Seductive Journey

For centuries, France has cast an extraordinary spell on travelers. Harvey Levenstein's Seductive Journey explains why so many Americans have visited it, and tells, in colorful detail, what they did when they got there. The result is a highly entertaining examination of the transformation of American attitudes toward French food, sex, and culture, as well as an absorbing exploration of changing notions of class, gender, race, and nationality.

Levenstein begins in 1786, when Thomas Jefferson instructed young upper-class American men to travel overseas for self-improvement rather than debauchery. Inspired by these sentiments, many men crossed the Atlantic to develop "taste" and refinement. However, the introduction of the transatlantic steamship in the mid-nineteenth century opened France to people further down the class ladder. As the upper class distanced themselves from the lower-class travelers, tourism in search of culture gave way to the tourism of "conspicuous leisure," sex, and sensuality. Cultural tourism became identified with social-climbing upper-middle-class women. In the 1920s, prohibition in America and a new middle class intent on "having fun" helped make drunken sprees in Paris more enticing than trudging through the Louvre. Bitter outbursts of French anti-Americanism failed to jolt the American ideal of a sensual, happy-go-lucky France, full of joie de vivre. It remained Americans' favorite overseas destination.

From Fragonard to foie gras, the delicious details of this story of how American visitors to France responded to changing notions of leisure and blazed the trail for modern mass tourism makes for delightful, thought-provoking reading.

"...a thoroughly readable and highly likable book."and#8212;Deirdre Blair, New York Times Book Review

Harvey Levenstein is professor emeritus of history at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He has published a number of books on American history, including Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet and Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America.

Preface

Pt. 1: In Search of Taste and Distinction, 1786-1848

1: Jefferson versus Adams

2: Getting There Was Not Half the Fun

3: A Man's World

4: Eat, Drink, but Be Wary

5: "The Athens of Modern Europe"

6: Pleasures of the Flesh

Pt. 2: Paris and Tourism Transformed, 1848-1870

7: Paris Transformed

8: Keeping Away from the Joneses

9: The Feminization of American Tourism

Pt. 3: Class, Gender, and the Rise of Leisure Tourism, 1870-1914

10: "The Golden Age of Travel"

11: Prisoners of Leisure: Upper-Class Tourism

12: How "The Other Half" Toured

13: Class, Gender, and the Rise of Antitourism

14: Machismo, Morality, and Millionaires

Pt. 4: The Invasion of the Lower Orders, 1917-1930

15: Doughboys and Dollars

16: "How're You Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?"

17: A Farewell to "Culture Vultures"

18: Unhappy Hosts, Unwelcome Visitors

19: Epilogue

Notes

Index