Born on this day in 1895 in Red Bank, NJ.

There was a time when travel books were so respectable even our greatest literary critic wrote them.

Wilson was interested in virtually everything (except, strangely, the Spanish-speaking world), so it was only natural that he wrote travel books. His most famous, Europe Without Baedeker (Baedeker being the Frommer of its day), is a characteristically detailed description of the post-war cultural and political landscape of England, Italy and Greece.

In Red, Black, Blond and Olive he visits New Mexico (focusing on the Zuni), Haiti, Soviet Russia and Israel. (What did I say about wide-ranging?). On his way to Haiti he stops in Miami:

"I have never been here before and am astounded and appalled by this place. ... Miami Beach goes on for miles, with its monotonous lines of palms, its thousands of hotels and houses which seem to have imposed on them ... a blanched and insipid uniformity. ...What draws people to this vacuum?"