Tony Wheeler founded Lonely Planet with his wife Maureen. The first Lonely Planet guidebook was Across Asia on the cheap (1973; Italian edition: EDT 2012), that tells about their trip from England to Australia following the “hippy trail”. Nowadays, Lonely Planet Publications has offices in three continents, with 400 employees, 250 authors, over 600 titles and 120 million copies sold worldwide (of which more than 8 million in Italy alone). His recent trips to Congo, Colombia, Haiti, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe are the subject of his latest book, Dark Lands, published in Italian by EDT after the success of Bad Lands. Un turista sull’asse del male (2007) and Un giorno, viaggiando…The Lonely Planet Story (2006).