Presents a history of the nineteenth-century first-class hotel, of what hotels have meant to American business, culture, and racial politics.

pt. I: Buildings and systems. A public house for a new republic : inventing the American hotel, 1789-1815 ; Palaces of the public : the American hotel comes of age, 1815-1840 ; The hotel system : assembling a transcontinental accommodation network, 1840-1876 ; Imperial hotels and hotel empires : tourism, expansion, standardization, and the beginning of the end of a hotel age, 1876-1908 -- pt. II: Hospitality. The house of strangers : the transformation of hospitality and the everyday life of the hotel ; The law of hospitality : the common law of innkeepers and the public space of the hotel ; Unruly guests and anxious hosts : sex, theft, and violence at the hotel -- pt. III: A nation of hosts and guests. American forum : hotels and civil society ; Homes for a world of strangers : house, hotel, apartment building ; Accommodating Jim Crow : the law of hospitality and the struggle for civil rights.