Verne's most outrageous "voyage extraordinaire" - a hasty world tour taken up on a gentlemen's club wager! Mr. Phileas Fogg, master of precision, enters into the strangest wager ever made over the whist table - that he will circle the globe in 80 days. The news astounds Jean Passepartout, sometime wandering minstrel, bareback rider, funambulist, gymnast and fireman, now turned valet to Mr. Fogg in the expectancy of a quiet and well-regulated life. For the next 80 days, their lives are anything but quiet or well-regulated.

Jules Verne preferred to call himself an author of "voyages extraordinaires." An extraordinary voyage it is, from Fogg's announcement to Passepartout that they are to "leave for Dover in ten minutes," to his triumphant return to the Reform Club at the last second!