Löfgren takes us on a tour of the Western holiday world and shows how two centuries of "learning to be a tourist" have shaped our own ways of vacationing. We see how fashions in destinations have changed through the years, with popular images (written, drawn, painted, and later photographed) teaching the tourist what to look for and how to experience it. Travelers present and future will never see their cruises, treks, ecotours, round-the-world journeys, or trips to the vacation cottage or condo in quite the same way again. All our land-, sea-, and mindscapes will be the richer for Löfgren's insights.

Orvar Löfgren, Professor of European Ethnology at the University of Lund, Sweden, has written a dozen books. His best-known work is also in English: Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle-Class Life (with Jonas Frykman, 1987).

"Offers acute, whimsical, self-reflexive histories of sight-seeing, walking, driving, cottage life, landscapes, postcards, getaways, nostalgias, and especially the sun-starved northern Europeans for the South."—James Clifford in Lingua Franca Book

"Some of the information he presents is amazing."—Charlotte Observer

"Lofgren's decision to take our daydreams seriously, and to note how we try to translate them into reality given half a chance, is fruitful."—Times Literary Supplement

"A history of that anti-history; a treatment of our collective annual fortnight away as a strange and fascinating parallel reality that runs year-round."—National Post

"On Holiday is one of the most enjoyable books on travel published in recent years. Fundamentally, it is an insightful investigation of 'elsewhereness,' written with humor that in no way detracts from the author's serious scholarship. Löfgren traces the origins of tourism to 18th-century pioneers--seekers of knowledge, adventure, or difference--and describes how 'learning to be a tourist' has transformed the idea of 'leisure' from elite pursuit to global industry. In a study that ranges from Continental spas to wilderness trekking, there should be something for every reader."—O. Pi-Sunyer, Choice

"Excellent…not just a valuable addition to the shelves of students of tourism but also an enjoyable and accessible read."—John Ghazvinian, The Nation

"On Holiday will change the ways that cultural critics think about wages and weekends, gains and games, trade and transcendence. Combining keen ethnographic analyses with personal reflections on a lifetime of travels, Lofgren explodes stereotypes of tourists as discerning selves and boorish others. His erudite synthesis of tourism history analyzes the normative discourses that have framed the practices of, and writing on, Western holiday worlds for two hundred years. ...Students of culture, emotions, industry, modernity, and transnationalism will profit and take pleasure from embarking On Holiday with Orvar Lofgren."—Christine Skwiot, Enterprise and Society

"A must for everyone interested in the history and sociology of tourism."—Christoph Hennig, Die Zeit

"On Holiday is diverting, engaging, and even entrancing."—Will Self, New Statesman

"Never a boring excursion."—Margaret Walsh, Business History

"A fun book to read, witty and emotionally evocative without ever being sentimental or superficial. It focuses on the common experiences of tourism familiar to readers from any class or culture, and really enters the tourist imagination—in stark contrast to most other books I've read about tourism, which act like the tourists are some sort of exotic livestock."—Richard Wilk, author of Economies and Cultures

"A pleasure to read. The author has accomplished the very difficult task of moving almost seamlessly from general observations to the specific, and from the observations of others through time to his personal experience."—Erve Chambers, editor of Tourism and Culture

"Löfgren takes us down countless paths that we didn't know were there. . . . His interests seem wonderfully idiosyncratic. The issues that he deals with are thoroughly familiar, but the angle of his light is very new."—Stephen M. Fjellman, author of Vinyl Leaves