Travel books tend to come in one of two types. The "this is wacky how did I end up here? and look at all the neat stuff I saw!" or the scholarly books which tend to focus on the history and significance of a specific location. This is the latter. Unfortunately this book covers six different locations(Devils Island, Easter Island, Pagan, Petra, Mt Athos, and Benjamin Constant) so it's very very short on any sort of personal experience. In some cases his experiences seem to be overlooked all together. This is a shame as the author is quite talented and could weave together all sorts of things which are only slightly related to the locations he is talking about.

The author has several asides in each section ranging from a history of the guilloitine to the role of cucumbers in the making of royalty and many things in between. It's truly fascinating but sometimes you wonder if he knows this much why didn't he write a longer book? ( )