Book Description: This poetic diary documents Robert Eisenman’s life-changing backpacking journey through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the early 1960s. Eisenman’s search for meaning took him to San Francisco and its Beat culture, to Paris, to Lebanon, Israel, and far beyond. The author's keen eye catches it all: pre-hippie hotels, midnight encounters with beautiful women, “India’s ceaseless fever,” the lure of distant cities and landscapes. Alternately hopeful and critical, these poems vividly etch the pleasures and perils of a bygone era and their profound effect on one young poet.