Customer Reviews

Usa: The Rough Guide, Third Edition (3rd ed)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I just completed a 2 month trip through the US and Canada. I'm afraid to say that the Rough Guide was not always very helpful in the process. It does contain all the basic information on a lot of places, all right. And I guess it is to be expected that some of it is quite superficial as you cannot not cover everything. However, the book has some important shortcomings:

- Maps are few and poor. More often than not I found that major streets were missing, making orientation a hassle. So you have to juggle the guidebook and a separate map when walking through cities or driving around. Also, it would be very helpful to mark the recommendations on the maps in the book (which is rather rarely done), so you don't spend hours locating the addresses on the map.

- The guide does not always indicate price ranges for restaurant recommendations (especially in large cities). It is quite annoying if you travel across town to a restaurant (and spend some time on it if you don't have a car) to find that the dishes are... and up. For budget travelers, this guide might be difficult to swallow.

- There's some inaccurate info on hostels and their opening times. So you need to call ahead before you end up in front of closed doors. Also, price ranges for motels are way off.

- There is no section on dangers and annoyances for cities, a section that could be very helpful (although it sometimes warns of some dangerous areas in the text).

Also, the rough Guide might want to consider a better binding, as the book came apart after six weeks of usage. Overall, next time I'd rather go for another guide than this for a trip to the US.

I just upgraded my old copy of the USA Rough Guide to the 2000 edition, because I think it's still one of the best USA guidebooks around. If you're visiting just one area of the US, you will find more detailed information in other books, but for those who want to travel all over the country, this guide contains a ton of information for a low price.

Before I became aware of Rough Guides, I used a lot of time (and money) searching for information about travelling in USA on the internet. After this discovery was almost no need for that. The quality of the information is high. The authors have a very critical attitude to what they the write about.

Enjoy this book.

I've been using different Lonely Planet guidebooks and I wanted to try another guidebook, so I bought The rough guide to the USA, but I'm very disappointed over The rough guide to the USA.

Compared to Lonely Planet The rough guide is:

-less informative

-not so funny to read

-of poorer quality (the back went broken in a week)

And worse: The maps are really bad, if they exist at all. And they do not point out sights, hotels, restaurants etc with numbers like they do in Lonely Planet guidebooks. Also it lacks on historical background which is very annoying for a person who have never been to the states. The section on dangers and annoyances is far from comprehensive. Distances are in miles...

I can continue with more annoyances but I think you'll get the point.

The only positive I can say about The rough guide to the USA is the price, it's cheap!

I have very mixed feelings about the Kindle version. It is great to have everything in one place (as the book has 1000 pages) and things are easy to locate and read on the iPad. The Rough Guide itself is as good and dependable as always, with interesting history and background information as well as specific local knowledge mixed in.

Everything, however, falls down with the image quality. The images are very small sizes and thus blurry at any size above a postage stamp. The maps are basically unusable, as the image quality is so bad that you cannot zoom in enough to actually read the street names and references from the text. Which basically means we will have to either download specific maps wherever we go, or buy local paper maps and carry them around too, which we were trying to avoid in the first place when we bought the kindle edition...

Am thinking of returning it, unfortunately, guide books aren't much use without the maps!

I went cross-country three times this past summer and must've thumbed through this book every hour or so of my trip (sometimes even while driving!). It sometimes was a bit sparse in covering _all_ the places to see, or perhaps a few "almost essentials," but when ANY book tries to cover the entire United States (and then some), you've got to forgive it some holes. Even so, I learned so much about each area, and did find some "secrets" I would have otherwise driven right past.

The other great thing about this guide is that it's written from a European (and emigrant American) perspective. You get a view on our geography (social as well as physical) that's quite refreshing. Also, the quick guides in the back: a compact history of the United States (which was brief, skeletal, but very interesting) and brief biographies of leading figures in North American history (which was interesting if only in their selections). A great road-trip read!

What an ingenious plan ole Mark Ellingham and the gang at Rough Guides have - publish the same travel guide for 2-3 years and hope no one looks at the date. Simply remarkable. If you'd like to continuously run out of money, by all means, buy this one. However, if you'd like an up-to-date book (even if one written by smarmy Harvard types), Let's Go is the one for you!

The Rough Guide is the best guide available. They give you an insight into what you want to do and regularly point out things you would have otherwise missed. My wife & I have just completed our 3 cross country trip with this book and they are yet to fail us. The best thing, outside of the history and background information they provide you is the restaurant recommendations. None of this where to get the best tofu burger here. They send you to where the locals eat and it has never failed us for great authentic eating. We threw out our other guide books months ago and swear by this series.

It shows the regular main attractions that you could easily find yourself. I was hoping for something different - out of the way places.

My wife and I have covered most of the US using this book. We've found it very helpful in helping us utilize the time we had. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of detail that was there for a single book covering this immense country. Most recommended restaurant and sight information is still very relevant three years on. That being said, I cannot speak to the transportation or lodging information, since we didn't need or use it. Some unneeded political commentary, but I see that in most guidebooks, really.