Eat the Wind: Travels with Dictators, Mercenaries, and Queens

After graduating from Stanford, Dan Wake was on track for a lucrative partnership at a big Washington law firm until he gave it all up to put adventure over career in 1985. It wasn’t the first time he’d rolled the dice to explore the world.

From hitchhiking in freewheeling Europe to riding buses through the Amazon jungle to roaming through Asia in the shadow of dictatorship, Wake embraced the unpredictability of the open road and developed a Forrest Gump-like knack for dropping into events making world headlines.

Whether he is charming his way through a royal jubilee in London, criss-crossing the Philippines during a bloody revolution, or simply finding remarkable people in remote places, Wake uses high adventure and keen humor to unveil the magic of unscripted travel before the internet changed the world. Eat the Wind vividly brings that enchantment alive and shows how it seduced a lifelong overachiever to risk his career for a chance to take the journey of a lifetime.