Book excerpt: "The New Tourist" by Paige McClanahan

Scribner We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. In "The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel" (available from Scribner), journalist Paige McClanahan writes about how tourism shapes societies and individuals, and about the need to redefine the meaning of "tourist" in today's shrinking world. Read an excerpt below, and don't miss Seth Doane's interview with Paige McClanahan on "CBS Sunday Morning" May 3! "The New Tourist" by Paige McClanahan Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now. Introduction About nine hundred years ago, a group of monks built a stone abbey along the banks of a cold, clear river in a steep-sided valley high in the Alps. The religious men took up residence among the locals—people who spent their days tending cows and sheep, churning butter, weeding onions and turnips, scouring the forests for mushrooms, and chiseling sculptures from the local limestone. Centuries passed, and the abbey went through the typical cycles of decline and renewal, fire and renovation, until 1792, when an invading army (the French) claimed the monks' worldly possessions as their own—and kicked them out. Stripped of its holy residents, the abbey took on a new life as the headquarters of a company that mined the local iron ore, which was destined for the infrastructure of a rapidly industrializing Europe. …