursuits because, as she notes, [b]etter pens than mine have described it all before (p. 12). Nor is the term great in thebooks title used casually. A contemporary and frequent ally of Catherine the Great Dashkova calls herself, tongue in cheek, Catherine the little (p. 9) and her travelswere meant for nothing less than to collect political information for the advantage of both Catherines. Accordingly, her writing focuses on the people she met nobility,statesmen, writers, men of letters, and artists (p. 13). Dashkova travelled widely inEurope garnering great political power as well as scholarly stature. She was a member of the elite Free Economic Society (p. 19), became the director of the Academy of Sciences and was founding president of the Russian Academy (p. 25). Thus, a highbar of qualications is set for inclusion in this compilation.

    The majority of the author-travellers included in the book are of European extrac-tion. Four are products of the USA (though one was born in Canada) and three areAsian,with oneeach from India, Japan andChina.They all travelled widely, primarilyin Europe and the Greater Middle East Region, but also to far-ung places, includingTibet, Saharan Oases, the Australian Outback and the Arctic. Some are rather morewell-known gures, such as Gertrude Bell (18681926), who played a pivotal role inearly twentieth century Middle Eastern politics and Freya Stark (18931993), whosework was so celebrated that she was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Others are lessknown. Pandita Ramabai (18581922), for example, grew up in British-controlledIndia and her work explores the supposed eastwest divide between her native Indiaand her experiences of the UK and USA. Likewise, the books historical sweep isequally grand. It spans nearly 250 years from Dashkovas days, playing an importantrole in Catherines Russian coup d etat in 1762, to Sharon Spencers (19332002)observations of Cuba in her nal diary entries in 2002, where she notes, For therst time I understand at least a little why Cuban exiles in the U.S. are so furious atbeing forced to leave Cuba. To them, this must feel like the mythic expulsion from theGarden of Eden (p. 281). The narratives often explore deep into the inner recessesof the mind and body, like Anas Nin (19031977) who observed, We travel, someof us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls (p. 219). They also reachoutwardly to confront the struggles and challenges of the physical world. Like XieBingying (19062000) who carried high the bright red banner of the Womens Corp,and marched at the head of the line (p. 243) in 1937 to resist the Japanese occupationof China. And Valentina Vladimirovna Tershkova (b. 1937) who was the rst womanto explore the frontiers of outer space as a Soviet Cosmonaut in 1963. Of that expe-rience, she said, It took me just 89 minutes to orbit the Earth and as I saw the planetfrom space I realized how small Earth is (p. 289).

    As women author-travellers, special opportunities and challenges are evident intheir experiences. For example, females travelling in the Middle East had access intothe harems and their reports serve to challenge popular male imaginations of thosegendered spaces. Of the harem, Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso (18081871)reports in 1855, it is a [lthy] place of darkness and confusion, infected, . . . full of

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    smoke . . . and foul air (p. 76). Others wrote anonymously in order to hide their gender. Fanny Lewald (18111889) started writing at age 30, but only then with her fathers permission and his demand that she publish anonymously (p. 88). FredikaBremer (18011865) also found early success by writing anonymously (p. 56). Later,however, she became very well known in Europe and the USA for her voluminousand engaging travelogues. Karen Blixen (18851962), aka Isak Dinesen, used thelater name to make readers think she was a man (p. 179); she told stories about her experiences of living eighteen years in British East Africa. Isabelle Eberhardt (1877 1904) challenged gender roles in the late nineteenth century in ways that remaincontested today. Travelling in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, she dressed as man,took the male name of Si Mahmoud Essadi and converted to Islam and was accepted

    into the Su Brotherhood as woman/man (p. 173).There are omissions from the book that readers might lament other qualied

    author-travellers that might have been included; entries from African, South Ameri-can, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and/or Pacic writer-travellers that might have beenincluded;or thefactthat thebookemploys no images, offers no qualifying or biograph-ical data on the contributors (although one identies himself as the author-writersgrandson), and has no concluding or summary chapter. But for these marvelous sto-ries (p. 9), Amoia and Knapp are to be congratulated for bringing these insightfulnarratives and scholarly analyses together in one reasonably priced book. The storiesare a powerful catalyst for further research into these individuals and on travel andwriting in general. Equally, the stories will undoubtedly inspire many people, whether for travel or tourism, to pack a bag and head out into the world to explore it for themselves.

    George F. Roberson c 2008 Denver, Colorado

    and Geography Human Dimensions Research GroupUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

    Email: [email protected]

    Event Management and Event Tourism, 2nd edn

    Donald Getz New York, Cognizant Communication Corp., 2005, ISBN 1 882345 46 0

    Getzs work remains at the forefront of the study of events and tourism with thisupdated work expanding upon on a rapidly growing eld.

    Overall, the book is informative and comprehensive. Unlike many academics, Getzavoids case studies and formulae to provide practical, useful information. Basic andadvanced study questions encourage the student to practice the concepts presented.Websites allow readers to do additional research if they desire and PowerPoint-based