JUNE 2022 - AudioFile
Ann Marie Gideon performs this eye-opening audiobook with style, intelligence, and subtlety. Through tone, she carefully differentiates the author’s travel writing from her more information-driven reporting on warming oceans and vanishing sand. She deftly changes the timbre of her delivery for male voices. The author travels the globe to observe resorts and share how they operate—from beach maintenance to insurance issues. Looking at the phenomenon of expanding middle-class tourism, she examines how the mega-wealthy are treated and provides a thought-provoking list of changes ahead for travelers, industry, and governments as we all face global warming. At once a thorough travel narrative and an examination of beach resort culture in the present and future, this is a fine and engaging listen. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
04/11/2022
Beaches are “a paradise both threatening and threatened,” according to this thought-provoking survey from journalist Stodola (Process). Though tourism is “the third-largest export globally” and “provides more than one in every ten jobs worldwide,” Stodola travels the globe to highlight how coastal towns that largely depend on tourism are changing due to climate change and have become hotbeds of social inequality. In Nicaragua, she explores how the country’s reputation went from one of “violence” to one with a “part hipster vacation scene, part groovier WeWork,” and in Tulum, Mexico, she takes in the damage caused by overdevelopment: “Tulum has become a study in paradoxes, where ‘eco-resorts' run on bungalow-size diesel generators, their waste seeping through the delicate limestone ground into the vast underground river system.” Throughout, Stodola shows the effects of, as well as coastal towns’ response to, climate change: Sea walls are built in Barbados to combat erosion, and roads are raised in Miami Beach as the tides reach ever higher. Stodola wraps up with steps the tourism industry can take to make for more “durable and inclusive” beach resorts, including sourcing food and drink locally and limiting the numbers of visitors. The result is a fascinating look at the dangers of climate change. (June)
From the Publisher
"If you liked White Lotus . . . watch for The Last Resort. . . . Stodola’s sobering investigation into the beach resort economy leaps from Thailand to Cap d’Antibes to Senegal, looking at why these manufactured environments became the vacation ideal and how climate change threatens them all." — New York Times Book Review, "Summer Reading Suggestions"
"Sharp . . . [A] careful critique of the invasive species that is the luxury resort. . . . I am glad that The Last Resort exists." — Lauren Groff, The Atlantic
"For a book that's not a thriller, this could be one of the scariest beach reads imaginable this summer. That's because Sarah Stodola's journalistic look at beach resorts . . . pulls back the curtain on paradise and reveals some of the shocking truths behind the surf and sand." — Town & Country, "The 33 Must-Read Books of Summer 2022"
"[A] gripping account about the dark side of paradise. . . . After reading The Last Resort, you’ll never look at an all-inclusive vacation quite the same way." — Esquire, "The 20 Best Books of Summer 2022"
"A beach read that will make you think. . . . Fascinating." — Washington Post, "21 Books to Read This Summer"
"There's a lot more to reading by the beach or the pool than you realize, as revealed in this history and exploration of beach resort culture—all the more critical as the travel industry is grappling with how to not only recover and thrive post-pandemic, but to also curtail its worst offenses as we approach a climate reckoning." — Fortune, "5 New Books to Read in June"
"Sarah Stodola's new book cracks open ideas of paradise and the complicated histories of coastal travel." — Southern Living, "Beach Reads Perfect for Summer 2022"
"What could possibly be a better beach read than an investigative deep dive into the dark underbelly of the beachside resort business? With expert precision, Stodola weaves together travel notes, climate journalism, and scathing critiques of capitalism into a work cultural history exploring why we all flock to the beach in the first place." — Harper's Bazaar, "The Best Beach Reads of 2022"
"Stodola details both the disastrous effects of overdevelopment on multiple beachfront sites as well as hopeful instances of conservation, charting the steps needed to curtail the devastating consequences of unchecked development. . . . Avid travelers and environmentally conscious readers alike will appreciate this treatment." — Booklist
"Thought-provoking. . . . Stodola travels the globe to highlight how coastal towns that largely depend on tourism are changing due to climate change and have become hotbeds of social inequality. . . . A fascinating look at the dangers of climate change." — Publishers Weekly
"A critical look at the juggernaut of vacation destinations: the beach resort. . . . A thorough and appropriately alarming analysis of how we made paradise and how it might be saved." — Kirkus Reviews
“The Last Resort is an extremely well-researched and enormously entertaining, even surprising, read. Combining historical context, on-the-ground reporting, personal anecdotes, sociopolitical and economic analysis, and actionable suggestions, this book should be essential reading for anyone who lives near, profits from, fantasizes about, loves or loathes, beach resorts.” — Laurie Woolever, author of Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography
“The Last Resort is an eye-opening study of our collective fascination with the beach and the global rise of beach culture. Equally as compelling is Stodola’s examination of the underbelly of ‘paradise’ and the toll it takes on the people and places that make our beach fantasies real. You’ll never look at an infinity pool in quite the same way.” — Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon, Caribbean travel expert, @JetSetSarah
“Rising seas, heat waves, pandemics, shrinking resources, unhappy workers: As Sarah Stodola writes, the idyllic beach destinations around the world are in real trouble. Stodola trekked from Phra Nang, Thailand, to the Rockaways in New York City, Fiji to Hawaii, Bali to Brighton Beach, taking the pulse of ailing industries and beaches devoured by hungry, rising seas. The Last Resort is a tour de force.” — Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of I Heard the Sirens Scream and Betrayal of Trust
Laurie Garrett
Rising seas, heat waves, pandemics, shrinking resources, unhappy workers: As Sarah Stodola writes, the idyllic beach destinations around the world are in real trouble. Stodola trekked from Phra Nang, Thailand, to the Rockaways in New York City, Fiji to Hawaii, Bali to Brighton Beach, taking the pulse of ailing industries and beaches devoured by hungry, rising seas. The Last Resort is a tour de force.
Laurie Woolever
The Last Resort is an extremely well-researched and enormously entertaining, even surprising, read. Combining historical context, on-the-ground reporting, personal anecdotes, sociopolitical and economic analysis, and actionable suggestions, this book should be essential reading for anyone who lives near, profits from, fantasizes about, loves or loathes, beach resorts.
Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon
The Last Resort is an eye-opening study of our collective fascination with the beach and the global rise of beach culture. Equally as compelling is Stodola’s examination of the underbelly of ‘paradise’ and the toll it takes on the people and places that make our beach fantasies real. You’ll never look at an infinity pool in quite the same way.
Booklist
"Stodola details both the disastrous effects of overdevelopment on multiple beachfront sites as well as hopeful instances of conservation, charting the steps needed to curtail the devastating consequences of unchecked development. . . . Avid travelers and environmentally conscious readers alike will appreciate this treatment."
Harper's Bazaar
"What could possibly be a better beach read than an investigative deep dive into the dark underbelly of the beachside resort business? With expert precision, Stodola weaves together travel notes, climate journalism, and scathing critiques of capitalism into a work cultural history exploring why we all flock to the beach in the first place."
Booklist
"Stodola details both the disastrous effects of overdevelopment on multiple beachfront sites as well as hopeful instances of conservation, charting the steps needed to curtail the devastating consequences of unchecked development. . . . Avid travelers and environmentally conscious readers alike will appreciate this treatment."
Library Journal
01/01/2022
Founder and editor of the online travel magazine Flung, Stodola offers a history of beach resort culture, which has led to fun and sun but also irresponsible construction, imbalanced local economies, beach erosion, and a too-heavy carbon footprint. With travel and especially beach culture now an integral part of the globalized world, what happens when rising seas come flooding in? With a 100,000-copy first printing.
JUNE 2022 - AudioFile
Ann Marie Gideon performs this eye-opening audiobook with style, intelligence, and subtlety. Through tone, she carefully differentiates the author’s travel writing from her more information-driven reporting on warming oceans and vanishing sand. She deftly changes the timbre of her delivery for male voices. The author travels the globe to observe resorts and share how they operate—from beach maintenance to insurance issues. Looking at the phenomenon of expanding middle-class tourism, she examines how the mega-wealthy are treated and provides a thought-provoking list of changes ahead for travelers, industry, and governments as we all face global warming. At once a thorough travel narrative and an examination of beach resort culture in the present and future, this is a fine and engaging listen. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-03-19
A critical look at the juggernaut of vacation destinations: the beach resort.
Travel and culture writer Stodola interrogates the cultural devotion to the idea of the beach as the perfect place, which is a modern concept. While the Greeks and Romans enjoyed the seas, by the Middle Ages, Europeans wanted nothing to do with the beach; in the 1800s, early seaside vacationers were lured by potential health benefits rather than a love of surf and sand. What the world today thinks of as paradise is “not nature; paradise is nature conquered, nature tamed.” It is far away, endlessly photogenic, and rich with entertainment—and it may or may not include a real beach. This shift of focus away from the literal beach is partly one of necessity: Climate change is making the maintenance and preservation of modern beaches as we know them untenable. Overdevelopment of tropical areas to accommodate skyrocketing numbers of tourists frequently pushes the resources of destinations to the limits, and rising water temperatures, erosion, and increasingly frequent and violent storms threaten the very beaches and communities where these resorts are located. Stodola organizes her book according to locations she has visited, detailing both the similarities of beach vacations across the globe as well as regional differences. She acknowledges the Western gaze that has informed much of what constitutes the traveler’s ideal, but she also emphasizes that the international traveler base is growing and changing. As the global middle class surges in population, especially in countries such as India and China, destinations will have to learn to accommodate an expanding range of tastes. The Covid-19 pandemic gutted international travel and highlighted weaknesses in the tourism industry that have long existed, particularly the overreliance on tourism as a source of income in destination countries, further emphasizing a need for a more intentional way forward if the beach vacation is to continue.
A thorough and appropriately alarming analysis of how we made paradise and how it might be saved.
