Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need

From Publishers Weekly A distinctly minor effort by the Miami Herald columnist and author of such previous successes as Dave Barry's Greatest Hits , this guide works too hard for comic effect. There are strained references to inedible airline food, a "Five Booger" ranking from the "Michelin Guide to How Snotty a Restaurant Is," Chicago as "The City with a Great Big Butt." There are tired gags, one involving the translation of a phrase about "the fish of your brother Raoul" and another about using the same map for downtown Vienna, London and Berlin. But the book is not completely devoid of laughs: "Akron: Meeting Yesterday's Challenges Tomorrow" is cited as a typical article from an airline magazine. There is a clever parody of a highway historical marker; and a discussion of the problem of locating a tree in Oregon that doesn't have an ecologist wrapped around it. The book, however, is hardly sidesplitting. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews Holder of a Pulitzer for funny commentary, Barry (Dave Barry Slept Here, 1989) follows the footsteps of Baedeker and Marco Polo and offers a travel book that is more current and just as useful. In a time-honored and noble tradition of comical assessments of the world away from home, Barry presents a light text, augmented with the customary cheesy charts, footnotes, and diagrams. (Maybe it's just coincidence, but the handy street-maps of Cairo, London, Berlin or Munich [one map], Vienna, Paris, and downtown Ireland all appear alarmingly similar.) There's advice on planning a trip (the author differs from his wife about packing a waffle iron), foreign languages, air travel, family travel (the best time to visit Disney World: 1962), and camping. There's a guide to all fifty states, Canada, and Mexico. Then there are also foreign countries, located in Europe. (See ``How to Use a Bidet.'') ``Most of these countries,'' Barry astutely points out, ``eventually realized the marketing advantage of not being so foreign.'' Little-known foreign fact: ``England manufactures most of the world's airline food.'' Filled with shameless fabrication (we happen to know, because we checked the road atlas we got from the insurance company, that Alaska is not in Canada, for example), but Barry's lies, like all good comedy, are emblematic of some kind of truth or other. Besides, ``you can trust us,'' he says. ``We're a guidebook.'' The title is accurate. Get this travel guide and you'll never want another. Funny stuff. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. From the Inside Flap Barry] is one of the funniest people ever to tap tap on a PC. This new book is a riot."THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRERComplete with maps, histories, quaint local facts, song lyrics, helpful hints on how to get through Customs, and tidbits from Dave Barry's own fond vacation nightmares, here is all you really need to know about travel, including: How to Speak a Foreign Language in Just 30 Minutes Without Necessarily Having Any Idea What You Are Talking About; Camping: Nature's Way of Promoting the Motel Industry; See the USA First! (While We Still Own Part of It), and more! From the Trade Paperback edition. Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Miami Herald. He is the author of numerous bestsellers, including the recent Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus. He lives in Miami, Florida. From the Paperback edition. Read more