Moon Handbooks Boston

We travel all over the world and use local guides for each region or city we visit. This guide covers the most visited sites as one expects. It also introduces the reader to Boston as the locals see it. We find the best memories of a visit to a new city are the small, colorful exciting places found amoung the well known landmarks. A small farmers market behind the Museum of Art where the neighborhood shops. A pub with authentic Irish music but without the tourist crowd. These flavor a visit and make it special. The author searches for these and helps make our visit better. If you can't see all the places in the book, he writes in a style that makes the book a good read in the hotel room or airplane.

Last year, anticipating the arrival of out of town family, I bought Jeff Perk's Massachussetts Handbook. I have lived in New England for 15 years but am still, of course, an outsider. I found tons of wonderful information and suggestions in the Mass. Handbook, so when the Boston Handbook came out I snatched that one up too. This is a great book for literate people visiting Boston. It covers the whole historical, literary, and artistic scene better than any of its competitors, and it is wonderfully well written as well. Beside highbrow information, he also includes wonderful material on Boston parks, as well as doing a great job with moderately priced eating places and hang-outs. The book assumes, it seems to me, that the reader is well-educated, interested in history and culture, without a lot of money to spend. If that fits your profile, you couldn't buy a better guide book. My only real gripe with the book is that he doesn't do the restaurants in East Boston where some of the most interesting cheap food is to be had.