Product Description

Jules Verne’s career as a novelist began in 1863, when he struck a new vein in fiction—stories that combined popular science and exploration. In Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg rashly bets his companions £20,000 that he can travel around the entire globe in just eighty days—and he is determined not to lose. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, the reserved Englishman immediately sets off for Dover, accompanied by his hot-blooded French manservant, Passepartout. Traveling by train, steamship, sailboat, sledge, and even elephant, they must overcome storms, kidnappings, natural disasters, Sioux attacks, and the dogged Inspector Fix of Scotland Yard to win the extraordinary wager. Combining exploration, adventure, and a thrilling race against time, Around the World in Eighty Days gripped audiences upon its publication and remains hugely popular to this day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10363 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-25
• Original language: French
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
An entry in The Whole Story series, this is an annotated edition of the 1873 classic, printed on coated stock and enhanced by both atmospheric new paintings and hundreds of postage-stamp-sized 19th-century photos and prints. The explanatory captions (credited to Jean-Pierre Verdet only on the copyright page) accompanying the latter are largely superfluous, although they do add random snippets of historical background to the journey. It's the views of old ships and trains, of costumed natives, and distant ports of call - from Port Said to San Francisco - that evoke the tale's panorama of the exotic, just as the many lurid Verne trading cards and other spinoffs capture the plot's melodramatic highlights. A good way to put both book and story in context for young armchair travelers. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
In 1863, Jules Verne (1828-1905) published Five Weeks in a Balloon, and struck a new vein in fiction - stories that combined popular science and exploration. He wrote 54 novels in the Extraordinary Voyages series.