Travels with Herodotus

Just finished reading my first book of the year — Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuscinski — and I have to gush. Kapuscinski was the ultimate rock star foreign correspondent: He spent four decades reporting on riots, revolutions, and coups in Asia, Latin America, and Africa (surviving 40 jailings and four death sentences along the way). Travels with HerodotusIn this memoir, we meet his muse: Herodotus, the ancient Greek who is widely considered the father of not only history but foreign correspondency and even travel writing. Kapuscinski was given a copy of Herodotus’s Histories before his first venture abroad to India in 1957, and it became his trusty companion on his own worldly travels. Here is one of my favorite passages:

We do not really know what draws a human being out into the world. Is it curiosity? A hunger for experience? An addiction to wonderment? The man who ceases to be astonished is hollow, possessed of an extinguished heart. If he believes that everything has already happened, that he has seen it all, then something most precious has died within him–the delight in life. Herodotus is the antithesis of this spirit. A vivacious fascinated, unflagging nomad, full of plans, ideas, theories. Always traveling. Even at home (but where is his home?), he has either just returned from an expedition, or is preparing for the next one. Travel is his vital exertion, his self-justification is the delving into, the struggle to learn–about life, the world, perhaps ultimately oneself.