50 Dark Destinations - by Adam Lynes & Craig Kelly & James Treadwell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the Alcatraz East Crime Museum and Jack the Ripper guided tours to the Phnom Penh killing fields, 'dark tourism' is now a multi-million-pound global industry. Even in the most pleasant tourist destinations, underlying harms are constantly perpetuated, affecting both consumers and those who work or live around such tourist hotspots. Highlighting 50 travel destinations across six continents, expert criminologists, psychologists and historians explore the past and contemporary issues which we often disregard during our everyday leisure.

This captivating book is the 'go-to' guide for anyone interested in crime and deviance-related tourism. Accessible and digestible, it exposes a worrying trend in contemporary consumer culture, in which many of us partake.

Review Quotes

"A fascinating travelogue of trouble. The tourist gaze that animates the book is particularly chilling, revealing the global span of crime - and the insatiable global appetite for crime's ghostly residues." Jeff Ferrell, author of Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge

"A fascinating collection of essays on dark tourist destinations. It digs beneath the commercialisation of harm, while bringing into focus the reasons for our obsessions with it."

Anthony Ellis, University of Lincoln

"Fun and scholarly, engaging and academic, interesting and intellectual, and should be widely read by anyone interested in violence, trauma, memory, memorialisation, war, museums and history. The subject matter is gruesome and chilling but at the same time accessible and illuminating." Kevin Walby, University of Winnipeg

"Captures how all societies have fascinations with the macabre, but pushes this notion to ask how curiosity became tourism. ... Should leave us reflecting on our age where everything has a price but do we really understand the price that has been paid?" Lisa Mckenzie, University of Bedfordshire

"Makes light reading of some of the world's most historically disturbing places. Read on if you dare to delve beneath their comfortable veneers and deeper into their world of disconcertedness." Daniel Briggs, Universidad Europea

"Infused with interesting facts and sharp observations about famous and not so famous 'destinations' all over the world, this book is a page-turner. Simultaneously cool and serious, rich and approachable, 50 Dark Destinations will provide you with a fresh way of viewing leisure, place and culture." Georgios A. Antonopoulos, Northumbria University

"Succinct, contextualised and insightful. Reveals the complex reasons why so many of us enjoy 'grazing' on carefully curated spectacles of suffering, desolation and death. With this cutting-edge criminological analysis, we can actually learn something about ourselves." Steve Hall, Teesside University

About the Author

Adam Lynes is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Birmingham City University.

Craig Kelly is Lecturer in Criminology at Birmingham City University.

James Treadwell is Professor in Criminology at Staffordshire University.