The Grand Tour: The Golden Age of Travel XXL

The Grand Tour
Rediscover the golden age of adventure

Global travel can be a wearying business: mass tourism, overcrowded planes, chaotic airports, heightened security, cookie-cutter hotel chains, well-worn tourist trails. Finding even a sliver of adventure can sometimes feel impossible. But take heart: for all of us with an unfulfilled spirit of wanderlust,The Golden Age of Travelevokes an era when traveling the world was a thrilling new possibilityfor those with the resources, time, imagination, and daring.

This richly illustrated volumecharts the travel heyday of 1869 to 1939. Bedecked with ephemera and precious turn-of-the-century photochroms, it followssix classic toursfavored by Western adventurers in the prewar era, including such famous traveler-writers asCharles Dickens, Jules Verne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, and Goethe. From theGrand Tour of Europe, a traditional rite-of-passage for young English aristocrats, to theFar East, barely touched by Western influence, to the famousTrans-Siberian Railway, we follow each journey through its itinerant stops and various modes of transport: trains, boats, cars, planes, horses, donkeys, and camels.

With pages brimming witharchival travel posters, guides, tickets, leaflets, brochures, menus, and luggage stickers, the book evokes all the romance, elegance, not to mention the sheer sense of novelty, that enthralled these golden-age passengers. Through decadent new cities, or wild, rugged terrains, this is yourpassport to a long-lost epoch of adventure and wide-eyed wonder at the world.

To travel is to live in all the meaning of the word… to breathe the free air, feel the joy of living, to become an integral part of creation.
Alexandre Dumas