Go deep on the cultural and environmental impact of the cruise industry—including a glimpse at life onboard from every point of view.

Pocket Collections

• Kimi Goffe
  

Read when you’ve got time to spare.





Few vacations are more polarizing than a cruise. Prized for its aspirational allure, condemned for its environmental harms, and loved (or hated) for its packaged fun.
In the stories below, sail along with a host of writers as they explore the great cruise divide. Some embrace cruises’ banal pleasures (“Cruises Are So Uncool They Are Cool”), while others experience them as “an enormous primordial stew of death and decay” (“Shipping Out”). A few even discover their unexpected potential for transformation (“The Time I Went on a Lesbian Cruise and It Blew Up My Entire Life”).
You’ll also meet many cruise ship inhabitants, from rich retirees skipping winter for months at a time to Filipino crew members whose working conditions are anything but luxurious.
Whether you’re a “cult cruiser” or a cruise hater, these are stories you’ll want to save—for reading en route, onboard, or at home on dry land.
Image by Carl & Ann Purcell/Getty Images