Usa: The Rough Guide, Fourth Edition

Start your engines and get cruising across America. In 1,100 pages, the Rough Guide takes you from the craggy shores of Maine to the anything-goes playground of Florida's Key West, from the volcanoes of Hawaii's Big Island to the wildlife of Alaska, and to every city, national park and truckstop of interest in between. Features include thousands of critical reviews of hotels, motels, restaurants and nightlife for all budgets. 78 maps and 16 pages of color photos.

A remarkably complete -- and compact -- travel guide to the entire United States. I scrutinized pages for two cities I know intimately (New Haven, CT, and Seattle, WA) and one I just visited (Palm Springs, CA) and can honestly say that this book does a very good job of capturing the essential feeling of each place, and of describing the high and low points of each locale. As is inevitable for such a copious compendium, there are entries for establishments that have gone out of business (The Unicorn and Costermonger), or entries I wished they had included (The Museum of Toasters). But on the whole, it's hard to imagine a more comprehensive and useful volume for the perennially peripatetic US traveler. Two suitcases up, up, and away!