Profiling Lonely Planet’s Tony Wheeler

Linda Watanabe McFerrin profiles the guidebook publisher in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. One interesting tidbit in the story I don’t recall coming across before: Lonely Planet guidebooks, she writes, “have been used to plan rebellions and successfully depose dictators. According to Reuters correspondent Aidan Hartley (in his book ‘The Zanzibar Chest’), Ethiopian rebels informed advance troops with a map of Addis Ababa torn hastily from his copy of Lonely Planet’s ‘Africa on a Shoestring’ when they overthrew the Mengistu dictatorship.” Perhaps there’s another guidebook to be done: “African Coups on a Shoestring.”
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