The next year’s 1980 edition was tinged turquoise and inspired The Boston Globe to call Let’s Go “the Bible of the budget traveler.” It was also the first guide developed from HSA’s new home under Thayer Hall B in Harvard Yard.
Soon, staffers found that they could successfully produce and market a seemingly limitless number of titles. Preparations were made for a guide to the eastern Mediterranean; the sun- soaked combination of Let’s Go: Greece, Israel & Egypt joined the family in 1981. To bring the number of titles to six, Let’s Go: USA arrived in its third incarnation the same year. This time, it stuck around. On the other side of the pond, Europe 1981 donned a curiously blue and brown cover.
Ten years after Let’s Go became professionally published, the company hit another landmark. The six 1982 editions were the first to be published by Saint Martin’s Press. As an immediate result, the thumb logo migrated into the “o” of “Let’s Go” and no longer dominated the cover. St. Martin’s also instituted marketing campaigns by advertising on popular radio stations and in college newspapers. Let’s Go: Europe 1982 turned orange and reached a corpulent 830 pages.
For 1984, Publishing Manager Linda Haverty supervised the expansion of the Let’s Go series from six to nine titles. That year, Let’s Go: Spain, Portugal & Morocco and Let’s Go: California & the Pacific Northwest were produced, though not without a few hitches: Morocco RW William Herzberg was arrested on suspicion of being a spy. (He was released when he explained his real job.) In addition, Let’s Go: Greece, Israel & Egypt was split into Let’s Go: Greece, which included Cyprus and the Turkish coast, and Let’s Go: Israel & Egypt, which included Jordan. All the while, Let’s Go: Europe hit 888 pages.
In 1985, 45 RWs journeyed across 35 countries, facing challenges from the mundane—like noisy hostels—to the perilous, including narrowly escaping the Frankfurt airport bombing. At Cambridge's helm, a sizable team transformed a sprawling 30,000-page manuscript into a concise 6,000 pages, with printers dispatching 440,000 Let’s Go copies globally in an impressively short span. This swift turnaround—unrivaled in freshness—set the publishing world abuzz. The innovation didn't stop there: Harvard's bright minds, as heralded by Publisher’s Weekly, championed technology, with the 1986 editions being typeset from computer discs, a feat that revolutionized traditional typesetting durations and dynamics.
How much easier it was, then, to produce the 1987 series, whose back covers first asked, “Did you know?” Let’s Go: Europe 1987 burst with 47 maps.
In 1988, the Let's Go series expanded to 11 volumes, splitting the California & Pacific Northwest guide into two distinct editions. Dr. Seuss's words graced the first page of the Europe 1988 guide, reflecting the series' whimsical spirit. The readership skyrocketed, reaching an estimated 1.6 million. That summer, the Let’s Go team temporarily relocated from Thayer Hall to the basement of Canaday Hall G, only to return to their original location by September.
The Let’s Go: Europe produced that summer, part of the 1989 series, cracked 900 pages and packed 54 maps. With hitchhiking becoming less of an accepted means of travel and more of a legal liability, the first new cover design in seven years banished the thumb from the “o,” relegating it to the apostrophe in “Let’s.” Probably unhappy about the change, a pack of reindeer chased one RW up a tree.
