Around the world : the grand tour in photo albums

Snapshots, passenger lists, itineraries, and postcards from San Francisco flapper Vera Talbot's Far East adventure. Chicagoan Clara E. Whitcomb's travel diary containing pages filled with souvenir photos, maps, and a list of titles for a future book about her travels in Egypt. These are only two of the narratives that unfold in the beautifully designed pages of Around the World . From Cairo to Burma and back again, authors Barbara Levine and Kirsten Jensen transport readers back to the dawn of world travel when, Brownie cameras in tow, the middle class toured the world for the first time and painstakingly documented their discoveries within scrapbooks, diary entries, and pasted-on souvenir postcards. Around the World traces the development of the travel photo album, from primarily narrative forms ships' logs and diaries into rich multimedia objects of sublime beauty. The book features a wealth of turn-of-the- twentieth-century photographs and ephemera such as passports, ship menus, calling cards, and newspaper clippings. Around the World evokes the pleasures of a time when the surroundings were taken in slowly and travel was an art in and of itself. The Barnes & Noble Review While it's hard to picture from our tech-saturated perspective, there was a time when refrigerators were so newfangled that they came with a manual that was also a cookbook for use with this unheard-of device. Reading Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums is much like paging through one of these guides, as it reveals many aspects of voyaging it's hard to believe ever were novel. And travel from 1890 to 1930 -- the era represented here -- presented considerable challenges. Only those of means could consider the time and expense entailed by a long journey when even getting to the main attraction -- the Tour Eiffel, the Sphinx, the Venetian canals -- could take days or weeks by motorcar, rail, steamer, paddleboat, or ocean liner. As the authors point out, people often wanted to do what they already seen in other photographs, and so we see many posing atop mountain peaks or feeding the pigeons in the Piazza San Marco. But what distinguishes one album from another are captions (Before Kit got seasick!) and ephemera such as pasted-in news clippings (Governor Seized in a Raid) and menus (lamb's head broth). Some travelers sought out edgier experiences, such as a public execution in Bangkok -- the attendee attaching photos within a discrete envelope. Page by page, this book provides pause-worthy marvels, best viewed across the lap of two close family members, ideally beside a glowing hearth, right at home. -- Victoria C. Rowan "From Cairo to Burma and back again, authors Barbara Levine and Kirsten Jensen transport readers back to the dawn of world travel when, Brownie cameras in tow, the middle class toured the globe for the first time and painstakingly documented their discoveries in scrapbooks, diary entries, and pasted-down souvenir postcards. Featuring a wealth of turn-of-the-century photographs, and ephemera such as ship menus, calling cards, and newspaper clippings, Around the World evokes the pleasures of a time when experiences were taken in slowly and travel was an art in and of itself."--Jacket Snapshots, passenger lists, itineraries, and From Cairo to Burma and back again, authors Barbara Levine and Kirsten Jensen transport readers back to the dawn of world travel when the middle class toured the world for the first time. In beautifully designed pages Around the World traces the development of the travel photo album. The book features a wealth of turn-of-the-twentieth-century photographs and ephemera, evoking the pleasures of a time when the surroundings were taken in slowly and travel was an art of itself. With snapshots, passenger lists, itineraries, and postcards, and from Cairo to Burma and back again, authors Barbara Levine and Kirsten Jensen transport readers back to the dawn of world travel when the middle class toured the world for the first time