Description

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Skiing into Modernity is the story of how skiing moved from Europe’s Scandinavian periphery to the mountains of central Europe, where it came to define the modern Alps and set the standard for skiing across the world.

Denning offers a fresh, sophisticated, and engaging cultural and environmental history of skiing that alters our understanding of the sport and reveals how leisure practices evolve in unison with our changing relationship to nature. Denning probes the modernist self-definition of Alpine skiers and the sport’s historical appeal for individuals who sought to escape city strictures while achieving mastery of mountain environments through technology and speed—two central features distinguishing early twentieth-century cultures.

Skiing into Modernity surpasses existing literature on the history of skiing to explore intersections between work, tourism, leisure, development, environmental destruction, urbanism, and more.

About the Author

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Andrew Denning is a postdoctoral fellow in history at the University of British Columbia.

Praise For…

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"[An] intellectual study."
— S. A. Riess

"A great case study . . . Skiing into Modernity is a great read."
— Consumption Markets and Culture

"Denning skillfully combines sport, cultural, and environmental histories... Skiing into Modernity is an excellent book."
— Canadian Journal of History

"Andrew Dennin offers an exceptionlly thoughtful analysis of how skiing took hold in European mountains and minds, also providing much food for thought for historians of skiing, leisure, and environment in North America."
— Pacific Historical Review

"Denning offers a thoughtful and innovative study that should prove useful to scholars of environment, leisure, Europe, and skiing."
— H-Net