“Virtual Voyages’ value lies in the attention it calls to oft-overlooked history. . . . [It] is a valuable reference source. . . .” — Elizabeth Mazzolini, The Communication Review
“Virtual Voyages offers a comprehensive look at the social and cultural conditions that popularlised the travelogue as well as its successors in contemporary culture.” — Emma Conneely, M/C Reviews,
“[A] timely and welcome contribution to studies of visual culture, travel narrative, media studies, anthropology and cultural history.” — Robert Clarke, Media International Australia
“[C]ogent essays that shed considerable light on the travelogue and its important relationship to technology, tourism, and transportation. . . . Recommended.” — J. I. Deutsch, Choice
“[T]his anthology is a very enjoyable read. . . . All that remains now is to encourage potential readers to sit back and enjoy the ride.” — Stefan Roesch Koenig, Journal of Sustainable Tourism,
“This is the first book to cover the history of travelogues, and on balance I think it quite an success. . . . [G]enerally carefully produced and includes a host of valuable contributions.” — Stephen Bottomore, Early Popular Visual Culture
“Virtual Voyages reveals a fine appreciation of the many and varied contextual settings of the travelogue, teasing out its different incarnations in its past and present forms.” — Saige Walton, Screening the Past
“Virtual Voyages offers us an incisive look at the ways and means by which nonfiction cinema has mobilized itself to span time and space, carrying viewers across magical expanses for what appears to be a nominal price. The hidden costs and complex pleasures of virtual travel receive close scrutiny in a book that is sure to stimulate further explorations.” — Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary
“Stretching from early cinema to IMAX, Virtual Voyages offers the best tour yet available of the production and presentation of travel films, one of the most durable and intriguing—and too long overlooked—of film genres. The reprinted and new essays collected by Jeffrey Ruoff historically situate Hale’s Tours, Burton Holmes’s lectures, home movies, Grass, Jungle Headhunters, Everest, and a host of other examples of the genre, and theorize the particular knowledges and pleasures the travel film offers of an exotic and mundane world in motion.” — Gregory Waller, editor of Moviegoing in America: A Sourcebook in the History of Film Exhibition