The Glorious Adventure

It was perhaps inevitable that Richard Halliburton, the romantic, imaginative wanderer, would follow in the footsteps of another legendary traveler--Odysseus. Halliburton's second book recounts his journey through the Mediterranean in the shadow of his mythical hero. In Greece, Halliburton charged Mount Olympus "in order to visit the gods that dwelled there"; he swam the Hellespont as Byron had before him and journeyed on to Troy, where Odysseus's long adventure began. Sailing to Stromboli in the Tyrrhenian Sea; then on to the Bay of Naples, to Circeo--"island" of Circe--and Li Galli, the siren isles that shimmered off the Amalfi coast. Battling through the Straits of Messina, Odysseus's Scylla and Charybdis, he explored Sicily and Corfu before setting out for the shores of Ithaca, long-forgotten home for one, the end of an adventure for another.