Praise for The Last Resort...
“If you liked White Lotus…watch for The Last Resort…Stodola’s sobering investigation into the beach resort economy leaps from Thailand to Cap d’Antibes to Senegal, looking at why these manufactured environments became the vacation ideal and how climate change threatens them all.” –New York Times
“Here’s a beach read that will make you think. Stodola explores the fascinating history of how beaches became our dream destinations.” –Washington Post
“Beachgoers everywhere need to read this gripping account about the dark side of paradise…After reading The Last Resort, you’ll never look at an all-inclusive vacation quite the same way.” –Esquire
“Delving into the histories of more than twenty beachfront locales, from the Jersey shore to Indonesia, this chronicle of corrosive tourism describes a pattern of overdevelopment that, in our current ecological moment, “implies an end to the beach vacation as we know it.” –The New Yorker
“[A]n illuminating and troubling study of global seaside tourism…Stodola takes an anthropological blowtorch to the ‘sanitized bubbles’ of beach tourism.” –The Globe and Mail
“[A] sharp and exhaustive examination of the history and pitfalls of luxury beach resorts all over the world.” –The Atlantic
“A thorough and appropriately alarming analysis of how we made paradise and how it might be saved.” –Kirkus Reviews
“What could possibly be a better beach read than an investigative deep dive into the dark underbelly of the beachside resort business? With expert precision, Stodola weaves together travel notes, climate journalism, and scathing critiques of capitalism into a work cultural history exploring why we all flock to the beach in the first place.” –Harper’s Bazaar
“Beaches are ‘a paradise both threatening and threatened,’ according to this thought-provoking survey…Stodola travels the globe to highlight how coastal towns that largely depend on tourism are changing due to climate change and have become hotbeds of social inequality…The result is a fascinating look at the dangers of climate change.” –Publisher’s Weekly
“Sarah Stodola’s new book cracks open ideas of paradise and the complicated histories of coastal travel.” –Southern Living
“There’s a lot more to reading by the beach or the pool than you realize, as revealed in this history and exploration of beach resort culture—all the more critical as the travel industry is grappling with how to not only recover and thrive post-pandemic, but to also curtail its worst offenses as we approach a climate reckoning.” –Fortune
“Stodola details both the disastrous effects of overdevelopment on multiple beachfront sites as well as hopeful instances of conservation, charting the steps needed to curtail the devastating consequences of unchecked development. . . . Avid travelers and environmentally conscious readers alike will appreciate this treatment.” -Booklist
The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach
A captivating exploration of beach resort culture—from its roots in fashionable society to its undervalued role in today’s world economy—as the industry approaches a climate reckoning
With its promise of escape from the strains of everyday life, the beach has a hold on the popular imagination as the ultimate paradise. In The Last Resort, Sarah Stodola dives into the psyche of the beachgoer and gets to the heart of what drives humans to seek out the sand. At the same time, she grapples with the darker realities of resort culture: strangleholds on local economies, reckless construction, erosion of beaches, weighty carbon footprints, and the inevitable overdevelopment and decline that comes with a soaring demand for popular shorelines.
The Last Resort weaves Stodola’s firsthand travel notes with her exacting journalism in an enthralling report on the past, present, and future of coastal travel. She takes us from Monte Carlo, where the pursuit of pleasure first became part of the beach resort experience, to a village in Fiji that was changed irrevocably by the opening of a single resort; from the overdevelopment that stripped Acapulco of its reputation for exclusivity to Miami Beach, where extreme measures are underway to prevent the barrier island from vanishing into the ocean.
In the twenty-first century, beach travel has become central to our globalized world—its culture, economy, and interconnectedness. But with sea levels likely to rise at least 1.5 to 3 feet by the end of this century, beaches will become increasingly difficult to preserve, and many will disappear altogether. What will our last resort be when water begins to fill the lobbies?
Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors
Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, and more. In Process, acclaimed journalist Sarah Stodola examines the creative methods of literature’s most transformative figures. Each chapter contains a mini biography of one of the world’s most lauded authors, focused solely on his or her writing process. Unlike how-to books that preach writing techniques or rules, Process puts the true methods of writers on display in their most captivating incarnation: within the context of the lives from which they sprang. Drawn from both existing material and original research and interviews, Stodola brings to light the fascinating, unique, and illuminating techniques behind these literary behemoths.