Afghanistan’s history since 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded to prop up a sympathetic government, has been dark and often violent....

But, before all that, the country was a remote and poor but not-so-bad place. Attesting to the pre-1979 Afghanistan and how much it has changed is this excerpt from a 1970s Lonely Planet travel book, which described the country as “vastly appealing.” The country’s biggest problems at the time, according to the excerpt unearthed by a Reddit user, were slow travel, “aloof” locals, and “banditry....