These selections from his reports on North America, the West Indies, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa make for delightful reading, as fresh as when they were written. And they reveal Trollope as a professional and enthusiastic investigator of political, social, and economic conditions. To read his travel writings, suggests Graham Handley, "is to become aware of the character of the man and the qualities which make him one of the most interesting literary personalities of his time. His enthusiasm for life, like his enthusiasm for writing, was uncurbed to the end."