His magazine is a must for people with wanderlust.

• Position: George Kane - People

You can't tell a book by its cover, but the number of mosquito-net advertisers in Great Expeditions magazine tells you a lot about George Kane's business strategy.

In its eighth quarterly edition under Kane, the Raleigh-based magazine doesn't attempt to go after, say, the 757,000 upscale readers of Conde Nast Traveler. Instead, it serves 30,000 U.S. and Canadian adventurers who'd rather spend their travel bucks on something like a Malaysian sea-worm festival than on escargot in Paris.

Most subscribers are 35- to 55-year-old professionals who travel four to six weeks a year, and lawyer-adventurer Kane, 43, says they are definitely not Ugly Americans. Instead, they're "people who use travel to learn more about the world and environment."

Kane, whose deceased father owned Durham's George Kane Construction Co., grew up in Henderson and earned a political-science degree from Florida's New College in 1973. He worked for The Franklin Times in Louisburg as a reporter/editor and the Library of Congress before entering law school at UNC Chapel Hill in 1978. He practiced corporate law in Raleigh for several years until opening his own office.

Canadian geologist Lawrence Buser launched Great Expeditions in 1978, eventually gaining 9,000 subscribers. In 1989, Kane inquired about ad rates while thinking about starting a travel agency and was told Great Expeditions was for sale.

Kane has increased its size from 44 pages to 64, doubled circulation in six months and changed to...