Tramp Royale

Über

Tramp Royale is a nonfiction travelogue by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, describing how he and his wife, Ginny, went around the world by ship and plane between 1953–1954. It was published posthumously in 1992, and subsequently went out of print.
Much of the book is devoted to social and political commentary and observation, including two lengthy but half-hearted defenses of the McCarthy hearings, about which the Heinleins were interrogated repeatedly in the countries they visited. Although Heinlein has been adopted as somewhat of a posterboy by the libertarian movement, the political commentary reveals that Heinlein was far from being a doctrinaire adherent of any particular political philosophy. For example, he compares the social welfare state of New Zealand unfavorably to that of Uruguay, and says he cannot explain why the one was so much more successful than the other.
Heinlein devoted an entire chapter to his visit to Tristan da Cunha, arguably the most remote human settlement on earth. He described the islands as being so far from the rest of human civilization that the next closest human settlement, St.