Author(s): Coons Lorraine Varias Alexander

History

'Tourist Third Cabin' offers a window into a bygone era in which modern steamships like the Queen Mary, the Normandie, and the Olympic transported new breeds of tourists between Europe and North America, and dazzled them with their technological marvels and palatial interiors. The interwar period saw the birth of mass transatlantic tourism as women, students, and ordinary people took to the seas in search of education, fun, and freedom. It was also a period of tumultuous social and cultural change. Historians Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias offer an intimate glimpse of the microcosm of the changing world that was the luxury liner. From crew members to passengers, ship decor to technological innovation, through labour unrest and political upheaval, we see the social world and the business of travel at the dawn of the modern age.