Guidebooks
A guidebook is not meant to be followed religiously. However, a well-written and timely guidebook can be a lifeline when traveling. A good guidebook points you to the most relevant places of interest, can help you find a place to sleep, and can also can help you find a decent meal (if there’s one to be had). The best guidebooks have accurate maps for even smaller cities and towns and can add a bit of historical and cultural perspective to a place as well.
Listed below are most of the major travel guide publishers.
Lonely Planet publishes independent travel guides to more out-of-the-way places than any other company. Started in 1973 by Tony and Maureen Wheeler in Australia, Lonely Planet became famous for its first book Across Asia on the Cheap written for hippie travelers of that era. That book has since evolved into the book South-East Asia on a Shoestring along with dozens of other guides to regions and countries, the extremely useful Lonely Planet Language Guides, and other travel writing and photography titles. You can find all these and much more at the Lonely Planet Shop
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Lonely Planet certainly has its share of critics, but many of its books are among the most comprehensive and timely guides available for certain regions. They are also the most widely available guides around the world in airports and small bookshops.
Moon Handbooks is a subsidiary of Avalon Travel Publishing based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Avalon publishes several major travel guidebook series, including the famous Rick Steves’ guides to Europe, Moon Handbooks, and Road Trip USA.
Moon’s original title, Indonesia Handbook by Bill Dalton, was first published in 1973 and is still a highly regarded guide to the archipelago. Most of Moon’s titles are decent and have a good independent feel about them.
UK-based Rough Guides have been around since 1982 and have built a publishing empire on a wide array of topics. Rough Guides are generally well-written and have good, current information about many places in the world but are sometimes short on specific, detailed information about certain destinations. They also publish maps, language phrasebooks, and a wide array of world music compilations.
UK-based Footprint is best known for their in-depth South America Handbook which has been published since the 1920s. While Footprint’s guides are very strong in South America, they are lighter in their coverage of other areas of the world but are extensive in the areas that they do cover.
Since the 1970s, UK-based Bradt has excelled at publishing guides that have a distinctly offbeat feel to them, often with the word “eccentric” in the title. To be sure, Bradt has chosen its niches to emphasize to the exclusion of others, but the guides it does offer have a unique perspective not usually taken by other guidebooks. Bradt has chosen to focus on countries and areas overlooked by other larger guidebook companies and even publishes guides to places such as Iran and Iraq.
These guides are a time-honored tradition of American college students who have updated these books every year since 1960. While they used to have a more European focus, Let’s Go now publishes titles to many global destinations. They are definitely oriented towards a younger, college student audience.
Rick Steves’ guides, along with his popular television series, focus exclusively on Europe. Steves has done a lot to raise awareness for travelers looking to see Europe without spending a fortune to do so. His shows have him come across as an extremely likeable fellow and his books are packed full of timely and highly useful information. Steves also publishes phrasebooks, maps, and books specifically focused on European art.
Started in 1957 with Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $5 A Day, Frommer’s guides became a standard for many travelers to Europe throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Although now owned by Wiley publishing, Frommer’s still publishes a number of guides to many regions. In our opinion, Frommer’s guides are generally not as in-depth as many others and are partial towards travelers with a larger budget. Still, some travelers find Frommer’s to be their favorite guides.
Fodor’s publishes guides to over 300 destinations. The company has been around since 1936 and today is owned by publishing giant Random House. Fodor’s guides are generally written for the more mainstream type of traveler but are fairly comprehensive for the market that they do serve. Fodor’s guides can be a good place to get a wide range of options for a particular place albeit with a slight bias towards the traveler with more money to spend than your average independent traveler.