Karen Dubinsky

Karen Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls, (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1999).
By focusing on a microregion whose spectacular resources are shared by both Canada and the United States, this book reconstructs the transformation of Niagara Falls from an exclusive “tourist site” into one of the most powerful symbols of twentieth-century North American culture. In doing so, the author sheds important light not only on the history of North American tourism but also on the history of sexuality, of marriage, and of their growing commercialization in popular culture. Based upon a wide range of documentary sources, this book is at the cutting edge of cultural history and its analysis is fresh and compelling. Seldom has an historical work spoken so directly and pertinently to both Canadian and United States history.
(awarded at CHA annual meeting, University of Alberta)