Sharing Travelers' Tales

Larry Habegger '75 and James O'Reilly '75 began talking together in the mid-1970s on a late-night show they hosted on WDCR-AM. In between playing Bob Dylan and Arlo Guthrie, the two did "a lot of yakking back and forth," recalls Habegger. Those on-air bull sessions, says O'Reilly, "set the groundwork for working together."

Whether as writers, editors, or publishers, the names "Habegger" and "O'Reilly" have appeared in tandem in an astonishing range of venues: in 1982 as co-authors in The Examiner of "Passage of the Hurricane," a San Francisco-based murder mystery serial -a la Armistead Maupin; since 1985 as co-contributors to "World Travel Watch," a widely syndicated newspaper column covering international "hot spots"—real and perceived; and since 1993 as co-creators of the award-winning travel book series, Travelers' Tales ().

Fifteen years ago they stopped in Manila for a press lunch with Imelda Marcos. "We spent three hours listening to her pontificate about the good she and her husband had done for the country," says an exasperated Habegger. Memorable moments like that are the basic ingredients for each book in the Travelers' Tales series, which Habegger describes as "like sitting down with people who've had a meaningful experience in a place."