According to some reports, the #1 travel fantasy is a trip around the world. Libertarian investor Jim Rogers lived that dream in 1999 when he embarked on a 116-country journey that he later wrote about in his best-selling book, Adventure Capitalist.

During the 1,101-day trek through war zones, epidemics, deserts, and jungles, Rogers and his wife Paige Parker traveled 152,000 miles in a specially built four-wheel-drive Mercedes-Benz sports car. The adventure earned Rogers a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest trip in one automobile.

The journey also gave Rogers a ground-level view of the world from a decidedly libertarian perspective, reported Sean Corrigan on LewRockwell.com (August 20, 2003). "The real merit of [Adventure Capitalist] lies in its sustained and caustic debunking of all the many governments, bureaucrats, NGO busybodies, and U.S. foreign policy wonks across whom he and his wife Paige stumbled at ... every one of the six continents which he visited," Corrigan wrote.

Here are some of Rogers' observations from Adventure Capitalist:

* On American politicians: "People all over the world seem to know the American people are good, but they also seem to know something happens to Americans when they go to Washington."

* On foreign aid: "It is no secret that this money is aimed at nourishing only those corrupt enough to get their hands on it."

* On U.S. foreign policy: "Overspreading our resources, specifically our financial and military muscle, has the further effect of breeding hostility around the world, creating a vicious circle in which we are required to spend even more money to maintain our safety, security, and prosperity."

Rogers is also the author of another travel book, Investment Biker (1994), which prompted Time magazine to call him "the Indiana Jones of finance."

Rogers first became famous in 1973, when he co-founded with George Soros the Quantum Fund, a global-investment partnership. After the fund increased in value by 4,000 percent in a decade, Rogers retired as a millionaire at age 37. Proving that his first fund was no fluke, in 1998 Rogers started the Rogers International Commodities Index, which increased in value by 76 percent over the next five years.

Rogers has also been a visiting professor of finance at Columbia University, a columnist for Worth magazine, and a commentator on the Fox News network.

                                                                                                        -- Bill Winter

Quotable

"[Rogers'] message is clearly libertarian. He is constantly amazed at the ingenuity and resourcefulness of human beings, while at the same time being constantly amazed and frustrated at the stupidity of government bureaucrats, dictators, and politicians." -- Doug French, LewRockwell.com, June 2, 2003

Books & Tapes

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