Like most Heinlein fan's, I picked up this book simply because it was by the man, altho I do like travel books from this period as well. As far as travel books go (and I have quite a collection from the 1950's and also pre-WW2), it's fairly typical of the period. The book's real attactiveness is that you get a glimpse of the real Robert Heinlein, his thoughts, his views, the way he lived his life, what he enjoyed, what he didn't. And also of his wife, Virginia. It's a fascinating insight and just for that, it's well worth the read for any appreciator of Heinlein's science fiction.

And as New Zealander, I loved the beautifully scathing chapter on New Zealand. He visited the country before I was born, but his descriptiont bears a remarkable similarity to the country as I remember it in my youth in the 1960's - there were no real facilities for tourists, the six o'clock swill (a relict of WW1) meant bars closed at 6pm, and with workers knocking off at 5pm, you went to the pub and drank as much as you could as fast as you could in one hour - a recipe for the fistfights in the streets that Heinlein describes. Eating out was awful, the hotels were as bad, if not worse than Heinlein describes (I stayed in a few with my parents when they travelled) and a "service culture" didn't exist. You got to take it or leave it - Heinlein's book brings back all those lovely memories of an insular country and a restrictive lifestyle which really doesn't exist anymore.

A few reviewers commented that New Zealand isn't like that - well, it isn't now, but believe me, back in the 1950's it was just as he described - and that was in the bigger cities - in the small towns it was even worse. Altho back then we DID like Americans - they saved our bacon in WW2 and Kiwi's still remember that....

And a last comment - the publisher's review above is a piece of rubbish by someone who obviously isn't a Heinlein fan and isn;t really worthy of any further comment.

Robert Heinlein is responsible for exciting more young American men and women about science and space flight than any other author. His beautifully crafted series of "juvenile" books can still be read half a century after they were published, and by people half a century older than when they first saw the books. Same is true of the stories and books written in the 1940s and 1950s. So I had assumed this would be vintage Heinlein, and fairly apolitical. It is, and it isn't.

Comparing the world seen from a tramp steamer in 1952-1953 to our world is fascinating; among the most interesting things (Heinlein was a good observer and generally reliable reporter) I found were the comparisons of South America then, with Indonesia and South Africa. And the most surprising were the depressing reports of life in Australia and New Zealand, now two of the best countries to visit; then two of the most unfriendly to tourists with the worst infrastructure and the most exclusionary policies. Hideous hotels, a drink only available in a hotel, meaning the reason for having the beds was to peddle the booze, and customs and currency regulations rather reminiscent of East Germany.

As to predictions, suffice it to say that Heinlein liked Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Rio, and thought their governments on the way to democracy. He liked some South Africans, but hated their government, and expected that the White population could never give up Apartheid, and would all die in their beds when the Black population revolted. So much for his crystal ball.

Unaccountably, Robert calls his well-known wife, Virginia, always known as Ginny, "Ticky" in this book. Was it to shield a bit of privacy? Did Ginny change her favorite name? They are both dead, so there's nobody to ask.

Towards the end RAH gives some very valuable, still, tips on how to pack for a round-the-world trip, whether by ship or plane, although he omits water purification equipment, if memory serves.

But it is in the last few pages that the whole thing falls apart. He pens a paen to America, to Patriotism. He argues that the rest of the world doesn't like us (perhaps true today; not in 1953); and suggests that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union is inevitable, along with population wars with China and India spilling over to occupy Australia. The crystal ball has cracked, and the Neo-con political overtones so blatant that one is tempted to ask whether the authors of the Iraq War, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith, etc., were fans of the militaristic period in Heinlein's writing.

This book provides a glimpse into the personality of one of the most influencial science fiction writers of the twentieth century, which is why science fiction fans will want to read it. But this book should also appeal to people who enjoy Bill Bryson's travel writing. This book is full of the same types of observations and humor that mark Bryson's work.

Heinlein's observations from his around the world trip with his wife in 1952-53 are, for the most part, dated. Having traveled to New Zealand and Sydney a couple of years ago, I can attest that these places are no longer anything like he described. Tourists are welcomed, the food and accommodations are as good as anything in the States, with no red tape to frustrate visitors (in fact, the tables have now turned, with tourist trying to enter the US having to face large amounts of red tape).

Like a time capsule, this book shows us the world as it was half a century ago, and by comparison, we can see how much the world has changed. What would Heinlein have to say about today's world?

The name Heinlein invokes `science fiction'. Trouble is, as he stated in Expanded Universe, he wrote other things too, which everyone thought was hyperbole until some digging was done and the mysteries, romance stories, political how-to and world warning message essays were found. This book is part of that `other' group, a travelogue of his around the world trip he took with wife Virginia `Ticky' Heinlein in 1953-1954. But regardless of what genre he was writing in, Heinlein's style, very personable `voice', and clear thought processes were always present, and this book is no exception.

But why would anyone want to read about Heinlein's travels from fifty years ago? Clearly the world has changed a lot since that trip, and much of what he saw then no longer exists or has morphed radically. But if you are looking for a very perceptive look at other countries and cultures, this is it, with the added fillip of looking to see just where and how things have changed and where things are still much the same as they were then. I've done a lot of world traveling in the past few years, and directly observed some of these changes. Perhaps one of the most obvious changes is the condition of Singapore, which Heinlein found to be very vibrant but quite dirty, and is now still vibrant but is one of the cleanest cities in the world, due to some draconian self-imposed laws. The Raffles is no longer THE place to stay there, though it still has some colonial charm, but has been eclipsed by some of the newer hotels. New Zealand, which comes in for some of Heinlein's harshest criticism, has made many changes to make a tourist's stay there more pleasant and enjoyable. Hawaii, while still an enormously beautiful island, has really become over-commercialized with one of the highest price tags of vacationing anywhere.

But as a confirmation of how acute and accurate his observations were, I was living in Sydney, Australia at the time he visited there, and can verify one of his statements that British subjects who came there were not treated as well as Americans, as when I came there I had a strong British accent and was frequently mistaken for one, which led to my exclusion from some of the kid's activities (I was about age seven then) while some other American immigrants in my school were not. Seeing such a small thing in such a short stay says much about how well he listened and looked.

But Heinlein does not merely catalogue the sights and feel of the countries he visited, nor did he stay within the bounds of only looking at the `tourist' sites. He looks at the governments, rules and regulations, economies, customs, history, and what he observed about each country's `average citizen's' attitude. Obviously he did a fair amount of research for this book - there is simply no way he could have accumulated that amount of knowledge about each country during his short stays in each one, though equally obviously he took copious notes about his first hand impressions during the days spent on shipboard between countries (though he never mentions doing so, instead regaling the reader with what life on ship was like, from Captain's table dinners to some heavy party sessions).

Throughout all of this book, there is a fair sprinkling of humor, most especially when he details the activities and dialogue of his wife. Many people have accused Heinlein of having unrealistic female characters in his stories, but here we see the archetype of those characters in a real person, one who Heinlein was obviously very much in love with, right down to his `compromises' with her that were all `her' way. In fact, Heinlein's own character shines throughout this book, a better look at the man and his actual opinions than can be found almost anywhere else. As an odd sidelight, Heinlein and I were within a few miles of each other in Australia in 1954. In 1983, I moved to San Jose, CA and once again I was within a few miles of where he was living then in Santa Cruz. But I never met the man, my great loss, for this man was a giant in more ways than one.

This book may have limited interest for non-Heinlein fans, but it is very readable, with some commentary that is just as applicable today as it was then, and is possibly a gold-mine for Heinlein scholars, as many things that he uses as background in some of his later books had an obvious genesis in what he saw during this trip.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

I discovered this book many years after reading all of Heinlein's fiction. Having been to many of the places he describes, I enjoyed his tales of them almost 40 years before I visited them. For example, his portrayal of New Zealand as a dismal place had certainly changed by the time I saw it, and it was a fairly happy, prosperous, and well run little country, from what I saw. But Heinlein found it depressing, dispiriting, overly socialist, and even violent--if you can believe his description of what happened when the bars closed--as everyone piled out drunk onto the streets, where real melees and fistfights would ensue. Well, I never saw any evidence of this in the almost three weeks I spent there in the late 90s, so I guess things had changed. Anyway, all in all an interesting little Heinlein book that is a must read for his fans, since it presages many of his later views on politics and other similar topics.