| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Thomas A. Chambers. Drinking the Waters: Creating an American Leisure Class at Nineteenth Century Mineral Springs. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institutions. 2002. Pp. xxi, 282. $39.95.
Part of a growing body of literature on the history of American vacation places, Thomas A. Chambers's important book takes an explicitly comparative approach to the study of northern and southern mineral springs. Chambers analyzes Saratoga Springs in New York and the springs of Virginia (primarily but not solely White Sulphur Springs) as places where the nation's elite created and defined itself. Chambers argues that class and status were more important than region in this process and that the similarities between these two premier American resorts were more significant than their differences. By examining the comparable role each site played in creating a "distinctive leisure class," Chambers hopes to "demonstrate the remarkable similarity of nineteenth-century American culture, North and South" (p. xx).	1
In Virginia, the springs were usually located in isolated, rural areas and were independently owned by a person or family. Saratoga, by contrast, quickly became a small town that invited a number of entrepreneurs to open businesses and hotels. Despite the difference, proprietors in both regions pinned their hopes on building a tourist industry that would commercialize and commodify leisure. In order for the resorts to survive and prosper, proprietors needed to find sources of capital, keep labor costs down, and hope for the improvement of transportation networks.	. . .

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