Frommer's(r) Portable Phoenix and Scottsdale, 2nd Edition

Rating:
Summary: Not the best
Review: I have not yet travelled to Phoenix, which is, of course, the whole purpose behind my purchase of this travel guide.

Something tells me, though, that all of the sights and attractions of Phoenix and Scottsdale cannot be summarized in 25 or so small pages (this travel guide is as wide as a wallet and only twice as tall, hence the "small pages" bit). I am not impressed with this travel guide. Frommer's, as many people have come to know, usually published travel guides with complete, well-researched information, and rarely do you need another travel guide if you've purchased a Frommer's first.

Not so with this one, unless all you do in Phoenix is eat and sleep-- literally. I say this because well over half of the book (est. 65%) is devoted to restaurants and hotels (and it's not a very long book (150pps not including the index). If this book was retitled "Frommer's Guide to the Best of Phoenix/Scottsdale Restaurants and Hotels," this book would have won my five star rating.

Now, in all fairness, the reviews for the restaurants and lodgings have been very influential factors in my decisions on where I will be staying and where I would like to eat. Again, the restaurants and accomodations chunk of the book is quite informative.

But too much of the book is devoted to where to eat, where to stay, and then "where to eat and stay outside Phoenix/Scottsdale." And there is a disproportionately large section of the book given to advice to international travellers, which for any USofA citizen is a waste of paper.

As I mentioned before, there is not much space devoted to sights and attractions. Only highlights are mentioned. And with some of the highlights, I am not entirely sure the authors of this book have spent the required time at these attractions that would allow them to write informative reviews. I, for one, am not impressed with most of the descriptions of the "things to see and do." They seem threadbare, as if the authors walked in and out of these places in ten minutes, just enough time to get to know the official name of the place, and perhaps see the only the highlights of the place. Very poor field research, in my opinion; they give only the highlights of the highlights. I didn't find the "to-see" section very useful.

The one use I DID get out of the attractions part of the book was the webpage addresses (URLs) for those sights that had them. This at least allowed me to use the Internet to research these places for myself. Frommer's always includes URLs for any place that has one, from restaurants to museums to attractions. This part of the book was useful.

All of this said, I surfed Amazon until I found two other books for the Phoenix/Scottsdale/Tempe area: the Insider's Guide to Phoenix and Best Places Phoenix. They are larger and more useful than this mostly-worthless Frommer's Portable Phoenix & Scottsdale. I certainly would not recommend this book unless all you do is eat and sleep in Phoenix/Scottsdale, and only then this book covers the higher-end places, places that someone on my income cannot afford very often.