Insiders' Guide to Salt Lake City, 3rd

Rating:
Summary: lots of information but too little evaluation
Review: A guidebook should do two things. First, it needs to present a lot of factual information about places in the area it describes. Second, it must evaluate the places in a way that is useful to its target audience. This book meets the first requirement: it gives some historical information about the Salt Lake area and it describes many stores, restaurants, hotels, and other locations that will interest travelers. It also talks about health care, education, and other topics that are useful to people considering moving to SLC. Unfortunately, this Insider's Guide fails the second requirement by describing pretty much everything in glowing terms: if you believe this book, everyone is nice, the restaurants are all good, and you can't stay in a bad hotel. Compared to the more useful and frank evaluations found in the better guidebooks such as Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, or Let's Go, this book is definitely second class.