Lonely Planet Eastern Europe (5th Ed)

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable book for a beautiful region
Review: I can only speak for the Yugoslav section in this book, since it is the country I am most acquainted with.
Generally speaking, the LP team did an excellent job researching Beograd, but information on the rest of the country is poor. They don't mention a thing about Serbian institutions like Studenica monastery; they omit everything about the Fruska Gora and there's not even a word on the charming town of Sremski Karlovci.
I wonder whether the information on the other countries is equally poor. If that is the case, I'd rather tour the region on my own without any book at all.
However, one improvement with respect to the previous edition is they are now including Kotor (But Ulcinj is not so much recommended as before, which I don't know why since the beaches are much better than in Budva).
With regards to Novi Sad, their suggestions are very poor, even in what concerns to lodging. My recommendations are: add the Fruska Gora, Srem Karlovci, Raska and probably Nis.

Rating:
Summary: Everything in Moderation
Review: I recently lived in Bulgaria for several years, and can attest to the relative accuracy of the Bulgarian section of this book. However, it presents a somewhat abbreviated picture, as the inclusion of so many countries in one book means that some chapters are unavoidably short. For example, Bulgaria is chock-full of great restaurants (both in the capital Sofia, and in more picturesque resort towns such as Bansko) but only a disappointingly small fraction are mentioned here. On the other hand, this book DOES include Albania (approximately 40 pages -- quite impressive), a country with admittedly little tourism but where such a guide is worth its weight in gold. If you'll be spending long periods in one country where a decent, individual country guide exists (such as the superb Rough Guide to Bulgaria, which served as my constant travel companion and which I highly recommend), you may want to consider buying that country's guide. But if you're traveling extensively around the region, or visiting otherwise less well-documented travel destinations such as Albania, this book fits the bill.

Rating:
Summary: Good but a little abbreviated
Review: I'm going to be a first-time Eastern Europe traveler this summer. However, I have travelled extensively and one of the first things I look for in a travel book is a book that offers information on all aspects of a country. For example, I felt the information on countries like Yugoslavia and Macedonia was a little abbreviated. There are some people out there who would actually like to do an "off-the-beaten-path" trip in those countries and Lonely Planet wasn't able to help me plan for this. The information on Greece was definitely helpful, but for those who plan to travel on their islands, I'd recommend Lonely Planet's Greek Islands which had exactly the right amount of information I needed to make my travels there worthwhile!

Rating:
Summary: Abbreviated, but good.
Review: We purchased this book before going to three of the countries covered, because there are so few books that cover Eastern Europe as a whole.

Although the information was limited, we found it helpful in general terms. It also whetted my appetite for going to the other countries in the book!