Author takes a walk on the sinister side

0 Comments | USA TODAY, May, 2007 | by Jayne Clark

After decades of blazing trails through some of the world's most desirable spots, British-born Tony Wheeler,

co-founder of Lonely Planet guidebooks, recently focused on nine countries more often found on the front page of a newspaper than in the travel section. He writes about his experiences in Tony Wheeler's Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil (Lonely Planet, $14.99) and talks about them with USA TODAY's Jayne Clark.

Q: In assessing the "badness" of a country, you devised an "evil meter," which scores three factors: how a nation treats its people, its involvement in terrorism and its potential threat to other countries. Do these things register with the typical tourist?

A: The country that came out as the worst was North Korea. People have...