Chasing the Book
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 08.02.05 | 11:08 AM ET
The August issue of Outside features a terrific story by Patrick Symmes about the Israeli backpacker guidebook phenomenon he calls “the Book.” What is the Book? “The Book has no one author, editor, or publisher,” he writes. 
“Defined physically, it is merely a set of loosely connected, handmade, decentralized notebooks cached throughout the vagabond meccas of Latin America and Asia—a collective, disorganized stash of travel tips, phone numbers, discount deals, crazed illustrations, conspiracy theories, backbiting marginalia, and boozy reminiscence, penned by and for the deeply broke backpackers of the world.” According to Symmes, while other little-known, improvised guidebooks exist, the Book is “the best unknown guidebook in the world.” Symmes is the author of Chasing Che: A Motorcylce Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
