<DIV><i>Grand Hotels</i> is the fruit of the many years Elaine Denby has devoted to travels and visits throughout Europe, North America, the Near East and the Orient; it is a fascinating architectural and social history that covers the globe from the 1830s to the 1930s, but which also takes note of the most recent refurbishments.<BR><BR>The styles of architecture and decor have varied enormously for grand hotels: a French Renaissance château manner for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the 1880s; a fantastic Moorish-style confection for the Tampa Bay on Florida's Gulf Coast (1891); Art Deco for Oliver Hill's seaside Midland Grand at Morecombe in England (1933). And the services available were equally stunning: Turkish baths, rifle-ranges, even a fleet of vintage Rolls-Royces at Hong-Kong's Peninsula. To keep this illusory world glittering, the reality had to run like clockwork, with managers like César Ritz, king of hoteliers, monitoring every detail from ballrooms to basement boilers. <i>Grand Hotels</i> explores every aspect of this all-but-vanished world of opulence, from the entrepreneurs, architects and designers who made it possible to the ambitious individuals and dynasties that kept it going.</div>