This book could be divided into three parts: Crichton's time as a medical student at Harvard; his travels; and his foray into psychic stuff, so I'll divide my review up the same way.

➽ n  Harvard Medical Schooln
I love this book so much, and I haven’t even reached the part that I picked the book up for (the travels, of course). In this first part, Crichton describes his time as a medical student at Harvard and what lead him to quitting medicine just as he graduated to become a writer instead. (And side note: this is making me question my life choices all over again. Between Crichton’s disillusionment with medicine and a conversation with my brother I had yesterday about life in the hospital and how being a doctor isn’t all that fulfilling, I’m re-thinking everything I’ve wanted to do in my own life. Ugh.) But back to the book. It was so interesting to see how differently medicine was practiced nearly fifty years ago.

➽ n  Travelsn
It starts in LA where Crichton had moved to be in the movie business. In the apartment complex he moved into, the manager listed “MD” after the title because he thought it added more prestige to the place, so every time there was a medical emergency, the doorman would end up calling Crichton, who wasn’t licensed to practice medicine. And a series of funny events ensued (well, they were funny when they weren’t sad).

Psychiatry In the next chapter, Crichton starts seeing a psychiatrist because his wife wants to get back together, but he doesn’t. She uses reverse psychology to get him to start seeing one when he doesn’t want to by telling him, this doctor is so busy he probably won’t be able to see you anyway. He takes that as a challenge and immediately makes an appointment. They start talking and he helps Crichton realize that he’s rather insecure about his life despite all his successes. He helps talk him through several of his next dating relationships as well. But my favorite part is just that someone so successful as Crichton needed help and reached out too. It’s okay to be in therapy and it doesn’t make you any less of a person.

In Thailand, he discovers that despite how much he’s traveled throughout his life, he isn’t very culturally aware and actually hasn’t seen most of the world outside of North America and Western Europe and he decides to change that. This chapter may have also contained my least favorite part of the book when they go to visit a "whore house". I was so disgusted and sad he would have even stepped foot into that place in the first place.

In Shangri-la, he visits the people of Hunza where he claims that people live to be 140 years old on a diet of apricots and are immune to disease.

Upon doing some research, it turns out that Shangri-la is just a ficitional place mentioned in a 1933 novel by James Hilton. As for the Hunza valley, it’s a real mountainous valley in Pakistan. This is the only scientific article I could find about the matter, and it turns out this claim is not exactly true. This  journal article also touches on the matter.

And I won't summarize the rest of it because it's definitely worth a read!

➽ n  Psychic stuffn
This is the part of the book that I could have done without, but he does make a good case for it at the end of the book in his postscript.

In conclusion, I’ve had this on my TBR for like 10 years now. Not sure how I even first heard of it, but I’m so so so glad I finally decided to pick it up. <3 I want more books like this in my life. Random ones you won’t see any book bloggers or bookstagrammers talking about, ones that were published decades ago, ones without pretty covers, but ones that mean so much to me.

Random stuff I learned:
➽ "During the Korean War, post-moretms on young men had shown that the American diet produced advanced arteriosclerosis by the age of 17.

➽ “I demonstrated a great value to keeping a diary, and have kept one even since. I reread Franklin’s Autobiography, and noted that he kept a record of himself, as I did, for exactly the same reasons. This most practical and observant of men had decided that careful record-keeping was the only way to find out what he was really doing.”

➽ “The creator of Sherlock Holmes was a Scottish physician, a lapsed Catholic, a vigorous athlete, and a Victorian gentleman. Although he is most closely associated with the cool, deductive mind of his fictional detective, Conan Doyle showed an interest in spiritualism, mysticism, and metaphysics even in medical school. His stories frequently contained a strong element of the supernatural; in such works as The Hound of the Baskervilles there is a continuous tension between a supernatural and a mundane explanation for events.”

➽ “Unaccustomed to direct experience, we can come to fear it. We don’t want to read a book or see a museum show until we’ve read the reviews so that we know what to think. We lose the confidence to perceive for ourselves. We want to know the meaning of an experience before we have it.
We become frightened of direct experience, and we will go to elaborate lengths to avoid it.
I found I liked to travel, because it got me out of my routines and my familiar patterns."

➽ “Has anyone in this room had their tonsils and adenoids removed? Has anyone had a radical mastectomy for breast cancer? Has anyone been treated in an intensive care unit? Has anyone had coronary bypass surgery? Of course, many people had.

I said, Then you’re all knowledgeable about superstitions, because all these procedures are examples of superstitious behavior. They are procedures carried out without scientific evidence that they produce any benefit. This society spends billions of dollars a year on superstitious medicine, and that is a problem—and an expense—far more important than astrology columns in daily newspapers, which are so vigorously attacked by the brainpower of CSICOP.

And I added, Let’s not be too quick to deny the power of superstition in our own lives. Which of us, having suffered a heart attack, would refuse to be treated in an intensive-care unit just because such units are of unproven value? We’d all take the ICU. We all do.

I then went on to mention the many cases of fraud in research science. Isaac Newton may have fudged his data;4 certainly Gregor Mendel, father of Mendelian inheritance, did.5 The Italiano mathematician Lazzarini faked an experiment to “determine the value of pi, and his result went unquestioned for more than half a century.6 British psychologist Sir Cyril Burt invented not only his data, but research assistants to gather it.7 In more recent years, there were cases of fraud involving William T. Summerlin of Sloan-Kettering, Dr. John Long of the Harvard Medical School, and Dr. John Darsee of the Harvard Medical School.”

➽ “There are, in fact, well-studied subjects who appear to defy scientific explanation—in particular the famous medium of the last century, Mrs. Piper, who was championed by William James, professor of psychology at Harvard. Mrs. Piper was subjected to intense scrutiny for nearly a quarter of a century, but no skeptic was ever able to demonstrate fraud or trickery.”

I found it appalling that Michael Crichton so calmly depicts waiting outside a brothel in Asia while his host has sex with children. I suppose we're supposed to think he's a good guy for not indulging himself, but the fact that he is having a conversation with someone while they wait, and never objecting or contacting authorities is shocking to me. As Edmund Burke said, "all that's necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing". After reading this book, I don't know that I'd even be able to think of Crichton as a good man.
The rest of the stories are ok, but a lot of his "travels" are metaphysical, which is not what I was expecting. Somehow, even ignoring the child sex slavery incident, he managed to portray himself as pretty much of a jerk. I haven't read all of his books, but a few were on my list to get to latter. After reading Travels, I think I'll just cross them off.

There are lots of good reasons not to like or to outright dislike Michael Crichton's Travels.

He shares very directly his understanding about how women differ from men during the 1980s compared to his experiences in the 60s and 70s. He studies things like psychic powers and auras and spoon bending. He gets married again and again. He might be at his most sympathetic while talking to a cactus. The chapter on Sean Connery felt too much like name dropping (though I liked Connery's advice: always tell the truth. That makes it their problem).

At times, I felt like Crichton learned the same lessons over and over (and over) without realizing that he was dealing with the same problem throughout his life.

The account ends with an essay criticizing the scientific community for its skepticism of psychic phenomena rather than the introspective conclusion I'd been expecting throughout the book.

Basically, it would be easy to dismiss the whole of this book using any one or two parts of it.

The only exception might be his descriptions of med school, which are raw and vividly described. I was impressed, and sometimes shocked, by these moments. I was also struck by how many doctors he met who felt powerless to help people.

But at all times in this memoir, I found myself thinking something like "here's a Harvard trained physician speaking candidly about auras and psychic powers and what he thinks about just about everything."

And I also recalled the scene at the end of Pulp Fiction when Jules explains that a dog is dirty, but it has personality. So it's not filthy. This book has personality, so I'm not inclined to dismiss it.

And let's not forget this advice from David Brooks, which goes something like "our character is defined by our attempts to wrestle with our personal flaws." Brooks does not mention our victory lap after defeating or solving our flaws. Our personal flaws, from what I can tell, are our personal flaws, and we should do our best to recognize and manage them perennially.

Crichton could have self censored, and didn't. It takes guts to do that, and sometimes that goes a long way.

Although I have liked some of Crichton's novels, this book of travel essays clearly shows him to be a self centered and arrogant person. Disappointing. I did not care about his many failed relationships and his obsession with diving.

Memoir of Crichton's journeys around the world & into his own psyche. Engagingly conversational writing style, which is very inviting & facilitates rapid reading. Intriguing but often offputting content. He begins the book w/an insolent narrative of his early medical school studies & hospital rotations beginning w/dissections of human bodies, showcasing the arrogant detachment of doctors through their behavior (ie; throwing around kidney & liver organs like footballs during autopsy studies, also partaking in excessive binge drinking) & their demeaning terminology for patients (ie; "Gourd Ward" or "Squash Court" for severely impaired Neuro patients). He proceeds to chronicle habitual pot-smoking on-the-job by many staff, before conducting rounds (cos it's so hard for THEM to handle their patients' debilitation!). Such background seems to explain a lot about the condescending attitudes often encountered by patients from doctors. Nevertheless, this book is still utterly readable, almost compellingly "un-putdown-able" at times. Crichton lifts the veil on people, places & activities, in ways which intrigue the reader's curiosity. Unfortunately, he sounds like a gigantic egotistical A** at times! - (ie; this 5x married guy quips things like "I had to go back & attend the son of a bitch's funeral & mess up my much needed vacation" when his own Father dies!!?!! ). He talks about the "subject dearest to my heart, me." He engages in ageism a few times (ie; considering a 66-yr old man "elderly," which was sadly ironic, since it turns out the author actually didn't live past that age & the 66-yo man he underestimated was actually quite vigorous in his life). Crichton also indulges sexism in some extremely offensive ways (ie; on his nauseating trip to Bangkok, where he acquiesces to a prominent "rake's" urging to visit child-brothels filled w/poor, pre-pubescent girls). He brags about dating "a sex symbol." He reveals his prejudices against other branches of his profession (ie; psychiatry, which is quite odd considering all the mind-altering experiences he avidly seeks & gives credence to, yet he still disparages psychiatry?! And despite demeaning it, he goes out of his way to impress the psychiatrist that his wife urges him to see: "I didn't really believe in psychiatry ... but I was challenged to present myself to Dr Norton in a fascinating way ... For an hour, I revealed all my most unusual sides. I made jokes. I expressed provocative opinions. I worked really hard to interest him in me"). He talks about schemes to try to secretly date multiple women in the same workplace simultaneously, instead of just being straightforward & up-front about it. Very self-Indulgent. Crichton seems almost to consider himself a self-appointed guru of wisdom advising the rest of us; but I don't consider his personal conclusions particularly convincing. His derogatory statements about Christianity are amusingly ironic, considering the number of flaky things he's done & believed in w/much less substantial evidence or foundations (ie; he ridicules the Burning Bush & the parting of the Red Sea; yet explores & readily participates in activities like spoon-bending, auras, psychic readings & astral travel). He talks like a gigantic baby at times, calling things "stupid" if he doesn't like them. A lot of cocky, privileged white male attitude on display here: conquer, exploit & destroy - all done w/a sense of witty glibness. Sad that such a financially prosperous, well-known man found nothing better to devote his riches to, than indulging his far-flung whims to travel & gawk at other cultures w/hardly a drop of compassion in his retellings of the many poverty-stricken & exploited people he witnessed. He was moved to seek & discover himself; but not to help any others? He felt no call-to-action after all the things he saw?? (More famed people, like Paul Newman, have established non-profits & helped children, etc.). Didn't know Crichton was so self-centered; I'd had a different idea about him. A shame to discover this. Given these caveats, I can't give his work top score. I still have to admit, it's almost impossible not to devour this book, as Crichton takes us forward from his medical years, into the years he spends traveling around the world to exotic locations, exploring alternate realities & alluding to his life as a writer & film producer/director. His postcript chapter is actually quite focused & thoughtful, as a paradigm for how to think about new, unknown experiences. It examines the chinks in the formidable armor of the rational/scientific perspective, urging us to remain alive & open to the unexplainable ("there is more to reality than measurements will ever reveal"). There's so much to experience vicariously thru this memoir (despite some of the serious reservations that the book invoked in me, about the author). Readers can scan thru & cull the valuable aspects that resonate for them personally, leaving the rest of the rubbish behind. Given this, the book is still an intriguing, worthwhile read.

This book was read to me. A very interesting autobiography. It seemed to me an open honest
account, sometimes self critical . Crichton is a very talented writer and that talent pervades
his own account of his tragically short life.

Where to start with this book?

Well, first of all, not everyone is going to like it. Michael Crichton is far more open and honest in this book than almost any other person in any autobiography I've ever read. By far the most obvious example of this is a scene where he talks about visiting a child-brothel with friends. Nothing happens more than visiting it (thank god, or this would be an instant 1-star read and I'd burn any book I own that was written by the man), but it is disturbing nonetheless. However, maybe what is more disturbing was how he came to that experience, how it highlighted some peoples willingness to go along with the plans of others when out of their comfort zone rather than speaking up and standing out.

From that story to an epiphany he had while cutting open a human head in a biology class, there's a lot here that makes it read like a horror novel.

Yet, despite this, I found Travels to be a surprisingly deep and interesting story. Michael Crichton was clearly a very introspective person and a lot of his life discoveries I found to be eye-opening. I'm still not on board with some of the paranormal elements he touches on (psychics, mysticism, etc), but I am more inclined to at least read about it with an open mind after reading this book. It isn't that he said anything profound to change my mind, but more that he did a masterful job in taking you on his life journey with him so that you felt each epiphany and paradigm shift as he experienced them.

This is one of the few books I have read where there were moments that genuinely made me stop and think about my own life to see how the lessons he learned might apply.

That being said, this book was not all good. It was a little slow and samey at times, with many chapters detailing new stories that only reinforced earlier experiences in such a way that they felt the same. There is also his disturbing habit of barely talking about his wives and family in the book save for when they joined him on his travels. It made him feel very detached from humanity and maybe a little shallow. Of course, it could also be that he just didn't feel right talking about those personal moments, but it still made him feel a little cold.

So all in all this is a mixed bag of oversharing and glaring omissions, horrifying experiences and funny stories, and basically just a strange read that I was simultaneously never comfortable with but enjoyed overall.

I think this is one of those books you'll either get something from and enjoy like myself, or you'll absolutely hate it and give it only one star.

For me, it's 4-stars and was worth the read.

Interesting.....
The topics of mental processes and disease, psychological reason for accidents, physical illnesses associated with certain personalities, minor illnesses (cold, sore throats) occurring at times of stress. All of which I believe do occur.
Funny....
chapter on Sex and Love in LA
Thought provoking.....
the idea (presented by his girlfriend)that the best way to think about the sexes was to imagine there were no differences between them. Quite a bit is written of his turbulent relationships with women as well as the difficult relationship with his father.

Written in ‘88 but it was just the perfect read, particularly with the mostly exotic locales described, during this COVID pandemic when my own travels have been cancelled.

More than a travel journey, he also writes of inner excursions; his maturation as a man, his success with meditation and exploring paranormal and psychic phenoms including channeling (himself), past life regressions and astral travel. All those topics I’m fine with but understand many other readers would put the book down when he “goes deep” as he says.

The postscript is a little odd as part of this book but interesting in addressing the relationship of science to ‘other reality’, I’ll call it. Dry but worthwhile to adjust anyone’s perspective. (Or skip it and just pick out the chapters on glorious adventures in exotic countries many people have never been to and some of which most people have never even heard of.) I did make a copy of the postscript to reread sometime as there is ALOT to ponder. Oh, and do look for his quotes from Lao-tzu in the postscript as their meanings are needed in navigating this COVID pandemic (2020].

I thought I was really going to like this book, despite the fact that it really is *very* different than what you'd think. Much less about travel, and more about his life, period. The whole first section was about his experiences earning his medical degree, for example. That part was great, if quite dated. But then he began to come across as a very repulsive person, and I'm just glad he isn't an author I read much of, or he'd have ruined his books for me. Lots of dangerous, ridiculous New Age mumbo-jumbo...and then he visits a child whorehouse. Yes, he does. He goes in, looks at the the little 7 and 8 year old children being "sexy", and while he decides not to actually have sex with a child himself, his friends do. And he seems to make no judgements on this. He just smokes a cigarette and waits for them to finish. Nice. Really nice. I'll be avoiding anything more put out by Crichton, whether books or films.

Michael Crichton’s Travels is more than a memoir—it’s a call to step outside your comfort zone and embrace the transformative power of exploration. For me, this book didn’t just ignite wanderlust; it inspired action. Crichton’s vivid accounts of climbing mountains, diving in the ocean, and trekking through remote landscapes fueled my own journey to complete the Seven Peaks of New England while grieving my own dad—a goal I’m proud to have achieved.

What makes Travels so impactful is its exploration of reinvention in the aftermath of tragedy and burnout. Crichton’s openness about his struggles and the solace he finds in the unknown resonated deeply with me. His experiences climbing Kilimanjaro and tracking gorillas in Rwanda left a particularly lasting impression, inspiring two dreams that still sit at the top of my bucket list. The way he describes the raw beauty of the mountain and the profound connection he felt observing gorillas in their natural habitat was both humbling and exhilarating.

That said, the section about Thailand mars an otherwise inspiring journey. Crichton’s descriptions and reflections in this part feel at odds with the vulnerability and curiosity that define the rest of the book. It’s a jarring detour in what is otherwise a profound exploration of healing, discovery, and self-reinvention.

Despite this flaw, Travels remains a book I return to whenever I need a reminder to embrace the extraordinary and to always keep a spirit of curiosity alive. Crichton’s journey is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of adventure to renew us.

This book is a great read. A lot of gems about perspective, education, experiences and ways of living life.

I enjoyed this book a lot because it speaks to the adventurer in me. Furthermore, the adventurer in me who is not yet fully exposed, engaged, understood. The adventurer who is covered up by other roles and states like son, sibling, student, unemployed, without adequate funds. And yes, I know there are controversial moments in this autobiography about which I too have questions for the author. Still, I found the stories of schooling and creativity and social interactions and new cultures and paranormal phenomena personally inspiring at a time when I feel in a drought of those trips. I definitely did not expect the book to take a turn to consciousness, altered states, and the paranormal world halfway through; however, I am even happier it did. I think Crichton’s first-hand experience and balanced/skeptical narrative of the “inner travels” make it all more compelling. I am intrigued to read more about connections (or the lack thereof) between medicine and consciousness. I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes to learn about the world around us.