Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum (1900)

I know, this book is old--written in 1900, it chronicles a trip that began five years before, and what travelogue withstands a century's test of time? This one. It is a remarkable volume that reads as modern as anything being written today, and is a good deal more entertaining than most travel tales.
It has been said that Joshua Slocum’s autobiographical account of his solo trip around the world is one of the most remarkable — and entertaining — travel narratives of all time. Agreed.
When he set off alone from Boston aboard the thirty-six foot wooden sloop Spray in April 1895, Captain Slocum went on to join the ranks of the world’s great circumnavigators — Magellan, Drake, and Cook. But by circling the globe without crew or consorts, Slocum would outdo them all: his three-year solo voyage of more than 46,000 miles remains unmatched in maritime history for courage, skill, and determination. And the scariest part of all is his journey from Boston back home at the end of the trip, so it is a thriller to the end.
Sailing Alone Around the World recounts Slocum’s wonderful adventures encountered along the way: hair-raising encounters with pirates off Gibraltar and savage Indians in Tierra del Fuego; raging tempests and treacherous coral reefs; flying fish for breakfast in the Pacific; and a hilarious visit with Henry (”Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”) Stanley in South Africa. A century later, Slocum’s incomparable book endures as of the greatest narratives of adventure I have ever read. Truely wonderful and highly recommended.