Rating: 
Summary: What a travel guide!
Review: As someone who travels to Croatia fequently, this book is by far the best guide money can buy. I've used other, more expensive books, but this one is the most up-to-date book I've encountered. It's also packed with TONS of useful travel information including that which is necessary for the budget travler.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but could be a hell of alot better!
Review: Croatia is magnificent country, it possesses an endless ammount of beauty and is a destination that can blow you away with its variety of unspoiled attractions and crystal clear water.Croatia offers travelers a large variety of experiences for all tastes and budgets and is relitively untouched and not overcrowded.If your planning a trip to Europe see the Croatian coast you wont be disapionted! Those were my experiences of Croatia. In my opinion the book is fair but does not do justice to Croatia.The history section does not give a good account of Croatias history and is misleading.Croatians are portrayed very poorly and there is an overwhelming bias against Croatia.I wont point out the many factual wrongs in the history section, but to justify my point the Bleiburg massacre of 200,000 Croatians at the end of World War 2 by Tito's Partisans was virtually overlooked and not mentioned!This is one of the most significant events in Croatias history and its not mentioned at all! Also Croatias struggle and suffering from the Serbian dominated Yugoslavia is not accuratly potrayed. The book shows Croatia fairly well and is very informative and easy to read but is to critical of Croatia. Considering that Croatia endured 50 years inside Yugoslavia (Croatia was virtually imprisoned inside Yugoslavia) and Croatia was 1/3 occupied by Serbian and the 50 billion dollar damage the war caused it is a miracle that Croatia is were it is today. I would recomend this book if you are interested in travelling to Croatia in the near furure.Since there is a lack of publications on Croatia this book will just have to do.I hope the authors fix their mistakes in the next edition and if they do so it can potentially be excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely terrible book
Review: Don't go there! Croatia is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And it's great, because it seems that only the Italians and Germans have figured that out! This book helped make our honeymoon a wonderful trip.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally!
Review: Finally a travel guide for Croatia. For several years, Croatia was left out of the various larger, multiple-country guidebooks; somehow it wasn't considered a part of Eastern Europe or Central Europe! I have worked in this country for about two years, and recently had the opportunity to explore the coast with the help of this book. The information was excellent and quite accurate, considering a year or more has passed since the publication and much has changed in that time. The only quibbles: some mistakes in the pronunciation guide, and the suggestion that people try swimming in the Drava River, which is polluted--a friend of mine wound up in the hospital for a week after taking a dip. My colleagues and I had to laugh at that recommendation! Like most tourist information on Croatia, the book is strong on the Adriatic and weak on the rest of the country--admittedly, not quite as spectacular, but with some places of interest nonetheless. The book is compact, the perfect size for toting around, and includes lots of intriguing historical sidebars. It will need updating soon, as the country is going through considerable change.
Rating:
Summary: Good, But Already Dated
Review: For a first edition travel guide, this book is excellent. Full of useful travel information and historical context. However, Croatia is changing massively and rapidly. It went from communism to authoritarianism to... maybe democracy this year. It went through wars and occupation and is rebuilding every day. It experienced massive migrations and refugee flows. Some of the information in this book (particularly in Eastern Slavonia) was already dated as the book went to press, there needs to be an annual update.
Rating:
Summary: An important book, and worth the wait!
Review: I believe this is the first comprehensive English language guide to Croatia and has been well worth the wait. The author has put a lot of effort into the book, and I especially enjoyed the short special features in boxed text throughout the text. The history is a great guide to a complicated country. I have always been fascinated by this part of the world and I certainly am even more inspired to get out of my armchair and see it now.
Rating: 
Summary: Racism Award for Sidebar on Vlasi (Vlachs/Aromani)
Review: I just read through Lonely Planet Croatia and found that it treats Croatia mostly as if it has no connection to the outside world. Thus, despite the opening of Yugoslavia, there is little information on connections with Montenegro, with Bosnia, etc., making regional travel a difficult coordinating task. How many of these heavy tourguides can one carry along on a trip? Say you plan a week or two in Croatia but would enjoy a side trip to Bosnia or a trip into Montenegro. This book doesn't link you with the obvious, nor does it provide much detailed information on arrivals into and out of the country. As with most Lonely Planet tourguides, one must buy individual maps to supplement getting from place to place. For example, I was looking for boats, speedboats and ferries from Italy to Zadar, but aside from mentioning the Croatian telephone number of only one company, no departure/arrival times, rates, a website or other information was was provided. I'm going to give this guide the travel guide racism award of the year for its sidebar on Vlasi (Vlachs/Morlachs in the guide). It suggests that beating women was a regular feature of Vlach culture, suggests that the religious sistership (there is alos a brothership ceremony) of the Orthodox Church was for the formation of lesbian relationships in lieu of marriage (Such bloodbrother and bloodsister ceremonies, still in use today, link friends for life, are completely platonic and were often used for inheritance and political reasons - it brings another person into a family, i.e. literally makes a sister or brother of someone unrelated). The Vlasi are a nomadic and semi settled peoples of great antiquity in the Balkans and Eastern Europe with a great mercantile heritage, speak several related ancient latin-like languages, and, with the Illyrians, form part of the ethnic substata of Croatians although some Vlasi still exist today. More than that, the editor suggests that the term Morlach means Black Vlach becuase the skin color of Vlasi was supposedly darker than Croatians. Where she got this additional piece of racism is unfathomable, but the term actually derives from the Greek term Mavrovlahoi, as differentiated from the Kutsovlahoi and other Vlach groups in Greek. The mavro in this case is derived from a period of time in which these Vlasi were either famous for their black wool and/or carried black banners, the banners forming reasons why groups tended to be differentially called as White, Black, Red or Blue or other colors peoples in the early Christian to Middle Byzantine/early Islamic period documents. (cf. also banner terms of these sorts for various unrelated Turkic and Mongol tribes, among others.) It is interesting to note in this regard that Croatians as a people are listed in wrtings from 7th century Byzantine sources as being divided into a Black Croatians group and a White Croatians group. And they carried banners reflecting this. All in all, the book would not have suffered from the author attempting forays into areas in which she was basically unschooled if she had used printed space for more detailed information on the country.
Rating:
Summary: Racism Award for Sidebar on Vlasi (Vlachs/Aromani)
Review: I just read through Lonely Planet Croatia and found that it treats Croatia mostly as if it has no connection to the outside world. Thus, despite the opening of Yugoslavia, there is little information on connections with Montenegro, with Bosnia, etc., making regional travel a difficult coordinating task. How many of these heavy tourguides can one carry along on a trip? Say you plan a week or two in Croatia but would enjoy a side trip to Bosnia or a trip into Montenegro. This book doesn't link you with the obvious, nor does it provide much detailed information on arrivals into and out of the country. As with most Lonely Planet tourguides, one must buy individual maps to supplement getting from place to place. For example, I was looking for boats, speedboats and ferries from Italy to Zadar, but aside from mentioning the Croatian telephone number of only one company, no departure/arrival times, rates, a website or other information was was provided. I'm going to give this guide the travel guide racism award of the year for its sidebar on Vlasi (Vlachs/Morlachs in the guide). It suggests that beating women was a regular feature of Vlach culture, suggests that the religious sistership (there is alos a brothership ceremony) of the Orthodox Church was for the formation of lesbian relationships in lieu of marriage (Such bloodbrother and bloodsister ceremonies, still in use today, link friends for life, are completely platonic and were often used for inheritance and political reasons - it brings another person into a family, i.e. literally makes a sister or brother of someone unrelated). The Vlasi are a nomadic and semi settled peoples of great antiquity in the Balkans and Eastern Europe with a great mercantile heritage, speak several related ancient latin-like languages, and, with the Illyrians, form part of the ethnic substata of Croatians although some Vlasi still exist today. More than that, the editor suggests that the term Morlach means Black Vlach becuase the skin color of Vlasi was supposedly darker than Croatians. Where she got this additional piece of racism is unfathomable, but the term actually derives from the Greek term Mavrovlahoi, as differentiated from the Kutsovlahoi and other Vlach groups in Greek. The mavro in this case is derived from a period of time in which these Vlasi were either famous for their black wool and/or carried black banners, the banners forming reasons why groups tended to be differentially called as White, Black, Red or Blue or other colors peoples in the early Christian to Middle Byzantine/early Islamic period documents. (cf. also banner terms of these sorts for various unrelated Turkic and Mongol tribes, among others.) It is interesting to note in this regard that Croatians as a people are listed in wrtings from 7th century Byzantine sources as being divided into a Black Croatians group and a White Croatians group. And they carried banners reflecting this. All in all, the book would not have suffered from the author attempting forays into areas in which she was basically unschooled if she had used printed space for more detailed information on the country.
Rating:
Summary: good, but has some defects
Review: like all travel guides, you can find something that is not there in 'lonely planet croatia'... i will be traveling croatia this summer and have had the advantage of using several guidebooks in my planning... they all have their pros and cons, so a review of any of them must necessarily discuss these: the pros: the maps and city plans are substantially better than in the competitors' guidebooks... lonely planet is one of the few cheap-o style travel guidebooks that gives you information on at least a few hotels that are not youth hostels, dives or other forms of bottom-barrel accommodation; in other words, they at least give you a few mid-range and expensive options if you wish to go that way... all the essentials are there, with great suggestions on places to sleep, eat and visit the cons: as with ALL of the backpacker/youth travel guidebooks (LP, rough guide, let's go and company), the information on sights/monuments/museums, etc., is SEVERELY lacking... there is just the most basic of information on the history of the sights that you have gone so far to see... which makes it necessary to buy another book, pay an expensive guide or some such thing... (for instance, you will rarely read detailed descriptions of the artwork to be found in a church and are often left wandering about saying 'this is so beautiful, i wonder what it is...i wish the guidebook would tell me more!') i know this would make the guidebooks huge, but even 50% more information would be wonderful so as to have a little bit more of a grip on what you are looking at after taking a 12-hour ferry ride across the adriatic to get there! which is why, despite its quality, i always felt the need to take another guidebook along, just in case...using my usual technique of tearing out just the pages i would need from each book
Rating:
Summary: Incomplete and out of date, but still a resource
Review: Lonely Planet's CROATIA travel guide is worth a look for any traveler going to Croatia, although this 1st edition has its share of faults. Information on Zagreb is pretty limited. The map of the city does not live up to Lonely Planet standards and it covers only about half of the city. The guide itself was published in 1999 and prices have changed not too drastically, but significantly. When it appears in its second edition, I hope the guide will have corrected this things. In the meantime, Lonely Planet CROATIA is worth getting, but it can't stand alone for the traveler headed to Croatia.
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