The Voluntouris

1. A guy who attempts to save the world in an attempt to save himself. 2. Someone who can only do it while on vacation. In 2007, when Ken Budd was 39, his father collapsed. He'd just finished 18 holes of golf. He had been retired for a year. By the time Ken and his wife got to the hospital it was too late. Over the next few weeks, as condolence calls flooded in, as Ken and his mother and his brother remembered their father and husband, as they grieved, Ken began thinking about parents, and children, about people: What do we leave behind? To whom are we responsible? How can we ensure this world is a better place for our having been on it? Kens wife is his childhood sweetheart. They have been married 15 years. Ken cannot imagine life without her, and yet - she doesn't want children. He does. In the wake of his fathers death, he really did. She still didn't. And then Ken got an e-mail, subject line: Katrina Relief Volunteer Opportunities. Ken signed up. He went to New Orleans. And then he kept going: Costa Rica, to teach English; China, to work with special needs children; Ecuador, to study the rainforest; Palestine, to work in a refugeecamp, Kenya, to work with orphans. The goal: to make the world a better place, a little bit, one trip at a time. And, at the same time, to figure out his place in it. The result is a journey that is part armchair traveller, part do-gooder manifesto, part personal journey. Wry and funny, heartbreakingly honest, as exotic in location as it is familiar in its concerns, THE VOLUNTOURIST is a memoir that will inspire you, captivate you, and linger in your mind long after you've turned the last page.