Published for the first time in the U.S.--one of the two diaries on which the movie The Motorcycle Diaries is based--the moving and at times hilarious account of Che Guevara and Alberto Granado's eight-month tour of South America in 1952.

In 1952 Alberto Granado, a young doctor, and his friend Ernesto Guevara, a 23-year-old medical student from a distinguished Buenos Aires family, decided to explore their continent. They set off from Cordoba in Argentina on a Norton 500cc motorbike and traveled through Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. The duo's adventures vary from the...