Eugene Fodor was born on October 14, 1905 in Léva, Hungary now called Levice in Slovakia. He studied political economics at the Sorbonne and the University of Grenoble in France.
Realizing that travel guides were generally boring he wrote his first travel guide On the Continent—The Entertaining Travel Annual which was published in 1936.
He moved to America and joined the US Army as a member of the Office of Strategic Services. It was revealed in 1972 that he operated as a US spy in Europe.
After WWII he established Fodor's, an English language travel and tourism publishing company and in 1949 Fodor's Modern Guides, Inc. was founded in Paris. He wrote guide books that went beyond a listing of hotels and sites they also contained practical information about the people and culture of a destination. He continued to write travel guides in America until Fodor sold his company in 1968.
Today Fodor's employs over 700 local writers and vacation experts offering guides to over 8,000 worldwide destinations.