The guide is good and will help any visitor to NYC to get along much better than without a guide. The truth is that even though the book is helpful, if you are used to travel with Frommer's books and never switched to Fodor's, I think there's no need to change. As a Frommer's brand buyer, I missed some features and easy reading when traveling with this book. However, This Fodor's book excells in 2 things, first, the full color photos at the beginning of the book are very inspiring, and second: the post-it flags included are a unique handy feature that will help you to highlight your most important sections of the book.

This guidebook gives you all the information you will need for a fun weekend--or week--in NYC. It even includes sample itineries to help you map out a course that won't have you running around the city confused. Leave the rest of the guidebooks at home. This one is all you need.

Anything and everything you want to know, see, and hear about New York. I'd be lost in New York without it. It even suggests schedules to go by so you don't miss out on the good stuff. It's great! Well worth for the low price.

I thought this was a great guide. It gives you the straight information on many NYC neighborhoods - the good and the bad. I found it really helpful when my husband and I were looking to buy an apartment, there's nothing else like it out there. Thumbs up!

Moving to the city?

Moving around in the city?

Looking for someplace new to explore over the weekend in the city?

Ingest media about the city and are tantalized but clueless about the neighborhood references?

GRAB THIS BOOK NOW!

Zany's manages to be a succinct yet comprehensive reference for every neighborhood in every borough and a couple in Jersey.

It provides at-a-glance lists of demographic info, public transportation access, average rental and purchase price, and distance in minutes to both downtown and midtown Manhattan. It also offers (compared to my experience accurate) overviews of noise levels, parking availability, family-friendliness, safety considerations, entertainment options, restaurants, public green spaces, and shopping.

While packing maximum info into minimum space, the well-written snack-sized histories and characterizations of neighborhood vibe also make it an addictive read.

Final Word: Interesting fun for any NYC fan, indispensible survey for would-be renters or buyers before contacting a broker.

This is so well written and organized, it is the only guide you'll need. I also bought If your thinking of living in...New York Times book and Monster.com's Relocating to NYC and surrounding areas. I wasted my money on those other two books because unlike Zany's they were mostly fluff and made it sound like all neighborhoods were equally good.

In contrast Zany's gives you detailed enough information that is "straight up" and not sounding like a salesperson for the hood. The descriptions give you a nice feel for the intangible aspects of any community. By organizing each neighborhood into things which are relevant to everyone, but not weighted equally by everyone, you can select what things are important to you and make your own decisions based on what is important and appeals to you.(e.g. safety, schools, parks, shopping, household income, diversity, etc.)

I also like the "editor's picks" which I found very helpful and included a little something for everyone (Best Bang for the Buck, Hippest Hood etc.). Using the book nearly exclusively we were able to narrow it down to two hoods that were in our price range and met our criteria for a good place to live. Well done!!

NYC can be overwhelming even for the repeat visitor. Be prepared, and use Fodor's. What I loved about the guide is that it breaks the city down into neighborhoods. You can pick the ones you want to visit, and wander through a different one each day. I originally tried to visit NYC with a map highlighted with the sights I wanted to see. It was a wild goose chase! The suggested itineraries in Fodor's made it easier, and I wasn't harried by running all over the city.

Fodor's has done good by NYC here. This tome is packed with juicy tid-bits throughout. If you 'Need A Break?' during your walking, there are literally hundreds of highlighted cafes, corner deli's, candy shops, and bakaries for you to peruse-separated by neighborhood and borough.

This book is divided into different chapters, the first dealing mainly with Manhattan and its different neighborhoods. Want to visit the grill/movie studio owned by actor Robert De Niro? It's in here. Want to visit the former homes of any number of famous New Yorkers? Or the bar in which poet Dylan Thomas supposedly drank himself to death? The restaurants where Hemingway and others wrote? Prohibition-era speakeasy's? All these and much more are expounded upon.

There is a dizzying array of info on museums, nightclubs, music clubs, restaurants, transit systems, and tours. My wife and I have been devouring this book in the months before our trip to NYC. It has been a blast. The beginning of the book also includes some nice color photography of various key sights and Fodor's has done readers a great service by listing its 'moments not to miss' on one page (things like where to be for a great sunset or the most romantic restaurant etc.).

Also helpful are numerous itineraries for walking tours based on a 3 day or 5 day trip to NYC. The inside cover includes a checklist of items to cover in the months up to your trip (reservations, finances etc.)

After returning from our trip, my wife and I can say that this book was a MASSIVE help to us. We carried it around in our bag and stopped each day once or twice to review it as we walked around. A great resource.

Absoluetly a GREAT BOOK! From the pull out map, to the pictures this book is just jam packed with information!

It includes categories such as: The Arts, Lodging, Nightlife, Shopping, and many more. Everything you need to know about the greatest city in the world is in this book!

Perhaps one of my favorite things about this book is that it has up to the date website information. I was able to purchase many of my tickets for attractions in advance thanks to this feature which allowed me to avoid long lines.

Other great features include addresses and telephone numbers, fax numbers, admission prices, and opening hours. Never worry about not having enough $$ or arriving too late to find the attraction closed.

Use this book as your guide and you are guaranteed to have a wonderful visit to NYC!

While this seemed like a good guide while planning the trip, in actual fact it was not terribly useful. It's poorly organized, so trying to figure out, on the fly, if there is a decent restaurant near an attraction means flipping back to the index too many times. The author also gave starred attraction prominence to a couple of places where she qualified it in the description with, it may take too long to get here for too little to do. Hmmm. Also the restaurant guidelines needed some sort of a noise index. This is one of those books that assumes kids will only be happy in an atmosphere of Disneyland-like frenzy. I like my kids to eat a normal variety of food (not chicken fingers or cheeseburgers only) in normal restaurants. The two restaurants we tried from the book were so unbelievably loud with non-stop sensory stimulation we couldn't speak to one another. After that I ducked into a bookstore and bought Fodor's Around NYC With Kids and packed this one permanently in the suitcase. I want a guide that lets me know if a place can tolerate a crying baby -- I don't need the waiters always dressed in "character" doing floor shows to get my kids to eat.

Our family just returned from a long weekend in NYC. We found the book invaluable. The book recommended the Doubletree Hotel as the best 'kid-friendly' place to stay, and they were right on. The rooms were spacious, modern and clean. The hotel also had a great location right on Times Square. The book also suggested John's Pizza which turned about to be a great call. The pizza was great, the restaurant loud enough for our kids and we were able to walk right in and get a table on a Saturday night.

Our family just returned from a long weekend in NYC, and this book was invaluable. The book's recommendation of the Doubletree Hotel as the best 'kid-friendly' place in town was right on. Spacious rooms, modern, clean and a great location. The book suggested John's Pizza which was another great call. The pizza was great, the restaurant was loud enough to handle the kids and we were able to get a table quickly on a Saturday night.

This book is very nice, but fo not buy it when you are looking for a book which takes a look inside these beautiful houses. It only shows the outside and ,i think, too many pictures of the gardens. It is really a nice book but i thought there would be many pictures of the houses and not so many detailed pictures of gardens...

I love this book! Reading it over this past winter brought back all the great feelings of being in the Hamptons. I love the fact that the beautiful photographs don't focus on just the ocean, but show hamptons life behind the scenes. The photographs of the gardens and artist's studios are especially nice. This is a great collectable book and I highly recommend it as a gift.

We live in the city - downtown. We have three children and wish/dream about getting out of town on a weekend and letting the children run and play on the grass in the country or sand on a beach. This book puts you there and without any of the sense of overwhelming and intimidating wealth that would take away from the beauty and feeling the Hamptons can offer. The photos are beautiful and the subjects are different and interesting. I truly do love this book and have given many as gifts to friends from out of town who have heard so much about the east end of the Island but have yet to visit.

This book is intresting by showing New York trough the season and everyday life (street scene, political meeting, people ...). But pictures are too gray and compare to the works that have been done by other photographers on this extrodinary city we could have expect a more beautiful graphism, beautiful pictures and a higher quality of the print (see the great example of "Signs" from Walker Evans)

I love this book my aunt and unclemade i

Mr. Ginzburg for me has captured the thing that is New York. I got several of these books as gifts for friends going to the City for the first time. It is much easier than trying to tell them about a city they'll only experience a small piece of.

If you want to stay in the cocoon of midtown Manhattan don't bother with this book. But if you want to see the REAL, non-homogenized-Middle-American New York, read this. If you want to see the outer boroughs, read this to know what's interesting. Thanks to this book, I discovered:

*Jackson Heights (mostly Columbian) *Brighton Beach (mostly Russian) *Greenpoint (Polish) *Bensonhurst (the REAL Little Italy) *Belmont (another Italian area in the Bronx; I liked Bensonhurst better, its easier to reach by subway, bigger and better kept) *3 separate Hasidic Jewish areas (Crown Heights, Boro Park and Williamsburg) *Washington Heights (Dominician/Puerto Rican) *Astoria (Greek) *Flushing (Chinese) *Atlantic Avenue (Arabic) *Midwood (Syrian Jewish)

One caveat: if you are interested in one particular restaurant call to make sure it is open.

I found that this guide assists you in discovering the diversity, background, and curiosity within Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx neighborhoods. I used it to uncover new restaurants and cuisines, especially authentic, unpretentious, inexpensive ones, whenever visiting the Big Apple.

It is great when you go into neighborhoods where they just don't speak English and often new immigrants (natives) on the street or over the phone are too myopic in giving directions.

It is great for the NYC visitor as exploring Queens and Brooklyn by subway doesn't come without some intrepidation, especially in the evening. But after qualifying the areas that I do know quite well, Little Italy and Chinatown, I read areas that I recently visited Koreantown, Manhattan and Little Columbia in Jackson Heights, Queens. I now value the insight and comprehensive amount of research the author presents.

Each ethnic group has a clear vignette on when they came and settled, the reasons for immigrating, noteworthy aspects of their culture, political and religious organizations, and restaurants, markets, shops, museums, and cultural activities. Some 500 pgs worth!

He gives a lot of practical info, phone numbers, hours open, specialties, so that when you are on a quest, you can find it. Lots of factoids and city trivia are sprinkled everywhere. Many opinions were on the mark. Good index.

The first reviewer needs to read more thoroughly: a) Russian Jews in Brighton Beach, p 223-8; b) Germans in Ridgewood, Queens (next to Glendale), p 55-7; c) even a random tourist like me knows that The Bronx starts at 140-150th St, a typo.

My main critique is that the author could have included simple "bigger-picture" maps showing the neighborhoods and Metro stops to make it more tourist friendly. While he gives general directions on where they are located, often I couldn't determine which borough it was in.

I found this book accurate and amazing! Mr. Leeds highlights so many neighborhoods with a keen understanding for New York and its cornucopia of ethnic flavor. Mr. Leeds, adding to what few tour guides know and understand, recognizes the recent Jewish immigrants to Brighton Beach-- in addition to pinpointing the best restaurants (Russian, Germnan, Italian Polish, Puerto Rican, etc.) with a simplicity, profundity, and flair that makes visiting them extra special!

I'd get my money back on this one, if I could. As a first-time traveler to NYC, I found this book absolutely less than worthless. It's probably better-suited to use by people who are experienced NY visitors, and are looking for new and different things to do, but even then I can't see how it would be worth spending the money for the hardcover. We made an honest try to use it, but found it essentially no help at all, and it spent the entirety of our trip sitting in a pile on the hotel dresser.

City Secrets New York City is not only an amazing guide to the lesser known sites and sounds of New York but it is the perfect gift for those traveling to the great city. I find the strolls through the neighborhoods helpful and amusing. The commentary offered by the contributors is inciteful and offers an education to the great city rarely found in other travel guides.

I am having my wedding in New York City and along with our "save the date cards" we have sent out copies of City Secrets New York to guests. I believe City Secrets is a charming primer for anyone planning to visit the city!

In the rapidly changing face of New York City fast becoming another strip mall full of chain shops and uniformity, it is refreshing to note that yes, real New York still exists--those unappreciated, and undervalued landmarks, shops, and restaurants that truly define NYC. Famous luminaries living in the city--architects, artists, curators, and gourmets--guide you to those hidden gems through witty, and informative stories on the cultural, and historical significance of each place. Entries are organized by neighborhood, and comes complete with addresses, phone numbers, hours of operation, and directions. City Secrets is a must for saavy travelers, and residents alike--there are many things here I never knew about. rkchin

There is a lot of history in New York City and the surrounding area, much of it baseball and the author certainly covers it well. Although much of what is in the book can certainly be found in other baseball books it is still a worth while read. I realize it would have added much to the size of the book, but I would have liked to see more pictures such as of the present site of Lou Gehrig's birthplace on page 162 and of The Lambs' Club on page 212. I found a few errors of which a few are inevitable, I suppose. On page 196 the author says Bob Friend was the winning pitcher after the Giants' last game in the Polo Grounds (1957) and nine years later he was the winning pitcher in the first game at Shea Stadium (1964). This would be seven years. On page 73 the name of Billy Jurges was spelled "Jurgez". The most glaring mistake, however, came on page 80 when it is mentioned that Lou Gehrig was honored at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1940. The correct year, of course, is 1939. I would give the book a tough three stars, maybe even closer to four, but that Gehrig mistake really bothered me.

Having borrowed the book from a friend and having read it with great pleasure, it has been placed on my Christmas wish list. It will provide me with a guide on future tours into New York to see the many sites related to baseball events that Reisler has done such an excellent job of describing.

In amusing vignettes, the author takes us from place to place, and from one era to another, in the annals of baseball. Each page opens the reader to entertaining narratives of baseball's interesting locations and exciting personalities. A grand slam.

I stand fast on my convictions that this book encourages trespass on the private lands of lower Platte Clove by suggestion rather than by directive: the author describes the area and the illegal ingress, but he qualifies the chapter by saying that this hike is "not recommended". The book received the same commentary by a reviewer from the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference publication, the TrailWalker, so I'm not alone in this observation. TThis is the second time this review has been removed by Amazon at the request of the publisher, Black Dome. Must be nice to be able to insist on only good reviews! What's up with that, Amazon?

I picked up this book to replace some of the outdated Catskill Guides I already have. This book is much more than I expected. It is well-organized and a pleasure to read. The routes are always interesting and the author provides much more information about the Catskills' environment. I also like the fact that hikes range from really easy to quite difficult. A few of the places that Henry picks are real gems that I didn't even know about. The pictures are good too. The book is a great size for taking on the trail.

A couple of my friends have this book, and I was thinking about buying it for myself. I was surpised to see such an odd review saying that this book encourages hikes on private land. I took a look through my friend's book and there is no mention of going on private land. I've been to Platte Clove (the area in question, I believe) and there are more than one way into the area. It is among the most spectacular places in the Catskills and for the author to ignore it would be a disservice to anyone interested in the Catskills. I'm not sure what kind of chip the person who wrote that review has on his shoulder, but it obvious that he/she is making up at least part of the review.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Catskills.