by Michael Montalvo
Daily Lobo
Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz, an assistant professor of history at UNM, wrote a book that explores the little-known history of American hotels.
Yale University Press published Hotel: An American History last month.
"It's a first-rate work of scholarship," UNM history professor Virginia Scharff said. "We are all very proud of him."
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Scharff was Sandoval-Strausz's faculty mentor and witnessed the development of his project, she said.
"He is a great asset to the department and to the University," Scharff said.
Sandoval-Strausz first contemplated the book's topic while attending Chicago University in 1996. He was searching for a dissertation topic when he came up with the idea, he said.
"I was sitting in the lobby of the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago and thought, 'This would be fantastic subject matter for a book,'" he said.
The book explains that hotels are an American invention.
Before researching the topic, Sandoval-Strausz considered hotels a European creation, he said.
"People moved around a lot more, beginning in the mid-18th century," he said. "As you have more people moving around, you have to provide them with hospitality in a way that was beyond the capacity of inns and taverns."
When the U.S. was still young and forming its identity, some entrepreneurs foresaw the need for hotels, Sandoval-Strausz said.
"The early hotels were large, imposing and impressive," he said. "They were meant to make a statement on the landscape."
Sandoval-Strausz said it was easy to gather new research material for the book because the project had never been done.
"It was a lot of work, but I didn't have to crawl around looking for unusual, hard-to-find sources," he said.
It took him about six years to finish his dissertation. He spent another four years converting it into a book.
The book also touches on early New Mexican hotel history, Sandoval-Strausz said.
"There is a great illustration of the Montezuma Hotel in Las Vegas, N.M.," he said. "In the book, I talk about the way hotels worked in New Mexico."
Hotel: An American History was recently reviewed in the New York Times. It has also been featured in the Economist and Slate.com.
In about two weeks, Sandoval-Strausz will be interviewed on National Public Radio.
"It's getting a lot of national attention," Scharff said.
Sandoval-Strausz is working on his next book, tentatively titled Latino Landscapes.
The book will discuss the physical environments created by Hispanics who immigrate to the U.S., he said.
