Plummer uses tourism as a way into Haitian-American relations rather than writing a history of the industry or assessing its contribution to Haitian development. The choice carries a methodological argument: diplomatic history restricted to formal dealings between governments has tended to absorb the assumptions of the policymakers it studies, and widening the evidence to cultural and ideological material breaks that circle.

Caribbean tourism began as a sideline of shipping firms carrying North American goods to island markets and advertising the scenery to cabin passengers, then grew with the cruise liner. Haiti's turn required a change in how the country was pictured. Occupation-era books and films had made it barbarous and sensational; by the end of the 1930s American social scientists who rejected racial hierarchy, private agencies, and above all educated Haitians themselves had shifted opinion.

The trends that produced the boom, Plummer argues, also set its limits, leaving Haitian poverty admired for its fortitude and then ignored.