“Tourists of History is a fearless guide through the paranoid landscape of contemporary American culture. Marita Sturken brilliantly maps the ways consumerism and tourism offer avenues of comfort in a threatening world at the same time that they become politically disabling. From the responses to the Oklahoma City bombing to the memorials to the Twin Towers, Sturken shows how the American way of mourning and remembering the dead shores up a conviction in a timeless sense of national innocence. This exceptionally timely book reaches deep into the past and will continue to resonate in the future.”-Amy Kaplan, author of The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture
“Tourists of History is a great read: well written, accessible on numerous levels, and driven by a persuasive argument that links tourism, consumerism, and Americans’ understandings of themselves and their history.”-Erika Doss, author of Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities
“Sturken is at her best making connections among the varied strands of American popular culture and mass media. . . . Sturken's analysis of contemporary consumer culture is stimulating. . . .”
- Kenneth E. Foote (Journal of American History) “Sturken shows how the complex interrelationship of fear and safety ultimately defines contemporary American culture and provides momentum for an episteme in which a terrorist threat is always imminent. Her book is original and powerfully insightful, and comes strongly recommended to readers of cultural studies and public history.”
- Adam Dodd (M/C Reviews) “While she argues for the importance of remembering the tragic loss of lives in Oklahoma City, Washington, Shanksville, and New York City, Sturken urges attention be paid to a dangerous confluence of memory, tourism, consumerism, paranoia, security, and kitsch that promulgates fear in order to sell safety, offers prepackaged emotion at the expense of critical thought, contains alternative politics not always seen until after the fact, and facilitates public acquiescence in the federal government's repressive measures at home and its aggressive political and military policies abroad.”
- John F. Barber (Leonardo Reviews)
