Making Sense of Tourism: The Beckoning Horizon is the first in a unique series. It takes the style of a series of essays, drawing on the author's remarkable 45 years' experience in tourism and education. Academic journals have praised its level of scholarship and understanding of the wide range of subjects it discusses. General readers noted its readability and insights, backed up by cases and examples from the author's long professional career. Older opinions on tourism are often challenged, new interpretations introduced. Tourism is placed in the closely-integrated context of educational development and the rise of the mass media. New theories are developed. Tourism is big business. Most people have regarded it as a purely leisure industry. They have called it a self-indulgent way of life replacing the 'real' industrial worlds of farms and factories. Yet tourism was actually used to create the great historic commercial and industrial revolutions. Today, it has the potential to bring about international understanding and peaceful progress. This book is the first of a planned series of five. The second book . On the Move , about tourism transport in Britain and the USA between 1851 and 1941, is published on 1 September 2021. Alan Machin brings a wide range of experiences to the task of 'making sense of tourism'. His working life ranged from marketing Shropshire's Ironbridge Gorge Museum to urban regeneration with Calderdale Council, West Yorkshire. He was a Senior Executive for a leading design company in Leeds. His career rounded out by teaching tourism management over 17 years at what is now Leeds Beckett University, inspiring students from all over the world. After retirement in 2009 he began to plan the Making Sense of Tourism series.