Frommer's New York City 2010 (Frommer's Color Complete Guides)
Product Type: Book
Product Price: $19.99
Manufacturer: Frommers
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Description
- Over 200 full-color photos throughout
- Detailed itineraries, including a "Eating Tour" of some of New York's favorite foods
- Full-color maps, including a 2-page map of the Bronx Zoo
- Tips on gallery-hopping, finding the best inexpensive theater, and the best hotel (and dive) bars
- An in-depth chapter that goes from the sale of Manhattan to the Dutch through the city's 400th birthday
- New York City abounds with new museums: from the Soho annex of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to the funky New Museum; we'll bring you the latest on the new arrivals and major renovations
- Hotel rooms and meals in restaurants are cheaper? How the city is responding to hard times...by cutting prices, and where to look for new-found bargains.
Discover The Best of New York City
Content from Frommer's New York City 2010
New York City's Top Destinations by Category
 The Most Unforgettable New York Experiences |  The Best Events and Seasons |  The Best Museums |
 The Best Places to Take the Kids |  The Best Bites for All Appetites |  The Best Shopping |
Reviews
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-06-20
Summary: "Excellent guide to NYC"
It's almost impossible to summarize a city like New York in only 486 pages. With this in mind, I think that this Frommer's guide does as well as any. I've owned 4 or 5 guides to NYC and this is the best one of the lot. I like the "Best of New York" section, and the sections on history and exploring the city are excellent.
I'm a stickler for good, easy to read maps, and these maps pass the test. There is a detachable folded map which for its size contains a lot of information clearly, but you'll need a different map for subway information.
I'm not clear on what the difference is in content between this guide and the Frommers "Gold Guides"-- dates and prices are the same but the Gold Guide has 50 more pages.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-06-17
Summary: "very helpful guide."
I am in New York City at the moment and have used the book all week. The map in the back is a tear-out and is sturdy enough to survive rainy days, and has kept me on track all week. The book is too large to carry all day, but we tear out the sections we need and it works well.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-26
Summary: "THE BOOK TO BUY IF YOU ARE GOING TO NY!!"
can't say enough great things about this book, you will find all of the info you need and want!
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-21
Summary: "Comprehensive and easy to use!"
I live about an hour away from NYC so I've been there many times for day trips. But I still need a guidebook - otherwise I keep on going to the same places that I know already. I love to browse through this book and plan a day in the city. If I have to go in for something else, I use it to find other things in the area. So well-organized, all the essential info about a place is there, but in a conversational tone. All the maps that you need are there and easy to view, no odd folding and unfolding. This guidebook is bigger than another one I own but has so much more info. It is still a handy portable size, just thicker. It is probably the best NYC book because it is both comprehensive and small enough to carry around in your bag.
Rating: 2 / 5
Date: 2010-03-16
Summary: "Belies the Disneyfication of Manhattan --- which is appropriate for most visitors"
I have lived in New York since 2006. I find it extremely difficult to read this book. I flip through it, and put it down. It's too large and heavy (1.6 pounds) to carry without a backpack or purse; much of the information is generic and unchanged from the 2007 edition. I recommend the portable edition instead.
Most (80%) of the book is single-paragraph descriptions of hotels, restaurants, and other attractions; mostly free of New-York-only idioms or perspectives that are often found in television shows like "Saturday Night Live" or "30 Rock". For the restaurants that I've visited myself, I'd say that the book's descriptions are accurate.
About 10% of the book describes the "outer boroughs" (Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island). The rest is centered on Manhattan.
The dining maps support only one-way lookups. If you know the name of a restaurant you want, it's easy to find the location. That's not so useful, because each restaurant listing already includes the address with cross streets --- remember, most of Manhattan is a rectangular grid. If you are in a particular sub-neighborhood and you want to know what the book says about the restaurants nearby, the maps are useless: you can find the numbered locations, and then you have to scan the alphabetical list of restaurant names to match the number. Then you have to go to the index to find the page with the restaurant. (It may be on the adjoining pages, but there, the restaurants are grouped by price, which doesn't help find the listing.) At least four restaurants on the Midtown map are not in the restaurant index!
The safety blurb is too general. I would have liked to see a list of areas to avoid. Google "New York crime map".
The pace of change in New York makes it difficult to keep a book like this up to date. I agree with E. B. White, who wrote: "The reader will find certain observations to be no longer true of the city, owing to the passage of time and the swing of the pendulum. ... I feel that it is the reader's, not the author's, duty to bring New York down to date; and I trust it will prove less a duty than a pleasure." (1949) The mention of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" (p. 92), which by late 2009 had acquired a new host, with Conan having started his all-too-brief tenure on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien"; and the highlighted Tavern on the Green, which entered bankruptcy in 2009 and liquidation in 2010, only heightens the reader's awareness of vicissitudes.
I think the editors and writers have exercised great restraint by limiting the exposition to essential, practical information. If I were to have tried to write this book, the size would have doubled with meaningless trivia. Unfortunately, sometimes the descriptions can become too general or telegraphic, and the reader is expected to already know what the writer means. In the neighborhood descriptions, the paragraph introducing "The Flatiron District, Union Square & Gramercy Park" reads:
"These adjoining and at places overlapping neighborhoods are some of the city's most appealing. Their streets have been rediscovered by New Yorkers and visitors alike, largely thanks to the boom-to-bust dot-com revolution of the late 1990s; the Flatiron District served as its geographical heart and earned the nickname 'Silicon Alley' in the process. These neighborhoods boast great shopping and dining opportunities and a central-to-everything location that's hard to beat. A number of impressive new hotels have been added to the mix over the last few years. The commercial spaces are often large, loftlike expanses with witty designs and graceful columns."
I fail to see how this might convey useful meaning to anyone.