Outstanding guide written by a woman who knows her stuff. I wish she would update this gem! I purchased this NYC guidebook in 1998 and although some of the info is out of date, it is still my constant NY companion. Hundreds of accurate food/price restaurant reviews, detailed maps, listings for specialty shops, clubs, hotels, hospitals, emergencies and literally everything you want to know in a book that fits in the palm of your hand. If there is an updated version I am not aware of, please email me.

This is another boonie dog book review by Wolfie and Kansas. When we heard the title of Andrea Mohin's book of photographs, "New York Dogs", we thought it was more than a little oxymoronic. After all, how could dogs adapt to New York City? Imagine spending most of your life stuck in a small apartment, never being able to run free in the jungle chasing wild chickens, having humans follow you with a pooper scooper whenever you go for a stroll. When our noncanine animal companions of primate derivation first adopted Wolfie, they lived in an apartment complex in semi-urbanized Tamuning. Wolfie promptly ate the blinds, dug up flowers, barked at caniphobic neighbors, made messes in the neighbors' parking stalls, and forced our humans to spend their life savings to buy a house with a large yard bordering the boonies in Toto.

We were surprised to find that most of the dogs pictured in Ms. Mohin's book appear happy and healthy in their urban environment. Ms. Mohin's introductory essay also makes New York City seem reasonably hospitable for dogs. After seeing "New York Dogs", we've decided that maybe the Big Apple is not such a bad place after all: all those cars to chase; all those dumpsters and garbage cans to raid; and all those dogs in Ms. Mohin's pictures whom we'd like to meet. We still would not want to live in New York, but this book has convinced us that it might not be a bad place to visit (if we could get around the stupid quarantine laws.

For my first visit to NYC I wanted a guidebook with a lot of information, easy to use etc. My partner has traveled a lot and wanted something that showed him new places to see. Both of us, of course, were interested in saving $$$.

New York for less saved us a lot - from the hotel (35% off at a lovely place indeed) to the best museums and attractions (even the Empire State Building) to some excellent restaurants (some of which my cosmopolitan, smirking partner recognized).

Because there is a credit-card style discount card, I was not embarrassed to get the discounts as am I sometimes with paper coupons and cut-outs. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to save big in the Big Apple (haha). J. Maria LaValle

Usefulness is the key when it comes to travel books, and I have yet to find a more useful travel guide to any city. When my family and I planned our trip to New York City, we knew we only had a few days to see everything we wanted (not to mention the Broadway shows we had tickets for) but were at a loss as to how to plan our sightseeing. I mean, how many sights can you see in New York? How long can ne spend at the Metropolitan Museum and still have time to see other sights? What other sights are available in the same general area? Too many times on other trips, I'd see one thing and find, to my horror, that the other thing I wanted to see was on the other side of town and would close before I could get there! This book lays out for you in detail several different three-day tours you can take. It includes recommendations for lunch stops and evening activities. The section on the Metropolitan Museum was invaluable, as the museum is so large that, without this book, I never would have been able to see everything I wanted to see, and I would have missed some exhibits with which I fell in love...

I highly recommend this book to everyone who's going to New York City. In fact, I recommended it to a friend of mine who lives in New York. She not only found it useful herself, but she bought the book so she could loan it out to friends who visit and stay with her.

This book was a last-minute buy right before my trip, and I have to thank the travel-guide gods for my good fortune in finding it. The trip wouldn't have been the same without it! Now I'm planning a trip to London and Paris and have been lucky enough to find a book by the same author on London. Unfortunately, I'll have to wing it in Paris, as she doesn't have a book out about that city (too bad).

I had never been to New York, when I went for a visit last week. What would I have done without this book! Paul Wasserman provides clear, short descriptions of all New York sites, restaurants, hotels, theatres, etc. The book gives great advice and ideas without strangling you to remain in a narrow line of destinations. The book gives you the freedom to enjoy the city in whatever manner suits you the best, but it serves as an anchor to put your mind at ease. It is the perfect travel guide for all visitors to New York City.

If you can't afford the recent huge hardback Changing New York but still love elegant black and white photos that offer a peephole into the New York city of the Depression, than you should not hesitate to get this wonderful volume. It's well bound too.

I remember the first time I saw New York. I was with my parents and we drove down through Pennsylvania from Canada, over the Susquehanna and into New Jersey. As we came around the turnpike, I recognized a city scape rising up over my left shoulder. Through the dusty car window and the haze, perspective was compressed and the distant city looked like jutting grey teeth. Emotionally I realized it was THE CITY, before I could make sense of the angle. It didn't fit with all the t.v. vistas and documentary pictures I had been raised on. It was unique, and it was fresh and it was my discovery.

As years go by and a once distant and monumental city becomes rationalized by repetitive experience, it is easy to lose the first sense of discovery, that dreamy feeling of seeing a great city for the first time.

"New York: Literary Lights" restores that magical quality. The book is an alphabetical listing of most of the great writers, publishers and writing haunts and events that have shaped the modern american mythos. More than just a back to back of mini-biographies, it is a secret map of the vital human side of New York. Streets that had begun to fade jumped back to life for me when I read that one of my favourite writers lived or worked there. The biographies are primarily about writers, but weave a rich fabric that depicts the literary history of New York. As I read deep into the book I found myself flipping back and forth, trying to pick up the trail of a place, or an event and its recurrant impact on New York literature. The writing is deft and chatty, the kind of writing that satisfies like gossip, but stays in mind much longer.

Although some of the stories and characters are legendary and quintessentially Gotham, like, say, Hart Crane, Norman Mailer, or the bar where Dylan Thomas took his last twelve drinks, the bulk of the book is deeper and more penetrating. There are several excellent entries on the Harlem scene, as well as the Jewish scene before and after the second world war. And I learned much about the generous nature of Nathaniel West. The merit of the book however, is Corbett's ability to go beyond the merely encycopedic- to bring out aspects or facts about a writer's life that I did not know. I learned more about people I thought I knew such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edgar Allan Poe.

Although I did not expect such devices, there is an excellent sectional map of Manhattan and Brooklyn which details the districts in which famous writers worked. As well, there is a nice glossary of quotes about New York, containing both the old familiar ones such as Hemingway's "Literary New York is a bottle of tapeworms trying to feed on each other" to Rem Koohaus' "In Manhattan, surrealism is invisible".

I managed to read this book before my last trip to New York. I regret this action, because if I had saved it, I could have extended the inevitable imaginal travel that takes place only when you have physically left a place behind.

I recommend this book highly, both as city guide of sorts and as a great armchair trip.

"Indispensable guide to the gay bars, clubs, accommodation and all the rest the Big Apple has to offer." - From MPG Books

This book is for anyone who has any intention of hiking anywhere in NY. From Long Island to Harriman to the Catskills to the Adirondacks, this book gives detailed descriptions on walks throughout all sorts of terrain. Each chapter has a brief history of the area so you really feel as though you are experiencing surroundings to the fullest. Plus, it is published by the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference which is apparently the premier source for information and maintainers of trails in the area. They also take suggestions so if you find some important detail missing from one of the trail reviews, you can write to the conference and give them your input. To make a long story short, I wouldn't go hiking anywhere in NY without this book.

Any southerner living in New York City will appreciate this lively, well-written restaurant guide that can soothe all your cravings. Soul food, bbq, Louisiana cooking, and any other country foodstuffs you can think of are right here in NYC (believe it or not!), and these southern-born boys have taste-tested all of them for us and come up with some real winners. If you find your stomach churning for grits and sweet potato pie the way I do, this book should be at your side always.