Around the World in 50 Years, Albert Podell
Around the World in 50 Years, Albert Podell
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Around the World in 50 Years
My Adventure to Every Country on Earth

Author: Albert Podell

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 12 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/05/2015

Synopsis

This is the inspiring story of an ordinary guy who achieved two great goals that others had told him were impossible. First, he set a record for the longest automobile journey ever made around the world, during the course of which he blasted his way out of minefields, survived a breakdown atop the Peak of Death, came within seconds of being lynched in Pakistan, and lost three of the five men who started with him, two to disease, one to the Vietcong.

After that—although it took him forty-seven more years—Albert Podell set another record by going to every country on Earth. He achieved this by surviving riots, civil wars, trigger-happy child soldiers, voodoo priests, robbers, corrupt cops, and Cape buffalo. He went around, under, or through every kind of natural disaster. He ate everything from old camel meat and rats to dung beetles and the brain of a live monkey. And he overcame attacks by crocodiles, hippos, anacondas, giant leeches, flying crabs—and several beautiful girlfriends who insisted that he stop this nonsense and marry them.

About Albert Podell

Albert Podell is coauthor of Who Needs a Road?, an adventure classic still in print after nearly five decades. He has been an editor at Playboy and three national outdoor magazines and has written more than 250 freelance articles. Albert was coleader of the successful Trans World Record Expedition. He holds a BA in government from Cornell, was the graduate fellow of the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago, and received a law degree from New York University. He lives in New York and is an all-around outdoorsman-skier, boarder, mountaineer, climber, camper, hiker, biker, archer, angler, surfer, kayaker, scuba diver, windsurfer, long-distance swimmer, and vegetable gardener.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Laura on March 30, 2015

I loved this book--but the author is a pompous, chauvinistic pig who overwrites and uses the thesaurus way too much. Nonetheless, the story--of how he visited all 196 countries--is fascinating and the book is chock full of crazy travel tales, including strandings at airports in the south pacific, ea......more

Goodreads review by Cold War Conversations Podcast on January 13, 2015

Shades of Bill Bryson meets Phileas Fogg. Podell has put together an interesting amalgamation of his tales in his quest to visit every country in the world over the last 50 years. Some he has to revisit as a result of splits such as Yugoslavia, and some have ceased to exist such as East Germany. Writt......more

Goodreads review by Nan on November 26, 2014

Everybody on God's earth should read this book if he wants to know what the world is like. Nobody else can tell you because nobody else knows. Nobody else has tried and survived a visit to every country on earth, including the most dangerous of: living conditions, wild animals, political violence, a......more

Goodreads review by Kristin on April 22, 2015

I knew I was going to like this book, and I knew it wasn't going to be nearly long enough. Right on both counts, but in ways that I wasn't expecting. There is just no way that anyone can write a travelogue that covers 196 (plus some now nonexistent) countries in a completely thorough manner. Do you t......more

Goodreads review by Paulette on November 28, 2014

I totally agree with the advance reviewers. Author Harold Stephens calls it "the best travel-adventur book written in this young century., author Will Lutwick raves that " it sets a new standard for travel-adventure books.". And Tony Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet books, who revolutionized the......more

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