Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but I hope his editor gets fired!
Review: This is a fun page turner for anyone interested in knowing all sorts of information about the less traveled places of the world. However, the phenomenal number of typos along with the author's uncanny ability to repeat himself are a bit of a distraction to the reader. The author rarely gives any references to where he gets his facts-- I find it hard to take a book full of statistics & tables at face value when he doesn't even note sources for most information, thereby establishing credibility. On top of all that, some of the data contradicts itself & causes confusion for the reader. But in general, I have enjoyed the book and I reccommend it for anyone who's not afraid to pick up a 1000 page book!
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Summary: little red book of danger
Review: A great book that is not only factual but fun to read as well. It has stirred an interest in me to get out and see the world not as a tourist, but as an adventurer. Good luck.
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Summary: People who voted for Bill Clinton read books, too!
Review: I wish the author would keep his political views to himself! It does make me wonder how biased much of the writing is overall.
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Summary: The World's Most Dangerous Book
Review: Some people who are actually adventure travelers will use this book as an encyclopedia to look up info on certain god-forsaken locations before their next insane journey. The rest of us can also get a kick out of reading this massive tome straight through, for a great geography and politics lesson on places you probably know almost nothing about. We get a good 300 pages of background info for world travelers of any type, including how to give bribes (necessary in most of the world unfortunately), avoid nasty diseases, or report on war zones. There are also some funny passages on what do if you are busted for drug possession. The DP crew certainly doesn't advocate drug use or transport, but this info will be useful to those counter-culture dudes who like to trek through the Himalayas or Sahara.First, I will have to warn you that this book is overflowing with typos and grammatical errors, indicating a severe deficiency in the editing department. Statistics and factoids tend to be repeated in adjoining paragraphs, sometimes inconsistently. Names of foreign people and places tend to appear under multiple spellings. Even basic fact checking seems to be lacking. For example, in a timeline of events in the history of Cambodia, the birth of Pol Pot is listed as 1928, while a subsequent entry in the same timeline states that he died in 1998 at age 73 (do the math). That's just one example of many that can cause confusion for the careful reader. The book's sheer size surely makes editing a real challenge, but hopefully this problem will be looked at more closely in future editions. The meat of the book consists of chapters dealing specifically with dangerous countries, and a few non-countries. Political and historical background on the current dismal situation, dangerous people and locations, and how to get in and out provide huge amounts of essential info for travelers, and fascinating trivia for the rest of us. Pelton does not hold back his feelings - watch for his scathingly sarcastic and opinionated musings on the situations in these dismal places, as well as whatever Western superpowers helped create the mess. People of certain political philosophies will surely disagree with Pelton's stance in many places. But he's been there - you haven't! The most rewarding portions of this book are field reports from some of the countries/areas covered, written by Pelton or members of his team after really traveling to these areas, often at extreme personal peril. The best is a harrowing account of a trip to Chechnya (yes it's still bad there even after the Western media got bored with the story), in which Pelton barely manages to reach the border after being surrounded by trigger-happy Russian soldiers. Pelton has given us a fascinating book with many potential uses, and not just for travelers or curious readers. It might just be useful for international policy makers as well.
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Summary: RYP rules!
Review: I love this book so much! It first crossed my path when I was with my ex-boyfriend, a former member of the U.S. Army. Prior to reading it, I'd often talk excitedly (and now I know, naively), about all the places I want to visit, and what I plan to do once I get there. Thanks to Robert Young Pelton, I no longer want to traipse through the jungles of Cambodia with an expensive backpack full of the latest high-tech gear. Nor do I want to bring back, um, consumable souvenirs from any country, support the cruel and backwater human rights situation in Brazil by spending money there, or go for the cheapest transporation deals I can find in any third world country. This book is cleverly divided up into various catagories, the best reads being the chapters devoted to each country RYP deems most dangerous (on a scale of one to five stars, five being the most dangerous). In these chapters, Pelton gives us a crash course in the history of a particular country, allowing us a little insight into why things are the way they are, as well as defining the scary scenarios most popular in each country (beware land mines in Cambodia and the highways in Brazil, where traffic jams can be 150 miles long!). And of couse RYP gives us etiquette advice which should be common sense (don't discuss religion or politics with your cab driver, bell boy, ect.), but ends up being enlightening as well (you'll be popular in some sketchy areas if you offer cheap gifts to the locals, such as stickers). RYP's writing style is hip and hilarious. This is the only non-fiction book I've read which made me laugh out loud. His humor is one of the only things that keeps the reader from getting too depressed over the grim reality of how the rest of the world has to live. I want to thank Robert Young Pelton for not only writing an excellent guide/adventure travel book, but also for opening my eyes to situations in the rest of the world. I contemplate many of his anecdotes when I complain about my life, forgetting how sweet, sweet, sweet we Americans really have it.
Rating:
Summary: A different book
Review: Having been to some of the places in the book, I can attest to what Mr. Pelton is saying. There are some scary dark alleys out there, and this book is a definite warning flare, or billboard to those attracted to such places, for places it may be best not to go. He takes it all with a sense of humor which makes this much more interesting to read than your average tourist guide. It's refreshing to see a book that is about where not to go and why. I'd give it five stars, but some of his advice sounds a little dodgy, and he contradicts himself in places. Otherwise, this is an outstanding read.
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Summary: Good Book but...
Review: I read this book and liked it. The book had some intresting information in it, but some of the information is a little out of date and the internet links mostly do not work.
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Summary: Excellent, but flawed.
Review: This is an excellent book. VERY interesting, will keep you entertained for hours. While most of us will never go to most of the places talked about in the book, it is still important to know about them. The only thing which holds back this book from getting 5 stars is the huge amount of typos and grammar errors. Normally i wouldn't mind, but in this book these errors are so numerious and severe that it is often hard to understand what the author is trying to say. Hopefully i will be able to give the fifth edition 5 stars if the author goes back and proofreads the entire book after he is done writing it.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining from front to back....
Review: Once I picked up this book, I could not put it down. Informative, funny, thought provoking, it was the complete package. More of a guide book than a piece of literarure, which disppointed me at first, but after I started reading, I was hooked. A real insight into the Earth's hot spots that mass media while neither discuss or show. The only drawback was the horrendous grammar and mispellings. It read like a middle school term paper. That was the only thing that stopped this book from earning five stars.
Rating:
Summary: Suicide on $25 A Day
Review: This book actually called the Al-Quaida situation YEARS before any popular work - warning, in the mid-1990s, that the weapons and training proffered religious fundamentalists to fight the Soviets were about to be turned against America. But this is a work of satirical travel writing, not geopolitics, so we can't expect the CIA to read these things. Magic destinations proffered by Fieldings include the Phillippines, Colombia, Syria, Cuba and Libya. Among the weird facts are some genuinely perspicacious observations.
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