Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth

Written by Dave Seminara

Narrated by Chris Henry Coffey

A brilliant, young con artist offered to help the world’s most traveled people reach the planet’s last untouched frontiers; instead, they were taken for a wild ride that turned into a costly lesson on the perils of wanderlust.

At twenty-three, William Simon Baekeland was well on his way to becoming the world’s best traveled person. The “billionaire” heir to a great plastics fortune had already visited 163 countries, but his real passion was finding ways to visit the world’s most challenging destinations—war torn cities, disputed territories, and remote or officially off-limits islands at the margins of the map. He earned rock-star status in the world of extreme travel by finding ingenious ways to bring the world’s most widely traveled people to difficult-to-reach and forbidden places. But when his story began to unravel, an eccentric group of hyper-well-traveled country collectors were left wondering how they had allowed their obsession to blind them to the warning signs that William Baekeland wasn’t who they thought he was.

Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth delves deep inside the subculture of country collecting, taking readers to danger zones like Mogadishu and geographical oddities like Norway’s nearly impossible-to-reach Bouvet Island. Along the way, this raucous tale of adventure and international intrigue illuminates the perils and pleasures of wanderlust while examining a fundamental question: why are some people compelled to travel, while others are content to stay home? Mad Travelers is a perceptive and at times hilarious account of how the pursuit of everywhere put the world’s greatest travelers at the mercy of a brilliant young con man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781705035894

Reviews for Mad Travelers

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dave Seminara is an inveterate life-long traveler, a nomad, who is always looking for the next horizon. In this short but info packed book he tries to understand why some people seem to be addicted to travel. In fact there are super-travellers, who have online websites where they rack up statistics about countries and places visited. Certain people vie to be the world's most traveled person. Some of them really are incredible spending most of the year on the move to tick off boxes. It's a weird sub-culture. The Mt. Everest is an island in the south Atlantic that has no people, no regular ships and is so weather challenged many visitors are never able to get of the boat and step ashore. The story that holds the book together is about a scam artist who stole money from the super-travelers by pretending to be a billionaire. It's a good story and keeps the pages turning although the ending is not satisfying as he never is brought to justice. The real value is Semiara's deep dive into the psychology of travel. Some great stuff here for anyone who has ever thought about why we travel and why some don't stop. The best advice is nothing is really an "addiction" unless it interferes negatively in your life.