Abstract: One of the most enduring forms of Western political thought is also among its least examined: the travel story. This dissertation scrutinizes the connections between travel narratives and political knowledge, as evidenced throughout the Western tradition---in Herodotus' History, More's Utopia, Montesquieu's Persian Letters, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name . First, because travel stories are broadly engaging, they can bring philosophical knowledge into public life. More importantly, travel stories offer insight into the human condition---into its inherent tensions, restlessness and irrationality---that other approaches to political knowledge slight or overlook. They speak to the particularities of experience and the plurality of cultures but also invite reflection about what is humanly universal. Ultimately, travel narratives underscore the centrality of the political to human life and make clear that politics is the most basic and yet also the most grand arena for the enacting of humanity's creative and destructive possibilities.