Celebrating a traveler's bible.

• Author: Robinson, Richard
• Position: South American Handbook

SEPTEMBER 1, 1998, marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the South American Handbook, the longest-running travel guidebook in the English language and almost certainly the best-loved by its readers. Almost daily, the mail bag fills with travelers' letters of appreciation, as well as news reports and random jottings from the farthest comers of the continent. The special relationship between editor and traveling reader has been nurtured over many years and is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job for Ben Box, who has worked on the Handbook since 1980 and was appointed its editor nine years later.

"Some people have been writing to us for years and have become part of the `family,'" says Box. "We receive a constant stream of communications-snippets of news by postcard or e-mail as well as lengthy bulletins from full-scale expeditions."

Graham Greene used to address his comments to "the best guidebook in existence" and ex-Python Michael Palin recently wrote of The Handbook: "I carried the volume in my bag from Cape Horn to Cartagena and consulted it every night for two and a haft months. And I wouldn't do that for anything else except my hip flask."

Box draws on the in-depth knowledge of a network of correspondents throughout South America--a retired businessman in Argentina, a Brazilian artist, an Ecuador-based travel writer--all long-term residents of their respective countries. In addition, he travels to South America "twice a year, publishing schedules permitting" to fill gaps in coverage, visit his correspondents, and to explore off-beat places. "South America never fails to surprise and excite," he says.

The mass of data assembled by Box and his colleagues is checked, collated, and edited before each annual new edition is whittled down to the condensed and ordered arrangement of maps and...