This collection of journalism and essays, escapism, bred in a confined childhood, is responsible for his incurable taste for the exotic. Many of the pieces here have been published before, and Norman Lewis recalls some of the extraordinary journeys he has take in the course of his life: to Liberia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Spain, Greece, Austria, Burma, Cuba, New Guinea, India and Italy. He pays his respects to a smoked ancestor in Italian Jaya, watches a trial by red-hot iron in Liberia, recalls his part in the shambolic American invasion of Italy in September 1943, meets a Gestapo chief in Austria, describes his friendship with the anti-Mafia crusader Boris Giuliano, and encounters a born-again astronaut in the Honduras.