Thrilling Cities

Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, takes readers on a journey through the lesser-known locales of fourteen cities around the world, creating a captivating time capsule of these thrilling destinations in the twentieth century.

Ian Fleming's world travels and interests, as well as his journalism and wartime experiences, lent authority to everything he wrote. In 1959, the Sunday Times commissioned Fleming to write a series of dispatches from the world's most beguiling locales. The result was Thrilling Cities, a masterpiece of well-observed travelogue that stands ably alongside the author's Bond canon.

From Hong Kong to Honolulu, New York to Naples, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favor of underground haunts, and mingling with celebrities, gangsters, and geishas. The result is a series of vivid snapshots of a mysterious, vanished world from a twentieth century Western perspective.

Just like his most famous fictional creation, Ian Fleming was a well-traveled man of the world who knew where to go to find excitement, adventure...and danger. In Thrilling Cities, he takes us along on a journey of international intrigue worthy of James Bond.