Completely updated every year, Frommer's Cruises & Ports of Call features photos of all the major ship classes that sail out of North American homeports. You'll also get up-to-the-minute coverage of all the lines servicing North America and the Caribbean, as well as in-depth ship coverage so you can choose the ship that’s best for you. Our authors, longtime cruisers, hit all the major ports of call on the North American and Caribbean cruise routes, from Oahu and Vancouver to New York and St. Thomas. Their candid reviews will help you find the choices that suit your tastes and budget.

The cruise ship market is a 30 billion-dollar industry, and in 2013 it is estimated that it will carry more than 20 million passengers; nor is there any sign of a slow down in the seven percent annual growth. What keeps the passengers coming in such huge numbers isn't the food, the ports or the entertainment. They come for the magnificent floating palaces themselves, the giants of the sea.?In this new book, the author showcases the most influential cruise ships of the last three decades beginning with Royal Caribbean's ground-breaking Sovereign of the Seas. When she was launched in 1988 she was the largest passenger ship constructed since Cunard's Queen Mary entered service some 48 years earlier, and her entry into service sparked a fiercely competitive building boom that continues to this day. ??The reader is taken aboard thirty of the most spectacular ships to reveal how their innovative designs changed the landscape of modern cruising. By employing original and archival photographs, deck plans, cruise programmes, as well as the author's intimate knowledge of many of these vessels, a unique picture is built up of these great ships and it becomes clear that the true Golden Age of Cruising is not in some distant past but exists right now, and that its origins can be traced back to one ship, launched in 1988.??A truly sumptuous and fascinating book for all those drawn to the world of the modern cruise ship.??As seen in Ships Monthly Magazine

A completely updated and expanded edition with nearly 100 more pages than other guides, with appendix of activities, menus, and user-friendly ratings. Photos.

Before the eighteenth century, the ocean was regarded as a repulsive and chaotic deep. Despite reinvention as a zone of wonder and pleasure, it continued to be viewed in the West and elsewhere as ?uninhabited?, empty space. This collection, spanning the eighteenth century to the present, recasts the ocean as ?social space?, with particular reference to visual representations. Part I focuses on mappings and crossings, showing how the ocean may function as a liminal space between places and cultures but also connects and imbricates them. Part II considers ships as microcosmic societies, shaped for example by the purpose of the voyage, the mores of shipboard life, and cross-cultural encounters. Part III analyses narratives accreted to wrecks and rafts, what has sunk or floats perilously, and discusses attempts to recuperate plastic flotsam. Part IV plumbs ocean depths to consider how underwater creatures have been depicted in relation to emergent disciplines of natural history and museology, how mermaids have been reimagined as a metaphor of feminist transformation, and how the symbolism of coral is deployed by contemporary artists. This engaging and erudite volume will interest a range of scholars in humanities and social sciences, including art and cultural historians, cultural geographers, and historians of empire, travel, and tourism.

Completely updated every year, Frommer's Alaska Cruises & Ports of Call features photos of all the major ship classes that sail to Alaska. You'll also get up-to-the-minute coverage of all the lines servicing Alaska, as well as; in-depth ship coverage so you can choose the ship that’s best for you. Our authors, longtime cruisers, hit all the major ports of call on the Alaska cruise routes, from Vancouver to Juneau to Anchorage. They’ve also checked the major cruisetour locations, including Denali National Park and the Canadian Rockies. Their candid reviews will help you find the choices that suit your tastes and budget.

The Routledge Handbook on Tourism in the Middle East and North Africa examines the importance of tourism as a historical, economic, social, environmental, religious and political force in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It highlights the ecological and resource challenges related to water, desert environments, climate change and oil. It provides an in-depth analysis of the geopolitical conditions that have long determined the patterns of tourism demand and supply throughout the region and how these play out in the everyday lives of residents and destinations as they attempt to grow tourism or ignore it entirely. While cultural heritage remains the primary tourism asset for the region as a whole, many new types of tourisms are emerging, especially in the Arabian Gulf region, where hyper-development is closely associated with the increasingly prominent role of luxury real estate and shopping, retail, medical tourism, cruises and transit tourism. The growing phenomenon of an expatriate workforce, and how its segregation from the citizenry creates a dual socio-economic system in several countries, is unmatched by other regions of the world. Many indigenous people of MENA keep themselves apart from other dominant groups in the region, although these social boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred as tourism, being one socio-economic force for change, has inspired many nomadic peoples to settle into towns and villages and rely more on tourists for their livelihoods. All of these issues and more shape the foundations of this book. This Handbook is the first of its kind to examine tourism from a broad regional and inclusive perspective, surveying a broad range of social, cultural, heritage, ecological and political matters in a single volume. With a wide range of contributors, many of whom are natives of the Middle East and North Africa, this Handbook is a vital resource for students and scholars interested in Tourism, Middle East Studies and Geography.