Landscape & Environment, Tourism - Social Aspects, Western United States - Travel Essays & Descriptions, U.S. Travel - National Parks & Historic Sites, Arizona - State & Local History, Deserts, Mesas & Canyons - Travel, Arizona - Travel

On the Rim

Name: On the Rim
Author: Mark Neumann
ISBN: 9780816627851

by Mark Neumann

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Overview

A captivating look at the Grand Canyon as scenic wonder, theme park, national icon, and refuge.

Why do nearly five million people travel to the Grand Canyon each year? Mark Neumann answers this question with a book as compelling as the panoramic vistas of the canyon. In On the Rim, he describes how the Grand Canyon became an internationally renowned tourist attraction and cultural icon, and delves into the meanings the place holds for the individuals who live, work, and travel there.

Weaving history, ethnography, documentary photography, and autobiography, Neumann exposes the roots-the personal and social dimensions-of America's pursuit of leisure. He shows how people visiting the Grand Canyon create their own experiences, even while they are affected by one hundred years of social history and cultural expectations. On the Rim examines the lines between progress and nostalgia, science and spirituality, nature and culture, authenticity and mass production, and work and leisure-all of which crisscross the tourist experience.

To support his argument, Neumann uses evidence from tourist registers and Park Service records, first-person narratives, interviews, and scenes from television shows, Hollywood movies, and popular novels. Heavily illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs, the narrative shifts back and forth between early descriptions of the canyon and modern tourist stories, the past illuminating the present at every step.

From Albert Einstein's visit and the hunt for the fugitive Danny Horning to the everyday experiences of local Native Americans, park rangers, and vacationing families, Neumann reminds us that every trip to the Grand Canyon is a complex journey, fueled by shared expectations but always open to the possibility of surprise. On the Rim is a multilayered, nuanced study of the place and its many visitors.

Mark Neumann is associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida.

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Editorials

Boston Globe

In the perceptions of those drawn to the Grand Canyon (explorers and day-trippers, employees and outlaws, artists and fast-buck artists) Neumann discovers a context in which to examine cultural and experimental fissures that separate leisure and work, home and away, religion and science, art and life. . . . A lively read.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"[C]ynicism is... a way of life against belief or after its exhaustion," Chaloupka observes in this maddening treat of a book, adding that good reasons for cynicism go far beyond individual incidents (such as Watergate or Whitewater) to structural and systemic causes. Hearkening back to Diogenes, the Federalist papers and H.L. Mencken, Chaloupka, a professor of political science and environmental studies at the University of Minnesota, calls up a menagerie of different kinds of cynics and cynicism, never bothering to make his sketches and digressions fit together into a coherent whole. Along the way, he draws a fundamental distinction between "cynics-in-power"' and "wig cynics" such as the militia movement and others influenced by what Chaloupka calls a "jumbled, postrationalist, unreal aesthetic of weird causation." At first, Chaloupka seems to promise rigorous argument and clear explication, but this expectation is repeatedly dashed. Arguments start, examples interrupt, premises are restated and then he's off on a new tangent. This may well be deliberate. Eventually, readers are introduced to another strain, the life-affirming "kynic"--closer to the original Greek--who plays with rules, power and morality. The kynic is a figure more like Charlie Chaplin than Richard Nixon. Discussions of resentment, backlash and stoicism, drawing, respectively, on Nietzsche, Susan Faludi and the Coen brothers' film Fargo, simultaneously enrich the speculation and enhance the frustration of resolution denied. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This pair of books presents the literary equivalent of a contrast between an old master's painting and Pop Art. If you prefer your Grand Canyon serene and spectacular, then Arizona Highways's production is the only choice. With a lyrical text by Childs and Ladd's staggeringly beautiful photographs, this coffee-table volume lends itself to leisurely perusal. Childs, a nature writer whose work has appeared in various magazines (Arizona Highways, Audubon, Sierra, Backpacker) holds a Master's degree in desert studies and spends nine months each year exploring and researching the wild country of Arizona and Utah. Ladd is a frequent contributor to Arizona Highways and has wandered and photographed the Grand Canyon since 1964. Their joint goal is "to describe what cannot be revealed through photographs...[and to photograph] what cannot be revealed in words." Neumann's (communications, Univ. of South Florida) book is the result of ten years of fascination with the canyon's multimillions of visitors. Although its introduction reads like a typical academic paper ("This book examines the Grand Canyon as an emergent and residual site for the production of the zones of a social imaginary that reflect and contain the geographical and temporal dislocations of contemporary life"), the book takes an upbeat turn as he interviews tourists, park rangers, area employees, and Native Americans. Neumann tosses in a modicum of history, and his black-and-white photos are interesting in that they document people rather than panoramas. Each book has its merits and each serves a different purpose and audience. Both are recommended for academic and larger public libraries.--Janet N. Ross, Washoe Cty. Lib. Sys., Sparks, NV Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.