Richard W. Hallett & Judith Kaplan-Weinger discuss the role of tourism websites—in particular, English-language sites produced by official governing bodies—in constructing the social identities of both nations (defined broadly) and tourists. They do this through an array of discourse analysis methods encompassing linguistic and visual texts, appropriately multimodal for multimodal objects of study such as internet sites. In Ch. 1, the authors situate their work within the context of tourism research and discuss the reasons for their specific focus. Tourism, they write, is “grounded in discourse” (2), as travel guides shape both potential tourists' imaginations of their destinations and the identities of tourists themselves. The authors frame the websites they examine within the tradition of these future-oriented travel guides. Websites differ from other travel writing in that they allow for both ocular travel, that in which the tourist imagines witnessing the scenes depicted, and epistemic travel, in which the tourist goes beyond received opinion to explore elements of cultures (3).

In Ch. 2 the authors specify their methods. They draw on several theoretical frameworks, including social constructionism, critical discourse analysis, mediated discourse analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis. Their perspective studies language (and by extension, the other semiotic modalities found on websites) as social action and views social problems as linked to texts. Identity construction for both individuals and groups is viewed as a process of associating certain features with the self and disassociating the self from other features from which it wishes to be seen as distinct (6).

Chs. 3 through 9 are devoted to a diverse array of cases. Ch. 3 explores the construction of independent national identity in the post-Soviet Baltic states—Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia—through the photographs and text on their official websites. Chs. 4, 5, and 6 discuss the construction of often overlapping “pilgrim” and “tourist” identities in three contexts: Santiago de Compostela, Spain, a popular Christian pilgrimage site; New Orleans, Louisiana, a city that has reframed its tourism discourse following Hurricane Katrina; and Gary, Indiana, an industrial city trying to invent an identity for itself despite image problems. Ch. 7 discusses the construction of nationalism through sports at the US Sports Halls of Fame. In Ch. 8, the authors discuss tourism websites' handling of the complex case of Myanmar/Burma, where tourism remains ethically controversial due to the country's ruling military junta. Ch. 9 explores the Jetlag Travel Guide series—featuring the fictitious nations Molvania, Phaic Tan, and San Sombrèro—and explores its parodic representation of tourism discourse's constructions of “self” and “other.” Ch. 10 effectively concludes the book's arguments and offers further directions for research. Overall, Official tourism websites represents a fascinating preliminary venture into an as yet underexplored field. The authors describe the text as an “initial foray into the analysis and understanding of the role of the internet in fostering identity construction for tourists and destinations” (121), and they invite further analysis building on their innovative approach.