Iyer has chosen twenty-six pieces that revel in rich discovery and brave experience both near and far away. Roger Angell remembers a sense of adventure during childhood car trips in New York (one taken with E. B. white, his future stepfather). Tim Cahill describes the joy of trekking in Patagonia, his "new favorite place on earth." Heather Eliot writes of a fevered love affair in the South Pacific, and Tad Friend hilariously tells of introducing Segways to Paris. George Packer recalls his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa and the swirl of political unrest there.