TITLE: Ask Arthur Frommer

ISBN: 978-0-470-41849-9

Topic/Genre: Travel

Editor: Eikenburg, E.

Arthur Frommer’s career in travel began when he was drafted into the U.S. Army just shortly after his graduation from the Yale University Law School, at the time of the Korean War.  Trained to fight in Korea, his linguistic abilities caused him to be assigned instead to U.S. Army Intelligence in Germany.  In the course of that service, Arthur’s love of travel blossomed and he constantly found great cheap places to stay across Europe.  In his spare time, he wrote The GI’s Guide to Traveling in Europe, which was an instant success and opened up European travel to the many servicemen stationed in Europe.

Upon his release from the Army, Arthur was employed as a lawyer with a large New York firm.  He took a summer off to write Europe on $5 a Day, a civilian version of The GI’s Guide to Traveling Europe, which was publishing in 1957.  That book, which became a monumental best-seller, taught Americans that they could afford to travel, and ushered in the age of modern tourism.  In the course of a 50-year career in travel, in which he not only published travel guides and a major travel magazine, but operated his own large tour company, Arthur Frommer became, and is generally acknowledged to be the nation’s foremost travel authority.

Today, Frommer’s travel guides, published by Wiley, Inc., consist of more than 340 titles reaching more than 6 million travelers each year, covering every major destination in the world.  Frommer’s has also developed a major Web presence, and more than a dozen travel lines for every type of traveler, from budget to deluxe, but the series remains faithful to its original mission — to make travel a time of adventure and self-discovery.

Currently, Arthur Frommer writes a twice-weekly column on travel which is syndicated to major newspapers all over the country by King Features.  He also presents a weekly nationwide radio program on travel on the W.O.R. radio network, which syndicates it to more than a hundred large stations in major cities.  In addition to writing 30 yearly editions of his famous guidebook to Europe, he has written numerous other travel guides to a myriad of destinations both in the United States and abroad; published hundreds of magazine articles in publications ranging from the Reader’s Digest to Newsweek; and is also the author of five annual editions of a path-breaking analysis of the entire travel industry entitled The New World of Travel. He served on President Lyndon Johnson’s Commission on the U.S. Balance of Payments.  He lectures frequently and has been a guest on national television shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Live! With Regis and Kelly and NBC’s Today, among many others.

Arthur is a graduate of Yale University Law School, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal, and he is a member of the New York Bar.  He practiced law in New York until the growing demands of his travel career required that he give it his full attention.  Today, Arthur lives in New York City with his wife, where he has served as an active trustee of New York’s Community Service Society (nation’s largest anti-poverty organization) and as a chairperson of Friends of RSVP, Inc.  (The Retired Senior Volunteer Program).  His daughter, Pauline, carries on the family tradition with her own series of Pauline Frommer Travel Guides on sale in bookstores throughout the country.