Rating: 
Summary: Let's be objective
Review: This guide was absolutely helpful during my travels in Ghana and I have never gone birdwatching in my life. The guide is written in a friendly way, contains plethera of information, and is certaily more accurate than anything one is able to come by locally. While it is great to take the locally available information and find out about things not necessarily covered by the guide, unless you are happy only knowing that the town you want to travel to is "not too far", you will find this guide a great resource. Unlike the previous reviewer, my conversations with other travelers in Ghana were more along the lines of how extremely useful this book has been. I spent a month in Ghana and apart from a few restaurants or hotels recommended in the book being closed, and types of roads not being marked on the maps, I found that traveling was much easier with the guide. The fact that there is such a thing as Guide to Ghana is excellent in itself because anyone who has traveled there knows how valuable quick and accurate information is. This guide delivers 95% of the time and is certainly better than any other I have seen. So if you would like some guidance, take this guide. Otherwise you might have a birdwatching free experience that might also involve avoidable bad food and lodging accompanied by hours spent in heat to find it.
Rating: 
Summary: Detailed Travel Guide.
Review: This is definatly the most detailed guide to Ghana currently available, however it is not aimed at students or others traveling on a low budget. It is also a little out of date eg. it recommends the Castle Restaurant in Cape Coast which burn down three years ago! things change fast in Ghana so no guide will be absolutly up to date, this is a usefull basis for exploring the smaller towns which other guides miss out.
Rating: 
Summary: No alternative but full of holes
Review: Unfortunately, this is the only English-language guidebook available outside of Ghana itself. Mr. Briggs does provide an excellent overview of history and backup material, but I found myself continually aware of the likelihood that he did not actually visit some of the places he recommends, and in some cases he provides the reader with inaccurate information. For example, he includes a brief list of vocabulary at the back of the book, phrases of which are borrowed from several different (and not necessarily mutually comprehensible) languages. He also leaves out several important facets of Ghanaian culture in favor of including the best places for bird watching. Mr. Briggs admits in the introduction that he was given only two months to throw this guidebook together-- and, unfortunately, it shows. I would recommend contacting the Ghana Tourist Board for more accurate and impersonal (i.e., the reader is somewhat forced to follow in the precise footsteps of Mr. Briggs and his companion, and if that includes a predominance of birdwatching and beerswilling, then so be it) information about what is available in, and the history of, various regions in Ghana. There are several alternative guidebooks available, but unfortunately they are only available In Ghana. Finally, I would like to add that the "travellers" whom I met during the course of my travels through Ghana echoed these sentiments. We traded tales and examined each other's marked-up copies where Mr. Briggs had misinformed us.
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