Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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81 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good but not great, March 26, 2002
I bought this book expecting to find something other than what it is. Instead of the subtitle "How to travel around the world" maybe it should have been subtitled "What you need to know before you travel around the world." The author is very knowledgable and the book offers a lot of valuable insight. It's been helpful for me planning my own global crossing. But not helpful in a pragmatic "here's what you need to do" kind of way. It was helpful in educating me about travel industry practices, paperwork preparation, and conditions in certain areas of the world.
However, I'm a bit dismayed by two aspects of the book. Hasbrouck seems to tout train travel on almost every page. He has a real love of trains I guess. He even said on one page that given the same distance (up to about 600 miles) he'd take the train over flying because, he says, they're more comfortable, the food is better, and you meet interesting people. Maybe my travel experience is vastly different than his, but I don't hold the same romantic fondness of trains. My experience has been they're a crowded, hot, time-consuming confinement with people that looked a bit sketchy. And I consider myself an adventurous traveler. I'm not one to watch the world from the bay window of a luxury cruise liner.
It also becomes annoying how the author seems to inject his political opinion into every page, almost every paragraph. He seems to editorialize on everything - capitalism, socialism, class bias, feminism, health and disease, food distribution, etc. I happen to agree with a lot of his opinion but to have it be so ubiquitous is droning.
Overall, this is a helpful book, probably one of the better ones out there for general around-the-world information. But if you're looking for the nuts and bolts "how to" information, find something else.
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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating but problematic, May 31, 2001
This book really intrigued me. I was hoping it would be just the thing for offbeat solo travelers such as myself. To some extent, it is: it contains much useful information and pithy anecdotes, and it's an enjoyable read. However, I can't help but feel that the research and editing are a bit slipshod -- pages and pages are devoted to relatively simple issues, while other topics that are at least as important get glossed over with a couple of sentences.I question the quality of the information that's in the book, too. In the section on North American road travel, Hasbrouck states that the American Automobile Association's TourBooks are generally poor, while their CampBooks are generally excellent. In my own experience (including a 7-week, 12 000-mile trip from New York to Alaska), the reverse is so. Hasbrouck further claims that AAA's CampBooks are the only series of camping directories that cover all of the United States, when in fact there are several others (notably Woodall's). On my trip to Alaska, I had both AAA's and Woodall's directories with me, and Woodall's was more comprehensive almost everywhere. I could cite other examples, but you get the idea. I really wanted to like this book, but it needs some more work before it lives up to its potential. Hasbrouck seems to know a lot about travel; if his research and editing skills were on a par with his knowledge, this would be a five-star book. A final thought: judging from the anecdotes in the book, Hasbrouck has been all over the globe. Yet he himself says, "People who seem to have been everywhere generally haven't been anywhere long." Makes one wonder.
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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
buy it for the airfare advice, but nothing else, July 27, 1999
By A Customer
I went ahead and bought both this book and World Stompers, and I think where one lacks, the other picks up. This book is incredibly boring and at times repetitive, but the travel agent's insight and explanation of how the international and domestic airline ticketing systems work is well worth the cost of the book. Also, I found some of the country information a bit outdated. For more nuts and bolts advice on how to get by as a backpacker on an RTW trip, as well as some helpfl and humorous anecdotes, read World Stompers instead.
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