Some people travel for cuisine, scenery or to broaden their horizons, but Kevin McAleer has journeyed the world for reasons less voluntary – and the results have been much less pleasant. With self-deprecating wit and a lively eye for the grotesque, in Tales of an Inadvertent Traveler he recounts getting stuck behind the Iron Curtain in communist Romania; battling the souvenir-industrial complex on a trip up the Nile Valley; being targeted as a drug runner by the feds during a train trip across America; getting von-Trapped in a Sound of Music-obsessed language course in Salzburg; and voyaging across the stormy North Atlantic on a cargo ship, the sole passenger, only to open his cabin door one night and find the captain’s lifeless body lying at his feet . . . These and other ill-fated junkets are chronicled in McAleer’s eccentric memoir, which turns mishap into comic adventure while also proving that the best travel stories aren’t always told by people who love to travel.