Hamilton's hostelries

摘要

Hotels are not usually seen as being at the core of a nation's culture. But Andrew Sandoval-Strausz, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, makes two grand claims for the American hospitality industry: that America made hotels what they are today and, more start-lingly, that hotels helped make America. The first is easier to establish. In 1838, a visitor dubbed the new Queen's Hotel in Cheltenham "the finest hotel in Europe". Yet it was modest compared with large American hotels of the period. They had 400-500 bedrooms; it had 79.