Customer Reviews

Seductive Journey: American Tourists in France from Jefferson to the Jazz Age

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I had trouble finding books to enhance my first real trip to Paris - Henry Miller just didn't do it- so I bought this book to help me to put together the pieces of my week there. Although there wasn't quite enough name dropping about places we Americans had been, I enjoyed it. Seductive Journey (not a very good title - seemed like something the publisher came up with to sell it) is a very well researched book about what Americans had enough money to travel to Paris in what era, how they got there, and what they did when they got there (rich men in Jefferson's time raising consciousness on fine art, wives of industrial magnates there for their first experience in shopping off the rack and dining out; then, as touring becomes cheaper, middle class women off to the Louvre etc etc). This largely is carried off through quoting diaries of travelers, which must have been de rigeur a century ago. There is a lot of literature review of classic travel logs - good references to Henry James and Mark Twain. Also included is a healthy dose of the French love-hate relationship with their tourists. Although not particularly informative as to places to go and things to see it turned out to be an unexpectedly enjoyable sociologic survey of a particular class - traveling Americans.