Trade Up Around The World

Join award-winning reporter Michael Wigge on a wild ride as he trades up an apple to a house in Hawaii in forty-two steps!

In Trade Up Around the World (book title: How to Barter for Paradise), Wigge travels through fourteen countries and across six continents exchanging goods for more valuable ones to turn a bitten apple into a Hawaiian dream home—and he meets an array of good-humored people who take his deals. Putting on his Barterman persona, he trades a partially-eaten apple for sixteen cigarettes in Germany; a couple of trades later in India, he fixes up a motorized rickshaw and trades it for silk; in Australia, a millionaire amuses himself by offering him an art piece for the silk if Wigge feeds a wild crocodile.

Finally, he arrives in Hawaii armed with two bicycles, a surfboard, Portuguese porcelain, three solid-gold coins, a Porsche wristwatch, a record by musician Coati Mundi with a contract for 25 percent of the proceeds from his next single release, a voucher for a two-night stay in a mansion in L.A., and a piece of original artwork by painter Alex Stenzel—now he just has to find someone to give him a house in exchange.

On the 200-day journey around the world, Wigge makes forty-two trades and meets strange, kind, funny, friendly, eccentric, and good-natured people who help him in his quest. It’s a journey you won’t want to miss!