This Book—this one volume in an uncountable chain—began the

seventh of October, 1989, in a restaurant in La Paz, Bolivia, when

somebody with time to kill inscribed the first tip. Written in English,
with a slightly unsteady hand, the author recommended the Hotel Torino
as “probably one of the cheapest hotels in central La Paz,” despite a few
drawbacks (“rooms don’t have windows… dark and dingy… smelly and
dirty”). Here in the very first entry were the muses that have dominated
the Book before and since: Thrift and her handmaid, Squalor. There was
one more piece of advice on that first page. Somebody had scrawled
right over the earlier text: “The night porter ripped me off
ASSHOLE!!!”