Does Tourism Ruin Everything?

About a 10th of the world economy is devoted to "tourism and travel," and for her exposé of the travel industry's dark sides, Elizabeth Becker has bravely traveled to where many pay good money to tread. "Overbooked" sees her in Bordeaux and Venice, on luxury safaris in Zambia, at cooking classes in Bangkok and—proving that she has not lost the taste for self-punishing reportage that she established as a Washington Post correspondent during the Khmer Rouge era—a succession of stultifying industry conferences. For most places, she presents a brief, unsurprising travelogue (wine in France, pizza in Italy, lions in Africa) to sugar her rather dire analysis: namely, that when unfettered, the travel industry ruins nearly everything it seeks to promote.