Lithuania, 3rd: The Bradt Travel Guide

Rating:
Summary: Best available guide to the country (at the time of review)
Review: Make no mistake, I am no devoted fan of Bradt guides. I have read my share of shoddy, poorly edited, lazily researched and prejudiced Bradt guides. So I approached this book with a very healthy dose of scepticism.

The fact is, the guide is very well researched, very up-to-date; even airline info is accurate and relevant! That's actually a great compliment: most big and respectable (?) publishing houses like Lonely Planet are still struggling to come up with anything more substantantial than "common sense" (in most case, it isn't even that) factoids such as their supreme insult to inteligence "pack as little as possible but take everything you need". But enough about Lonely Planet - they are my favorite whipping boy and this review is not about them.

So we agreed that Bradt is well-researched and accurate. The regional information (outside Vilnius and Kaunas and Klaipeda) is, at the moment, second to none; main cities are also covered very well. The writer had enough sense to seek extensive advise in Lithuania from everyone who is anyone in travel writing business. It seems that the (formerly) glorious publishers of Vilnius In Your Pocket (they were incredibly good before they overstretched themselves, spread their editorial effort too thin and apparently stopped investing into their famous gold-standard research) quietly helped Bradt with all their knowledge, in return for a modest and barely noticeable plug. Not fair? Well, maybe, but it helped Bradt.

This book is worth every penny. Besides practicalities, it has good articles on history and language and culture, too. There is very little to fault on content side. It looks like there's nothing missing, and I don't say things like this too often.

Having said all that, I am still not impressed with their graphic design. It looks amateurish; a bit of gloss and color and visual guidance would be in order. Some places look as if they were designed by your uncle in his free time on home computer. Maybe it appeals to some people, but many will be put off, thinking - why should I spend good money on something that looks like a college newsletter? This would be a superficial reaction, but one which does no favors to publishers when trying to sell the book.

Overall, the book is still worth your money - by all means. For Lithuania, you don't need to bother with Lonely Planet, who were so far in the lead six or seven years ago that it seemed like no-one could catch up with them. Since then, LP stood still and Bradt evolved incredibly, and now fortunes are reversed. Again, at the moment (September 2003) there is nothing better on the market.