David Porter was a naval officer and a diplomat, not a professional writer; he wrote Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean (1815) and Constantinople and Its Environs (1835) at his friends' insistence, not to fulfill his literary aspiration. Yet his travel narratives have merit. Well received at the time of its publication, Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean is a document of early American nationalism and of American rivalry with Great Britain, an important chapter in the War of 1812. Porter's Constantinople and Its Environs, a loose compilation of letters he wrote to James Kirke Paulding , has remained largely unknown, though its multiplicity of voices and themes makes it a kind of precursor of Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad (1869). If Porter was not blessed with great literary talent, he was at least lucky enough to be among the first Americans who would bring home to...