James rockefeller liv heyerdahl biography

“What is there in man … that demands ‘change, travel, excitement,’ as was so succinctly stated by Toad in that delicious volume, ‘Wind in the Willows’?” asks James S. Rockefeller Jr. in his memoir “Wayfarer.’ It’s an apt quote, as the author and Toad share many qualities – chiefly a mercurial passion for adventure and anything to do with an engine.

Rockefeller kept a journal from a young age.

Thus, at 92, he is able to re-create with remarkable clarity adventures, exotic places, conversations and eccentric people from his long life. Coupled with his knack for descriptive writing (e. g. a farmer “as gnarled as a hemlock root, with a face so red and pointed it could have been dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm”), the result is a candid and captivating story whose connective tissue is the people he embraced on his travels and the four strong and indelible women that he fell in love with along the way.

He skates quickly over most of his childhood.