Marco D'Eramo's thought-provoking The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age, translated from Italian by Bethan Bowett-Jones and David Broder, is a thorough and often critical look at modern tourism through a variety of sociological lenses. Rather than being a "postmodern frill... the truth is that tourism is the most important industry of the century," explains D'Eramo, an Italian journalist and social theorist. He creates a salon-like atmosphere of noted thinkers and writers, synthesizing hundreds of years of thought about interpreting the world through travel.
The economic impact of tourism is the crucial consideration for D'Eramo, weaving through topics and across chapters. "It would be difficult to overestimate tourism's impact on individual national economies," he explains. The global pandemic of 2020 brought this into stark relief as, when cities shut down, it "proved the centrality of tourism through tourism's omission."
D'Eramo expresses dismay at the current state of "hit and run" tourism and doesn't hide his consternation about the increasing "theatricality" of cities across the world, like Rome, that rely on tourism to balance budgets. He concludes that tourism in the future will most likely be different. "We live in a world where the three spatial dimensions have shrunk, but at the same time we have developed other dimensions in which to move," he says, nodding to a "multidimensionalism" made possible by digital media. This is an intriguing book for sociologists and economists, as well as for serious travelers wishing to understand their impact as they once again move about the globe. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.