Bad Lands

£7.99

Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet, travelled through some of the world’s most repressive and dangerous regimes. Wheeler says, “When Mr Bush produced his ‘Axis of Evil’ list, my first thought was ‘I’ve got to go there.’ I’d visited Iran several times and found it to be a beautiful and welcoming country but I’d never managed to make it to North Korea or Iraq. North Korea’s utterly reclusive nature has always fascinated me and I’d had a long interest in the tourist potential of Iraq. So the Evil Axis trio formed the core of my Bad Lands and it was no trouble to come up with a half dozen other contenders."

As he travels, he considers each country’s attitude to human rights and terrorism, to ask ‘what makes a country truly evil?’ and ‘how bad is bad?’. It’s a timely comment, written in his usual no-nonsense style, making for an absorbing and frank look at life in these countries.