If you plan to visit New Orleans (the Big Easy) be sure to consult your Fodor's Guide BEFORE you go. You'll know where to stay, where to eat, and how to enjoy your trip the best. Take the tours and visit the Jazz Clubs...and definitely eat the best food in the world.

This book covered all the ground, sea and air of Belize. If you ever wanted to know where to stay, where to eat, and what there is to see, this is the book to buy.

If you don't buy any other book, get this one. It has it all.

Studied it at length before booking and then we took it along and were glad we did both. You will be too.

As a person who enjoys traveling, I decided to purchase this book on my first trip to Virginia Beach. This guide introduced me to many different sights to see that I never knew existed. They provide phone numbers and addresses of the locations and their descriptions of the places were very accurate. This superb book lists the best attractions, restaurants and many other things for all of the cities in Maryland and Virginia. If you're going to MD or VA for the first time or for the tenth time, this book is a great addition to add to your bag.

In this volume, Joseph Reidy traces the development of Central Georgia from the period of its earliest settlement following the Revolutionary War through Reconstruction, focusing on economic, political, and social changes. Prior to 1830, most Georgians were yeoman farmers seeking self-sufficiency, owning only a few slaves with whom they lived and worked in a familiar manner. During the cotton boom of the 1830s, large planters moved into the area, establishing the plantation system, large numbers of slaves, and the ganging method of production. The depression of the 1840s allowed the planters to make gains at the expense of yeomen, as they bought up land and slaves at low prices from debt-burdened farmers. The process of planter consolidation and domination continued into the 1850s when cotton prices rose. Reidy argues that to respond to increased demand, rather than practicing scientific agriculture to increase output, planters in central Georgia simply increased the workload of their slaves, hiring additional overseers from the newly dispossessed white lower class. The increased tensions between planters, struggling yeomen, overburdened slaves, and the new landless poor whites played out in the Secession crisis and period of Reconstruction.

Despite their claims that a slave republic was the only form of government capable of producing harmonious social relations, planters were aware that the growing poverty in the region undermined this argument and threatened to turn the yeomanry and poor whites against them. Evidence of this division could be seen in the growth of party politics, with planters, town dwellers, and immigrants preferring the Democratic Party, and yeomen and poor whites turning to the Know-Nothings. Planters hoped to alleviate social tensions by funding poor relief, public education, and internal improvements that would bring new jobs, but the yeomanry, while approving in theory of public works, rejected them out of opposition to the higher taxes such projects would entail. Once the Civil War broke out, planter actions only furthered the destruction of the social and economic relations they had hoped to save, as planters refused to devote all resources to winning the war at the expense of current profits. They continued to plant cotton when grain was needed to supply troops and would not contract out their slaves to war materiel producers at low prices, resulting in rising prices for yeomen families who could not maintain self-sufficiency with their household heads away fighting the war and decreasing purchasing power for white laborers. Planters were unable to feed or protect their slaves from Union troops, destroying slaves' faith in paternalism and forcing them to take care of themselves, which prepared them for independence following emancipation.

Following the war, planters hoped to exercise the same control over free blacks as they had over slaves, but with the help of the Freedman's Bureau and Radical Republicans, free blacks negotiated for more control over working conditions, their families, religious institutions, and rights as citizens. While facing legal discrimination at every turn, they were in many cases able to negotiate contracts as sharecroppers, educate their children, exercise their right to vote (though not to hold office), and establish their own churches and political movements. Yeomen also benefited somewhat in that they now had unprecedented ability to hire black laborers, but were harmed by new laws limiting hunting and fishing on unenclosed lands, which diminished their ability to subsist as much as it did that of freedmen. Both black and white non-planters increasingly turned to wage labor, marking central Georgia's transition to a capitalist economic system. Planters lost a good deal of their political and economic dominance, but maintained as much of their social power as they could under the newly bourgeois order.

I have been in Costa Rica for 2 months now and have one more month to go. I have been using this guide to find hotels, great places to eat, shop, and hang out at night. His recommendations are awesome and, of course, accurate. The only discrepancy has been some of the hotel prices. They seem to be quoted lower in the book by a few dollars even though I am traveling during the low season. His bus schedule times are pretty accurate although with so many fluctuations with scheduling it is best to call ahead. If you want more history on any particular region it would be best to do outside reading as this guide book is more to the point step by step instructions on how to get there and where to stay.

I've lived in the beautiful state of Florida for 36 years and this book is one of the best tour guides I've seen for people who love to drive as much as I do. While perusing this publication, I have found several places that even I haven't visited yet. There are 25 separate driving tours (recommended driving times of one to three days) mapped out for you to enjoy. Each trip/map is accompanied by descriptions and color photographs of the best attractions to visit along the suggested routes. So, grab a copy, jump in your car, and have a great time whether you are with family, with friends, or going solo. And remember, please drive safely and enjoy this great state.

I've been visiting New Orleans for over thirty years and these two guys found some joints I've never even heard of.

I took this guide on a first time visit to San Antonio and found it invaluable. Not only was it up to date with info on the latest hotels, attractions, and restaurants, but it contains lots of asides containing interesting information on the different sites that added to our enjoyment at visiting these sites. A first rate job!

This Frommer's Guide got me where I wanted to go -- and pointed out a few places that I never would have thought of. Sure, it's a great guide for Baltimore, Annapolis, the Eastern Shore. The information on area restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions are great. Plus there were some interesting tidbits about out-of-the-way places worth a visit. I never thought about a trip to Wilmington for instance. Yet after reading this book I found some great places to visit: good restaurants, a beautiful inn, and an intriguing contemporary museum, for instance.
The reviews were accurate and didn't steer me wrong once. It's a solid guide for both states.