Global travel can be a wearying business: mass tourism, overcrowded planes, chaotic airports, heightened security, cookie-cutter hotel chains, well-worn tourist trails. Finding even a sliver of adventure can sometimes feel impossible. But take heart: for all of us with an unfulfilled spirit of wanderlust, The Golden Age of Travel evokes an era when traveling the world was a thrilling new possibility for those with the resources, time, imagination, and daring. This richly illustrated volume charts the travel heyday of 1869 to 1939. Bedecked with ephemera and precious turn-of-the-century photochroms, it follows six classic tours favored by Western adventurers in the prewar era, including such famous traveler-writers as Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, and Goethe. From the Grand Tour of Europe, a traditional rite of passage for young English aristocrats, to the Far East, barely touched by Western influence, to the famous Trans-Siberian Railway, we follow each journey through its itinerant stops and various modes of transport: trains, boats, cars, planes, horses, donkeys, and camels. With pages brimming with archival travel posters, guides, tickets, leaflets, brochures, menus, and luggage stickers, the book evokes all the romance, elegance, not to mention the sheer sense of novelty, that enthralled these golden-age passengers. Through decadent new cities, or wild, rugged terrains, this is your passport to a long-lost epoch of adventure and wide-eyed wonder at the world.

These rediscovered Photochrom and Photostint postcard images from the private collection of Marc Walter were produced by the Detroit Photographic Company between 1888 and 1924. Using a photolithographic process that predated the autochrome by nearly 20 years, they offered people the very first color photographs of the United States. Suddenly, the continent's colors were available for all to see. From the rich ochres and browns of the Grand Canyon to the dazzle of Atlantic City, these places were now a visual delight not only for eyewitnesses but for Americans far and wide. Imbued with a sense of discovery and adventure, the pictures gathered here are a voyage through peoples, places, and time. They take us through North America's vast and varied landscape, where we encounter its many communities, and above all transport us back to the United States of over a century ago. Across more than 600 pages including fold-out spreads, this sweeping panorama takes us from Native American settlements to New York's Chinatown, from some of the last cowboys to Coney Island's heyday. As luminous now as they were some 120 years ago, these rare and remarkable images that brought America to Americans now bring America's past to our present.

The turn of the 20th century seemed full of promise for Germany. The suburbs may have teemed with tenements to house the new industrial proletariat, but on spacious new avenues in the city centres, people strolled proudly past magnificent bourgeois residences. The economy was booming, the aristocracy and the military enjoyed unlimited social prestige, and most of the population revered the Kaiser. Through some 800 color pictures, this book presents turn-of-the-century Germany as it liked to see herself: self-confident, glittering, patriotic but also with a belief in progress and - for those who could afford it - a cosmopolitan flair. As in the critically acclaimed America 1900 the images are all rare examples of the historical photochrom process, a printing technique that allowed black-and-white photographs to be reproduced in colour. From Ludwig II's fairy-tale castles in the Bavarian Alps to glamourous bathing resorts on the North Sea and Baltic, the pictures reveal a Germany of optimism, beauty, and transformation. Technical innovations and modern boulevards sit alongside medieval towns, rural traditions, and mystical forests, creating a fascinating and nostalgic panorama of a long lost epoch before the ravages of time and history set in.