4 comments about Make the Most of Your Time on Earth (Rough Guide Reference).

1. If you're looking for a reference book on travel ideas, look no further! This book is beyond excellent.
   
   I am currently researching for an extended round-the-world backpacking trip with my son. I spend a lot of time in bookstores taking notes. This book, however, was so full of excellent info that I actually bought it, despite my strict budget. It is one of the best travel investments I have made so far.
   
   It is arranged in chapters, each dealing with a specific region, such as the Iberian Peninsula, Southeast Asia and even the Polar Regions! In each region are listed fantastic and interesting things to do there. There is a great variety: from walks on castle walls in Wales to walks on hot coals in Greece, from Christmas shopping in Kutch India to sampling wines in Liechtenstein, from turtle watching in Costa Rica to tracking rhino in Namibia. There are, literally, a thousand things to do. And they're of all varieties - relaxing, adrenaline-pumping, cultural, outdoorsy, athletic, lazy, cheap, pricey - there is truly something for everyone in here.
   
   At the end of each chapter, there is a "Miscellany" section with little tidbits about each region, like best places to dance or dine, trivia, unusual hotels, best souvenirs, etc.
   
   At the end of the book, the activities are listed alphabetically by country. Then they are all listed by number, after which there is vital info for each entry, such as a website or directions.
   
   Each entry is well-written by its respective author, condensed but informative and interesting. The photographs are numerous and fabulous - they get you excited about the place. I suppose even armchair travelers will get their kicks from this book!
   
   In short, this book is a bargain, a must-have for anyone who plans to travel anywhere. Or even for those who like to pretend! Hold me to it, you won't regret it.
   
   P.S. Rough Guides has been cranking out some great books lately. I also highly recommend World Party, similar to this book, but with a focus on festivals and other celebrations both wild and tame. Awesome.



2. I simply bought this book to remind myself that there is so much to see around.......
   The recommendations of the book are really good. I've been to several of them, and those are worth it.



3. I buy a lot of books from Amazon, especially books on travel. This is hands down the best purchase I have made in that genre. The descriptions are great, there is lots of valuable information, and the photography is wonderful. I would say that this is a book that will give you many, many good ideas, but you will need to depend on other more specific guidebooks for the actual planning (Lonely Planet and Footprint are what I prefer).
   
   As an aside, I also purchased the "World Party" book that too is published by Rough. There is some repetition, but on the whole I think that the two books compliment each other quite nicely. If I were choosing between them, I would probably select this volume. After all, there is more to life than parties...or so I've been told.



4. We have both books, the 1000 Places to Go Before You Die and this book. This one is much better, because it focuses much more on experiences rather than shopping and staying at fancy hotels. The other book seems like half advertising. Sure, the experiences might not all be my cup of tea. I won't be doing any extreme sports, and I won't be partying now that I am a mom. However, there is something for everybody, the pictures are compelling and the descriptions are opinionated, evocative and short.

5 comments about Material World: A Global Family Portrait.

1. "Material World," written during the 1990 U.N. International Year of the Family, is a major achievement and, although it can seem dated in areas, is still timely and relevant for our world today.
   
   Profiling 30 families from across a wide spectrum of the 183 U.N. member states, "Material World" depicts these families' struggles and triumphs in words, pictures, and statistics. Many of these vignettes are uplifting--the Cuban family holding on to each other as their nation suffers through communism--and many are very saddening--the three Carballo children sleeping in fear of being robbed each night. It is highly useful in perspective building and also a good way to see how others live elsewhere in the world. It is not going to make one "proud to be an American," but it is also not an "America-bashing" book. "Material World" demonstrates very powerfully the old proverb: 'It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.'
   
   The Albanian family, with its minute amount of belongings; the Brazilian family, struggling to survive the slums; the Mexican sisters, window shopping before getting the very special treat of an ice cream bar--all exemplify this ideal. The children are in particular very inspiring, rising as they do above the conditions many sadly live in. This is their life, their daily bread--and in a powerful example, they make the most of it.
   
   "Material World" is inspiring, beautiful, and still timely, even over ten years after its publication.



2. This book is a fascinating look at materialism, or the lack of it, around the world. Oddly enough, the American family was not the most obviously materialistic; there was a Saudi family with a 42 foot long couch! I have put this gorgeously photographed book in my classroom for independant reading time for my 9th graders. It is filled with statistics, information about the countries and the families and the stories of the photographers themselves. Also check out The Hungry Planet, a visual look at what people around the world eat, photographed and written by the same authors of Material World.



3. Material World by Peter Menzel is one of the most exciting and informative books I have come across in a long time . No other book I have ever read has given me such in depth knowledge of the lives and circumstances of people living in other countries around the globe. The photographs are breathtakingly beautiful and the statistics are fascinating. Ursula Michelson, author of Alzheimers Patients in the Nursing Home: How Well Do Caregivers Meet Their Needs?



4. This book is absolutely a wake-up call for many people out there who think they don't have enough! Beautifully put together. Outstanding.



5. I thoroughly have enjoyed this book, looking at the people from around the world and their possessions and realizing how different I live from another. It was amazing to see each family so proud, of either how little they have or how much they have, and to have all that they own on display (from in the dead of winter to floating on a boat!).

5 comments about 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive.

1. We live in a very modern world and most of us have very busy lives. We get caught up in the regular grind of daily life. I have been slowly getting back into the outdoors and I have been looking for just a book such as this. In fact I found it by accident while looking at books at REI. This book is a godsend.
   
   This book is designed to give you the information to be able to PREPARE for and handle a short term "oh crap" situation. It reads very well and it contains very good and practical advice. I am a former boyscout and in some senses considered myself "outdoors savvy". I am a busy person and I tend to be in a rush. So if you are like me, you are also a prime candidate for being up a creek without a paddle. At least I was until going through this book.
   
   This is the stuff that should be taught in schools. Chance favors the prepared hand. So it is up to you. :-) I will be reading his next book soon and I will give a review of that too.
   
   If you are hesitant about buying the book. You could be next on the "natural selection" list, anyway I am not going to be the one looking for you because you were not paying attention or writing your obituary.
   
   Michael Miller - Atlanta, Georgia
   KI4RDP



2. Not detailed or specific. Not very informative for the size of the book.
   With this book and a lighter you can stay warm. To show how off track the book is look at the title....All that to tell you this book is about survival. Save your money on this one.



3. I loved this book. Two things a person needs in order to survive anything, anywhere are: resilience (toughness--which can never be faked) and a sense of humor. Cody Lundin possesses both, along with a sound understanding of what it takes for the human animal to survive in a currently existing environment outside our normal, civilized comfort zone.
   
   The book's theme is all about keeping a proper perspective...about yourself and about the situation, meaning, one must be armed with accurate, reliable, valid and CURRENT information, first and foremost, which one actually is proficient in applying under duress of an immediate, survival need. (Note: The book is about modern survival--not learning primitive life-style skills.)
   
   98.6 DEGRESS is all about K.I.S.S.A.S. Keep it simple, silly...and survive (for real).
   
   This book needs to be right next to the Family First Aid Manual in any properly prepared household. Like the First Aid Manual: possess it, read it, study it and know how to apply the lessons in everyday life.



4. This book I would highly recommend for beginners. The title refers to the bodies core temperature and thus the book delves deep into the science of how to regulate your body temperature. Regulate that and prepare a survival kit and your in good shape to face most situations. The authors knowledge on these subjects is extensive and while you will forget 90% of the statistics you are given you will retain the overall gist of how your body works and what tools to use when in survival mode.
   
   I looked at some of the negative reviews and the main complaint seems to be that the book is too simplistic (It doesn't teach you how to build bows or shelters or any of the other cool, fun stuff). It's true the book sticks to its basic subject matter rigidly but the information contained is simply the most vital a person can have. Add to that the interesting manner in which the book is presented and you have a quick read. I didn't want to put it down.



5. Awesome purchase. This book's a keeper. It goes straight to the point and tells you what you need to know and do, if ever caught in a survival situation.
   
   One downside of the book, in my opinion, is that it does not go into a lot of detail regarding survival situations in environments other than hot deserts and cold temperate areas. The survival kit components that are featured in the book attest to that fact.
   
   But overall I love the book because it gives you knowledge you can begin to use immediately.

4 comments about Rick Steves' Florence and Tuscany 2008 (Rick Steves).

1. I spent 9 days this spring in Florence and Tuscany & found this book to be absolutely wonderful--full of great tips to get the most of your trip. Obviously, a lot of other people found him useful too, as everywhere we went, we saw people toting his book around! My German sister-in-law found it comical!
   
   I am so glad that my friend introduced me to Rick Steves! I now own 3 of his books and am actually shopping for a couple more to use in the coming year!



2. We lived by this book for 4 days around Florence. The restaurants Rick suggests were really great (we tried 6 places), map is detailed, museum guides are adequately informative. He was wrong on a couple of museum prices - sometimes by 50%. I'm not sure if they are anticipating fee decrease in 2008 (we were just there last week). There are other guidebooks with color pictures and more detailed descriptions of sights - might also want to have those if you are not going to do a guided or audio tour. His suggestions on side trips to the hill towns were great. We went to Siena, Pisa, San Gimignano and Volterra by car. We are really glad to have had this book. Definitely recommend and will definitely buy Rick Steves books for our future travels.



3. We just returned from a tour to Florence and Tuscany region, and feel this book is inadequate for the Tuscany region in general. It was very helpful for Florence, but many of the cities we visited were not even listed in the book. Therefore, I would consider this mainly a Tuscany guide book.



4. came across this in an apartment in Florence, wisely jettisoned by a traveler who had more useful things to carry in their luggage.
   
   Steves' book IS quite good at the very practical nitty gritty of Florence: for example precisely how one collects pre-reserved Uffizi tickets, but his comments on cultural aspects are at best token and often stupid. Not everyone will want, like me, to know all about as much of the art as possible in a book about Florence, but for a travel guide to cover, say, Santa Croce and make reference to only one painting when the place is full of the most glorious and important fresco cycles by major figures is inexcusable. If the information is there, one can ignore it, but if it isn't, you might return to the US (the prime market, I imagine) and realise that you have been within yards of great paintings but the guide book didn't GUIDE you to go and look at them. Instead, in Santa Croce, he refers to admittedly interesting monuments, but fails to refer to the finest (Bruni's), he's only interested in the famous names.
   
   His grasp of the art is very poor and he seems to address his readers as though they are 12 year olds needing asinine jokes to keep their attention. For him medieval painting is a world of never-neverland (his phrase) where the poor painters are struggling desperately to paint realistically but just can't do it! Simone Martine's Uffizi Annunciation is patronised: he can't see its beauty and sees it as a mere stone on the pathway to realism. Mary 'doesn't look too impressed': a good point if he only had the wit to see that perhaps the responsibility of her role is frightening and overwhelming - it's a very moving and human piece, but his approach seems to be,'Why try to elucidate when you can be folksy and jocular'. An early crucifixion is mocked for having Christ's head raised as on a wedge as though this is a pathetic effort at three-dimensionality when it is pretty obvious that the angle would enable viewers to see Christ's face (and suffering) more clearly from ground level and has little to do with aspiring to realism. He also says that the Siena Pinacoteca (a gallery full of wonderful Sienese painting) would tempt him in only if there was a downpour! (I dread to think what nonsense Steves writes about, say, Picasso, if REALISM is the criterion by which all is judged.)
   
   A cardinal sin, for me, is the advice to 'leave this guide face up' in a number of restaurants to gain a reduction. When I travel I like to try to be as little like a tourist as possible, while still obviously being one. I know I stand out like a sore thumb, but Steves seems happy to be as obvious as an amputated leg. And what sort of arrangement leads a guide book writer to 'negotiate' deals for his readers? All very sad, especially as Steves seems to be the Guru of European travel for Americans. Perhaps he suits those, like the previous reviewer who praises Steves for enabling him to 'do' Pisa in 45 minutes and not miss anything, though how he would know he hadn't missed anything is beyond me.
   
   The Rough Guide does everything Steves does well just as effectively, while the cultural stuff, whether great art, architecture etc or jazz clubs, bars, cinemas, clubs - is in another league. If you want a detailed guide to the art and history of the city, see American art historian Eve Borsook's Companion Guide: it has the art, the history and is a really good unfussy read, but most travelers don't want to carry a library with them so they need a book that covers the practical and the cultural at least competently.
   
   And if you want to get a guide to the UK, PLEASE don't buy Steves': I dread to think what rubbish he writes, on the basis of this offering.
   Not even worth the one star the site requires me to give!

3 comments about Frommer's Alaska 2008 (Frommer's Complete).

1. This will be my first visit to Alaska and I purchased the book to help me make the most of the trip.



2. This is an must for the tourist who wants to know something about the area they will be visiting. It is full of good info for a person going on a cruise. It has helped us to plan our days in the different ports we will visit. We highly recommend this book.



3. Frommer's Alaska 2008 proved to be as complete a vacation guide as we'd expected from previous worldwide books purchased under this name previously.

5 comments about Istanbul: Memories and the City.

1. I think book reviews, rather like any similar activity composed of observation, reception and reflection, can be skewed by our personal experiences and knowledge, as well as corrupted by the opinion and speculation that we sometimes try and keep under control. The empathy and sense of understanding that I felt when reading Istanbul, Memories and the City, were very much shaped by my prior experiences, my personal interpretations of what I had seen, and my own frame of mind.
   
   I was going through Istanbul's Ataturk airport last December (2007) and with the prospect of a long and dull journey in front of me, I was looking in the bookstore for something that I could "lose myself in" during the incredibly dull and boring journey back to Alicante. I was doing some idle browsing in the airport bookshop and I came across Orhan Pamuk's book entitled Istanbul, Memories and the City.
   
   After hurrying to the gate to embark on my flight, there was yet another set of security check, another set of the same procedures to go through - belts off, boots off, everything metal through the scanner, mobile phones, MP3 player, pens, coins, I had so much junk; I even put the Pamuk's book into the plastic tray they provide as part of the terror free scanning service.
   
   Actually this book seemed to be of more interest to the security person than all the rest of the modern technology and metal crap I was having scanned. She looked at the book placed in the tray, as if it might contain some thing rather subversive material, she smirked, picked the book up, then she chucked it back into the tray. I pretended not to notice. Again she picked the book up, made some comment to one of her colleagues, and then chucked the book back into the tray, laughing the way people do when actually there is nothing funny to laugh about; a forced laugh. I still pretended not to notice and of this "behaviour", and just walked through the detector and picked my things up at the other end.
   
   Little things like that can really turn me off a place, it can lead to momentarily dislike and antipathy towards places, especially one that I have found to be, on occasions, desperately depressing, grey and miserable, somewhat filthy, frequently anachronistic, and neither comfortably traditional nor fundamentally contemporary; a pessimistically gloomy halfway house, stuck between a densely populated provincial backwater and a peculiar and unauthentic pastiche of modernity.
   
   I boarded the Iberia flight back to Madrid, with the feeling of someone arriving home, to the familiar and friendly. I took my seat, and prepared for the 4 hour flight to Madrid, within 5 minutes I was asleep.
   
   I awoke to the sound of the in-flight service, I was handed a tray, and I also took a bottle of nice red Spanish wine to accompany dinner.
   
   Sufficiently relaxed and replenished, I took out my recent literary acquisition and started to read.
   
   The book, as I read it, focuses on Orhan Pamuk's recollections of the experience and sensations of growing up in Istanbul, from a very young child in the fifties to a young adult in the seventies. Pamuk expresses a wealth of empathy for the memories of his childhood, and for the city that has been his home for most of his life.
   
   In many ways, Pamuk's account of his Istanbul reminds me very much of many aspects of my life in Cardiff and South Wales when I was very young. This idea was reinforced by a review in the English daily newspaper The Telegraph, in which David Flusfeder wrote:
   
   "Europe has its share of melancholy cities: the citizens of Lisbon take each destructive fire as fate's latest grim joke; Warsaw has been regularly ripped apart by foreign invaders; and it's hard to be cheerful in Trieste or, indeed, Cardiff."
   
   I find it curious that quite a few "western" travellers, writers and artists have sough to represent Istanbul, to recall memories of Istanbul, even modern Istanbul, as a somewhat some what exotic eastern place, full of mystery, harems, intrigue and promise; interesting for its cute differences and it's perceived quaint traditions, for it's ancient history, for its old buildings and even older dirt, for the perceived charm, permissible decadence and cultural diversity. As an aside, I find some of the reviews of Pamuk's work to be bizarre and only vaguely byzantine in their intricate expressions of misplaced and arrant nonsense, and far more so than authors are typically exposed to.
   
   However, I do not find it so strange that many of Pamuk's compatriots are as quick to dismiss and deride him as others in Europe are as quick to laud him, and both doing so on the basis of scant knowledge of the author or their work, and are frequently seasoned with oppressively recondite forms of anachronistic nationalism, by people both in Pamuk's home lands and elsewhere in Europe.
   
   But in his book of memories, Pamuk talks to us about his family, his father, his mother, his friends, desires, the Black Rose, as well as the city; the quarters, districts and neighbourhoods; The Pamuk apartments; Cihangir, Beyoðlu and Niþantaþi; flavoured gin, stuffed mussels, sweets and puddings; the peoples, the Turks, the Italians, the Armenians, the Germans, the French, the Greeks, the Jews, the Persians, and others; art and literature; the necessity of the cosmopolis and the importance of authenticity; the ever present Bosphorus; books, bookshops and booksellers; the cities pizza eating dogs; the trams, buses, shared taxis and metro; the calming and relaxing nature of act of painting; simit sellers and unmentioned fish sandwiches; the changes in life; shared experiences; schools and colleges; books; fishermen, fantasies and murder; art, artists and the artist as seen by the bourgeoisie; the collisions between ships on the Bosphorus, crumbling buildings, the effect of neglect on wooden buildings and the burning of palaces of Ottoman Pashas; the end of empire, the decay that follows and also the new opportunities; family apartments, change and movement; the other self; walking the streets at night; black and white; the taste of a little goats cheese held in the mouth and a sip of tea; ships and ferries; big American limousines; quarrels and complications; the westernised, ornate and hardly used lounges in many apartments; Istanbul Modern; life and death; the writers, poems and novels; the humorous anecdotes culled from articles written during more than 100 years of Istanbul journalism; of architecture, and, of course, writing.
   
   Throughout the book Pamuk comes back to the theme of melancholy (hüzün, in Turkish) which I think he strongly identifies with a depressing spectre that haunts certain abstractions of what can be seen and felt as being Istanbul. I am not so sure exactly where this melancholy stems from, but I would bet that much of it comes down to a deep sense of deception and loss, that goes way beyond the passing of innocence and has been allowed to grow into a monster of nightmares that threatens to cast asunder any modern senses of education, culture and civility; the sad and avoidable debasement of hope and the defeatist crushing of the promises of a better future.
   
   Pamuk seems to have used the writing of this book as one might use a mirror, to reflect his states of mind - his moods, and to project his desires and dislikes, his hopes and fears, into the world. It is a truth that I find compellingly attractive, authentic and very contemporary. Of course, it might not be to everyone's liking, but if you want to truly understand Istanbul then it really is a "must read".
   
   Thinking again about the insignificant incident at the airport, I suspect that the behaviour of the security guard was just another example of the petty, provincial and anachronistic spirit that has created such a depressingly and melancholic place for people who have made Istanbul their home, and yet who desperately want to live in the global "here and now", in their own interpretation of a cosmopolitan, comfortable, modern, cultured and civil society, and unsurprisingly, they do not want to be dragged back into the distant past, into the dark ages; those times that most of us have fortunately never experienced; a return to times, backwardness and conduct, that none of us in our right minds, would ever desire.
   
   Orhan Pamuk, very much like Immanuel Kant who never ventured outside of Königsberg,, has lived virtually all of his life the city of his birth. The following words written about Kant by the critical philosopher Ursula Reitemeyer, in "The History of Mankind between Nature and Reason" strike a chord of relevance and similarity:
   
   "So criticism is the core of Kant's metaphysics of history and the reason, why his metaphysics outlasted his epoch and made him to the very first global philosopher. Kant, that is to say, identified "world" not with a coincidental and necessarily limited perspective of the world but with the whole history of mankind as a morally evolving process. On this theoretical basis every human being is a citizen of the world by birth. This message contains Kant's lasting merit for the modernity - and is probably its only chance."



2. Times gone by. Greater times, present days. A very personal take on the Great City by one of the world's great writers. Not always popular in his home country, his prose transcends borders, showing Istanbul as it truly is: universal. Packed with great black and white pictures.



3. The book is personal, moody, altogether a very lovely snapshot of an enigmatic city which hangs between East and West. Vintage photographs add their atmosphere to the text.
   
   Orhan Pamuk is a master at his craft; for further reading after this, I suggest "My Name is Red."



4. I finished this on a flight from Izmir to Istanbul. It's a good thing I did: it provides an excellent preface to visiting that amazing city.
   
   Pamuk has three guiding ideas in this book. First is that all Istanbullus share a sort of melancholy which Turks call huzun. The idea is that they all lament the decline of their city since it was the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and that they lament their servitude to the Western world. Secondly, Pamuk wants to harness this huzun and create an artwork that is distinctively Turkish -- not Western, not Muslim, but a harmonious blend of the two. Thirdly, Pamuk believes that the city inhabits the man just as much as the man inhabits the city: Pamuk feels Istanbul's moods and it feels his. Huzun is thus a strictly collective emotion. One cannot feel this sort of melancholy on one's own; one can only experience it in a collective way along with one's fellow-Istanbullus. (Indeed, it's not clear to me that residents of any other city -- Vienna, maybe? Pittsburgh? -- can feel huzun; it may be a nostalgic melancholy that only Istanbullus are logically entitled to feel.)
   
   I didn't feel the huzun in Istanbul, but then I was only there for a few days; Pamuk doesn't believe that anyone can understand his city without living there for ten years or more. It may also be impossible for a new generation of lifelong Istanbullus to feel the huzun: those born into today's Istanbul may not realize that there's anything other than the Western model to follow.
   
   This is all his perspective as an insider to the culture. As an outsider to it, my perspective says something altogether different. When I visited Istanbul, there was at least one mosque, minaret, and muezzin per quarter square mile. One block off the main drag in Beyolu (Istiklal Caddesi), our cab had to stop to let a flock of sheep and their shepherd pass. One block off on the other side was a warren of little streets filled with conservative Muslims. I felt distinctly foreign there, both in nationality and in culture. If this is "the West," Istanbul-style, then Pamuk has nothing to worry about.
   
   At times -- certainly over the last fifth of the book -- Pamuk's melodrama about huzun gets to be a bit much. He haunts the miserable streets of a lost empire, collar upturned against the snow, trying to shake off his own desperation at a lost love and make an art form that doesn't just ape the West. On and on he goes, trying to beat us over the head with the idea that the city inhabits the man and the man the city: we cut back and forth between his furious wanderings in the streets and his fight with his mother over what he'll do with his life. Pamuk thinks he is terribly clever. He wants us very much to know how clever it is; earlier in the book he drops hints about its "hidden symmetry." This symmetry, so far as I can tell, is just the symmetry between the man and the city. So now you know. If you were paying attention during the first half of the book, you already knew. I'd rather not be bludgeoned with the Cleverness Stick.
   
   Still, it's a fun read. It's peppered with (deliberately) black-and-white photos of old Stamboul, from an era when people flocked to the shores of the Bosphorous to watch the Ottoman pashas' wooden "yals" (waterfront mansions) burn to the ground one by one. There's great romance in this book, great love for the Bosphorous, and delicious history. Worth reading, but not worth owning.



5. I have now read all of Orhan Pamuk books available. I have learned so much about another culture because of this brillian author.

5 comments about Prague (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE).

1. My husband and I love to travel and found that the DK Eyewitness books are better than Fromers or Fodors. This Prague book was very helpful and made our 5 day stay wonderful (granted, you don't need 5 days in Prague).



2. DK Eyewitness Travel guide Prague: We were there a week and this guide was great. It also helped us lable our pictures afterwards. I wanted it as a suvenir of our trip also. For a shorter trip or one where you are going to many other cities I would recomment their top ten guides which are smaller, lighter weight and still have good maps and commentary. We used one of these for Munnich and it was great also.



3. A very good pictoral of the most important places to visit in the Prague Area.



4. You can find interesting and useful information about Prague and its surroundings. The historical part lets the reader to understand the city's soul what is a most.



5. This guide shows you Prague in all its splendor, one of the nicest cities to visit and with this DK guide you can even get to know it before arriving to the city. The guide as always gives you a very complete information on all major and even smaller less known places so that you can really enjoy this magnificent city.

3 comments about Fodor's Italy 2008 (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1. The Fodor's guide is the best guide to Italy out of all the other major travel guide brands. I looked at all of the books and eventually chose this one.
   
   Just as a background, I will be going to Italy (Venice, Florence, Rome) on an educational trip in 2009.
   
   This guide will give an overview of each area (eateries, places to see, things to do, hotels) but then gives a detailed list of everything. Maps are provided for easy locating.
   
   There is also a giant tear-out map which is also a plus.
   
   This book was considered alongside Lonely Planet, Frommers, and Rick Steve.
   
   I will definitely get the 2009!



2. This book is an excellent tool if you are going to Italy...visited 10 cities and several side excursions..used the book for EVERYTHING I needed to know where ever I was!! Certainly worth the price...don't leave home without it!!



3. I just got this last night and let me say, I cant put it down. It has so much info. If you like wine tasting , try these areas,,or hiking,try this region. It has lots of tips and is well written and going to be a great help when I make it to Italy. If you are looking for a good book to help narrow down areas you want to see like I was,this is the book for you.
   Enjoy and Ciao!

5 comments about Rick Steves' French Phrase Book and Dictionary.

1. What I like about this is that it is pocket size so I can actually have it with me when I need it, and it gives more useful and practical phrases, like how to tell the taxi driver to SLOW DOWN!



2. Had three semesters of French in college. Grew up in the midwest, where an A sound like A, and a U sound like U. Didn't retain much, but can recover and survive with the help of this book. It is one of the most accurate in providing correct phonetic interpretations of how words and phrases SHOULD sound in French. Many of the other books do not! Don't leave for France without it!!!



3. While this is helpful, it is not a necessary purchase if you purchase the 2008 Paris Guide by Rick Steves. But it is a fun and entertaining read!



4. Great book! Highly recommended. Easy to use, easy to find the topics you need when you need them. The phonetic words are easy to understand, and are spot on with the real corresponding word (with some other phrase books I have tried, the phonetics were not quite right). There are phrases for real situations, even some funny situations, covering everything from being pulled over by police in your rental car to dealing with pushy street venders (which are abundant in Paris! - which came in handy for us when at the Louvre!). There is a menu and food decoder which we referred to quite a bit so as to know what we were ordering to eat. With this book, we were able to communicate easily everywhere we went: the metro, the train station, eateries, museums, grocery store, and even in the countryside where hardly anyone speaks English.
   
   My Spouse and I were in France last month and I had purchased this book weeks ahead of time and began reviewing the phrases inside. By the time we got to France, we both had learned enough to communicate nicely with the people. In Paris, there are a great many people that speak English, or at least understand it a bit, but it's still nice to be able to say something to them in French even if it's just a greeting. But we stayed in the countryside where English is rare, but we got on just fine at the grocery store, the villages, and the cafes with this little book in hand. The easy to use words and phrases are great in a pinch, but as a helpful tip: Don't just buy the book and wait to use it until your there standing at a ticket booth trying to figure what to say - familiarize yourself with the key phrases that are important to you, and where they are located in the book before you even get on the plane.



5. I would not recommend this phrase book because I found it very hard to access the phrases. It is organized by situations where you would use the phrases, such as counting, traveling, eating, and sleeping. It requires too much skimming and scanning to find what you want to say.

5 comments about Greek Islands (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE).

1. The book is absolutely beautiful, but its content for many islands is woefully brief. Since it leaves out the mainland, I would have hoped for more space on the Saronic Islands, for example. Thank heavens they included a brief section on Athens, since everyone has to pass through there sooner or later. But there is almost nothing on the rest of mainland Greece, which is another book. I wish the publisher would put them into one volume. Apparently this is the long awaited new edition.



2. As with most DK publications this book provides excellent information and fantastic illustrations and maps.



3. Loved the book! Had all of the infomration that we needed. Book was loaded with history, maps, key points of interest and interesting facts. It was an excellent guide for us as we toured the greek islands and gave us the best and key points to visit which helped us use our time most efficiently. Loved the Greek islands!
   
   Overall, we got a lot of use out of our book and I would HIGHLY reccomend it!



4. DK Eyewitness travel guides are the best on the market and this one does not disappoint.



5. We have used the Eyewitness Travel books for many years, and they just seem to get better and better. They aren't the only sources we consult, but they are the only one's we actually bring with us on vacation, as they seem to cover so many different types of places and activities well.