One of Dawson’s more significant contributions to the history of tourism is his analysis of BC tourism activities during and after World War II. Dawson’s study, with its eight decades of coverage, shows how consumer culture was established in BC and, in the process turned tourism into an industry.

- Russell Douglass Jones, Eastern Michigan University, Enterprise & Society, June 2005

In this interesting book, Michael Dawson studies the rise of a tourist economy in British Columbia over the course of the twentieth century. This is an important discussion, making <em>Selling British Columbia</em> a must-read for historians interested in either consumer history or twentieth-century Canada. Who would have thought that provincial government could be so engaging a topic?

- Steve Penfold, University of Toronto, BC Studies, No. 146, Summer 2005

He provides the most thorough examination yet of the shift from tourist trade to tourist industry in Canada, and raises important questions about the emergence of consumer capitalism. <em>Selling British Columbia </em>is obviously necessary reading for anyone interested in Canadian tourism; it also merits serious attention from those concerned with advertising, publicity, and promotion, business and industrial associations, and business in twentieth-century Canada generally. One hopes that his approach and suggestive findings will stimulate both methodological debate and further explorations of tourism and consumption by social, cultural and business historians.

- Ben Bradley, Queen’s University, Canadian Historical Review