Best Books for Young Independent Travellers

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Lonely Planet "Condensed" city guides for $9.95 are awesome. They're great if you've been to a city in the past and/or if you know your basic itinerary, they fill in the gaps with places to eat, shop, and cover the major sites. I just used the London and NYC ones recently. Although I respect Arthur Frommer and subscribe to "Budget Travel" his guides are washed up. A lot of my fellow travel agents think hes anti-travel agents, he's actually driven a lot of business to mainstream resorts and tours via travel agent. His guides are pretty bland and basic, even if he "invented" budget travel.
Best Guides: Lonely Planet, frommers.com, Rough Guides, Rick Steves Europe Guides supplement with internet research
These are the younger, hipper guides. Also Consumer Reports travel books and newsletters and anything buy Kelly Monahagn is good.
Avoid: Fodors, Frommers, and the big bulky mainstream books. I own all of them for reference to deal with all types of clients, but you shouldn't unless you want to become a travel agent. Also, Fieldings danger guides are interesting to read but unrealistic for most people.
Frommers guides aren't even written by Frommer anymore, he sells stickers for "recommended" shops and restaurants to put in their windows in London ! His magazine is worth subscribing to, but even there he's a hypocrite. He correctly rails against the stupid writing in Sunday travel sections, yet usually recommends the same phony resorts. Also he loves to spout off his "liberal" views but supports Caribbean resorts that ban gays. I'm a right winger but I love selling to gays, they like to travel and they pay their damn bills on time, so why does Frommer dis them.
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