
Hotel Life
The Story of a Place Where Anything Can Happen
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 30. August 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-4696-3611-5 (ISBN)
Description
What is a hotel? As Caroline Field Levander and Matthew Pratt Guterl show us in this thought-provoking book, even though hotels are everywhere around us, we rarely consider their essential role in our modern existence and how they help frame our sense of who and what we are. They are, in fact, as centrally important as other powerful places like prisons, hospitals, or universities. More than simply structures made of steel, concrete, and glass, hotels are social and political institutions that we invest with overlapping and contradictory meaning. These alluring places uniquely capture the realities of our world, where the lines between public and private, labor and leisure, fortune and failure, desire and despair are regularly blurred. Guiding readers through the story of hotels as places of troublesome possibility, as mazelike physical buildings, as inspirational touchstones for art and literature, and as unsettling, even disturbing, backdrops for the drama of everyday life, Levander and Guterl ensure that we will never think about this seemingly ordinary place in the same way again.
Reviews / Votes
A clever take on hotel life ... the book presents hotels as powerful social institutions, not unlike universities, hospitals and even prisons, that embrace all walks of life and offer insights into who and what we are."" - Overnight New York""Provides a good counterpoint to standard works examining hotels from historical or operational viewpoints."" - CHOICE
""Authors Caroline Field levander and Matthew Pratt Guterl do a great job entertaining their readers with gossipy tidbits, jaw dropping information, and little-known insider facts."" - The Bookworm Sez
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
31 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
392 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4696-3611-5 (9781469636115)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Caroline F. Levander is the Carlson Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Rice University.
Matthew Pratt Guterl is Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies at Brown University.
Matthew Pratt Guterl is Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies at Brown University.