Subtitle: Honeymooners, Heterosexuality and the Tourist Industry at Niagara Falls
Author: Karen Dubinsky
Subject: Cultural Studies/Gender Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2655-8
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2656-6
Pages: 288 pp., 80 b&w illus., 7-1/4 X 8-3/4

"Karen Dubinsky traces the history of Niagara Falls as a rendezvous for the most 'heterosocial' vacations of all-the honeymoon. . . . [She] paints a funny and intriguing portrait of the institution of heterosexuality and its impact on tourism over the past 150 years." -The Women's Review of Books

When Oscar Wilde visited Niagara Falls in 1882, he declared that the Falls must be the "earliest if not the keenest disappointment in American married life." Wilde was neither the first nor the last to notice the peculiar relationship between heterosexuality, the honeymoon, and Niagara Falls.

The Second Greatest Disappointment charts the growth of Niagara as a tourist destination from the 1850s to the present, and shows how it acquired its reputation as the "Honeymoon Capital of the World." Tourist industry records, as well as interviews with people employed Niagara's hotels and attractions, provide an insider's perspective on the marketing of this cultural landmark.

Karen Dubinsky also traces the history of the honeymoon, placing in context of changes in the public culture of heterosexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. So when Cary Grant declared to Grace Kelly in the 1955 film To Catch a Thief, "What you need is ten minutes with a good man at Niagara Falls," everyone knew he was not referring to sight-seeing.

The Second Greatest Disappointment uses travelers' drawings, advertisements, and guidebook photographs to tell an engaging story about an old North American landmark.

Karen Dubinsky is an Associate Professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where she teaches women's history and the history of sexuality. She is the author of Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880s-1920s