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Brown, Dona.  Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteeth Century.  Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.

In Inventing New England, Dona Brown presents "a case study of the processes of 'inventing' a region" and reveals how experiencing the New England landscape became a commodity in which we still invest [11].  She convincingly chronicles how the tourism industry turned the immaterial -- scenery, security, nostalgia, and heritage -- into something viably marketable.  Each of Brown's six chapters illustrates the invention of a scene and the marketing of the experience to be had there.  Her scenes are the scenic vista, the wild and primitive backcountry, the middle-class safe-haven, the romanticized good old days, the homecoming, and the upper-middle class safe haven.  Brown also submits that, beyond inventing scenery, "an infrastructure was in place" that prompted tourist into corroborating a prescribed and specific experience by providing a vocabulary and list of expectations to compliment the experience [60]. It also becomes evident in this book that New England was not just invented, as the title suggests, but it has been constantly re-invented again and again to suit changing appetites of tourist and to support failing economies.

 Brown's method is anecdotal, and well suited to her topic and thesis.  She uses quotations and narratives to engage us in her fluid argument, complete with examples and primary source references.  By organizing the book chronologically, Brown creates a narrative readers can easily follow.  She also creates a type of guidebook for potential travelers in the business of tourism by moving from one area to the next as each was developed as a destination.  Brown's method is complemented by an interdisciplinary approach that uses much period material culture, literature, and ephemeral documents.  To the scholar of cultural landscape studies, the book provides a view of landscapes that is skeptical at best, reminding us to deconstruct the origins of scenes and experiences the seem all too "natural." [S. Dangelas.]