Honeymoon With My Brother

When Wisner is dumped five days prior to his wedding and demoted from his high-flying job with a California real estate developer, he decides to go on his honeymoon trip anyway — and bring his brother, Kurt. And then prolongs the vacation. Over two years, the pair traipse across 53 countries, unwittingly soliciting Russian prostitutes, bribing non-English-speaking traffic cops, and flashing a picture of them with George W. Bush to get out of tight spots. If this sounds like the setup for a comedic road-trip flick, you're right. (Sony has already optioned the book.) But Wisner's accounts of a Balinese cockfight or Trinidad's Carnival do what good travel writing should: make you want to be right then and there. And while his obligatory life-lesson passages are undeniably cheesy, they are never less than sincere.