An exploration of tourist behavior and the places they travel to within the social and class structures of the modern era.

In his work, Dean MacCannell, professor of landscape architecture at the University of California, Davis, explores notions of authenticity, elite culture, and popular culture as they relate to the construction of social reality around the phenomenon of tourism that captivated the Western world in the second half of the 20th century. MacCannell is interested in the relationship between individual behavior and social relations, studying 'the behavior of tourists and the places they travel to better understand the hidden structures and meanings of life at the end of the modern era.'

The idea of ​​The Tourist originated and developed within sociology, but like the phenomenon it studies, the book has spread far beyond its native discipline. First published in 1976, the book, along with the essay collection Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers (1992), which cemented MacCannell's reputation as a preeminent tourism scholar, remains invaluable to both scholars and interested observers.