The title of author and entrepreneur Corey Mortensen’s book, EMBRACING BEWILDERMENT, comes from a poem by Rumi: “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment is intuitive knowledge.”

If this creates the expectation of profound insights, most readers are going to be disappointed. EMBRACING BEWILDERMENT is nothing more than a travel book about Mortensen’s experiences in Western and Eastern Europe, Great Britain, and Asia.

To be sure, the book is an excellent travel guide. Mortensen provides highlights for each country he visits, such as the bull run in Spain and the waterfall in Iceland and the bars in Scotland, all based on his personal experiences. He also excels at providing what he calls “useless information”—historical, statistical, and sociological titbits about the country. These include the number of deaths from the bull run, how France invaded Vietnam in 1857, and the dangerous tiger bees in Taiwan.

Unfortunately, he never goes beyond this. Mortensen has no talent for odd observations, interesting anecdotes, or bringing people to life. All his descriptions of people are like this: “Chiseled from stone, the gods broke the mold when they gave James his looks. The guy was stunning. In addition to his looks, he had a great personality.”

When he hooks up with a woman named Cindy from a previous trip, hoping to see if there’s still any chemistry there, his account similarly falls short: “In the end, reconnecting with Cindy was bittersweet. While it was fun to catch up, the spark wasn’t as bright as I remembered it, and after a little conversation, the spark was extinguished entirely.”

These shortcomings could be overlooked if Mortensen’s pseudo-profound title didn’t promise something more than an extended travel brochure. Even his subtitle is misleading: “A reluctant entrepreneur’s journey—an unconventional European summer twisting into a mind-bending excursion through Southeast Asia.” The “reluctant entrepreneur” part comes in the book’s final section, where he goes to Hong Kong to help out a friend who’s dealing with a Chinese factory for his chair company. This is actually one of the more interesting parts of the book, since Mortensen provides some original insights into the practical world of business.

Generally, though, EMBRACING BEWILDERMENT is only useful for readers who plan to make similar trips themselves. It lacks the depth and descriptive power of D.H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia and Mornings in Mexico, the keen observations of V.S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness and A Turn in the South, and the wit of Bill Bryson’s Down Under and African Diary. Overall, the author lacks any skill in drawing characters, providing deep insights, or making original observations from his travels.

EMBRACING BEWILDERMENT is a good travel book in that it highlights key features, customs, and brief histories of each country author Cory Mortensen visits.

~Kevin Baldeosingh for IndieReader