Home Books We Came, We Saw, We Left: A Family Gap Year

We Came, We Saw, We Left: A Family Gap Year

We Came, We Saw, We Left: A Family Gap Year

by Charles Wheelan

W. W. Norton & Company ·2021 ·288 pages ·Memoir
Near the Top
Near the Top
I Index
55/99
Maybe Someday

46/99

Critics

Near the Top

64/99

Readers

n/a

Scholars

41/99

Rating

52/99

Volume

54/99

Rating

75/99

Volume

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About This Book

What would happen if you quit your life for a year? In a pre–COVID-19 world, the Wheelan family decided to find out; leaving behind work, school, and even the family dogs to travel the world on a modest budget. Equal parts "how-to" and "how-not-to"—and with an eye toward a world emerging from a pandemic—We Came, We Saw, We Left is the insightful and often hilarious account of one family's gap-year experiment. Wheelan paints a picture of adventure and connectivity, juggling themes of local politics, global economics, and family dynamics while exploring answers to questions like: How do you sneak out of a Peruvian town that has been barricaded by the local army? And where can you get treatment for a flesh-eating bacteria your daughter picked up two continents ago? From Colombia to Cambodia, We Came, We Saw, We Left chronicles nine months across six continents with three teenagers. What could go wrong?


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Reviews

"It is also a disarming repudiation of those patronizing and "powerful social forces" that prevent too many families from similar adventures, and a waggish examination of nuclear (pun intended) family dynamics ..."

Carson Vaughan· NPR Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"A vivid chronicle of a family's intrepid sojourn ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

"A professor of economics at Dartmouth College, delivers a humorous account of the year he spent traveling the world with his family ..."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Wheelan is a lucid and likable storyteller, and his antic family dialogues are spot-on, but he is not — and does not pretend to be — a poet of place ..."

Amity Gaige· The New York Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"lighthearted in tone, but intelligent, thoughtful and informative ..."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune Read review ↗ Near the Top

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