Fodor's Travel Guides

A global travel guide book series, started by a former spy

THE A5 REVIEW

One of the longest-standing modern travel guide series was started in the 1930s by a Hungarian-American man named Eugene Fodor.  His first book was called On the Continent – The Entertaining Travel Annual, written to provide a more current and less boring guide to travel in Europe.  His guides were successful, respected not only for the standard practical advice expected from most guidebooks but for providing helpful information on local culture.  His next book called 1937 in Europe was written specifically for American travelers, and the next 1938 version was a New York Times bestseller.  Fodor became a US citizen in 1942 and joined the U.S. military during World War II.  In the 1950s, the CIA recruited him to utilize his language skills and local expertise to act as a spy in Europe, also providing counterintelligence agents as travel writers, helping to fund his business.  Fodor told the New York Times in 1975 that "I told them to make sure and send me real writers, not civil engineers. I wanted to get some writing out of them. And I did, too”.  Fodor’s Travel today has guides now covering over 300 destinations with over 700 local writers. 

See more information on Fodor's Travel Guides, on Amazon

A SAMPLE OF FODOR'S TRAVEL PUBLICATIONS (with links to Amazon)

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INTERESTING LINKS:

• Eugene Fodor died in 1991 at the age of 85.  Read his obituary from the New York Times.
• NBC News has a nice article on Eugene Fodor and his history as a spy.
  

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FODOR'S 2018 GO LIST

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