Rating: 
Summary: Not For Everyone
Review: This is not a bad guide, but I wouldn't recommend it if you want to carry just one. Steves focuses on just three neighborhoods for hotels and restaurants. But what really started to annoy us was his attempts at humor, political digs (e.g. Rumsfeld references),and casual attitude towards major historical and religious references. Best example is when he describes the significance of the Madonna to Renaissance artists by saying that she was even more popular than the singer Madonna in the 20th century! My wife and I found ourselves rolling our eyes and grimacing as we read Steves guide while visiting some of the world's most major museums and religious sites.
Rating: 
Summary: Must read for those who want to see and feel the REAL Paris
Review: Excellent guide book for those with a week available to visit the most celebrated city in the World. A must read for anybody who never been to Paris before. Money saver too!. Standing ovation to Rick Steves.
Rating: 
Summary: You're going to LOVE FRANCE!
Review: I've made >20 visits to France all together. Here are my reviews of the best guides....to meet you r exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!
Rick Steves' books are not recommended. They may be an interesting read but their helpfulness is very poor. They don't do well on updates, transportation details, or anything but the first-time-tourist routine and even that is somewhat superficial on anything but the mega-major sites.
Michelin
Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.
Fodor's
Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:
The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.
SeeIt! is a concise guide that extracts the most popular items from the Gold Guide
PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit
UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out
CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information
Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide
MapGuide
MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the Metro. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the center of the city.
Time Out
The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!
Blue Guides
Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.
Let's Go
Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:
Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.
City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.
PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information
MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)
Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.
Frommer's
These are time tested guides that pride themselves on being updated annually. Although I think the guides below provide information that is in more depth or more concise (depending on what the guide is known for), if your main concern is that the guide has very little old or outdated information, then this would be a good guide for you.
Rating:
Summary: Rick Steves rocks!
Review: I used this on my honeymoon in France. These are the best travel guides around!
Rating:
Summary: Worked well for my trip
Review: I just returned from my trip to Paris, and Rick Steves' book was an immense help.
For those unfamiliar with Steves' books, be aware that these guides differ from others. Steves is not afraid to give his opinion of what to do and what not to do during your travels. He provides important insights on great museums you HAVE to see (The Louvre) and tourist attractions that you might be disappointed with (i.e., the Pantheon). Instead of a generic reference book, imagine a tour guide written by a close friend which gives you tips on the best ways to plan your trip, get around, or even find the least-crowded entrance. Tips like these can save you a lot of frustrating time and money.
Steves' book excels at providing such information, and also at guiding you through interactive city walks and museum tours. That way you'll know what to look for, and can shorten or lengthen your stays based on your own personal interests (music enthusiasts will want to read about the free up-close organ recital at St. Sulpice).
In addition to sights within Paris, the book also covers day trips to places such as Chantilly, Chartres, Giverny, or even Disneyland Paris. If you want to spend more time outside of Paris, however, you'll need to get another guide.
Steves provides information on hotels and restaurants, but they are hardly complete. The 30-40 sleeping recommendations range from the ultra-thrifty to ultra-expensive, and Steves seems to do a job of choosing good values. The same goes for eating establishments.
Other books (like Eyewitness Guides) have color pictures and more general information, but Steves provides the essential information, hints, and even some entertaining quips. If you really want to do it right, get two guides, but make sure Steves' is one of them.
Rating:
Summary: Unique & outstanding guide to history, art & architecture
Review: I used this book for my four-day stay in Paris. Rick Steves writes not only with wit and verve, but also with humor and goodwill. Yes there are some political references that some might find offensive, but they are appropriate to the destination under description. They're not over the top.Steves covers all the important sights you knew about, plus the ones you didn't. Everything from the Louvre to the Paris Sewer tour, plus the attractions in the Paris-vicinity, such as Versailles and Chartres. This book won't tell you where the best nightclubs are to pick up dates (and other such transient information that clogs up other tourist guidebooks), but it will inform you about the art, architecture, and history that attracted you to the great city in the first place; the eating information is also more than adequate. The only thing I would knock Steves for is his complete glossing over La Eglise de la Madelaine (he doesn't like the architecture--not Gothic enough for him, perhaps?). The church embodies the history of Paris as much as any building (the Church, the Revolution, Napoleon, the July Monarchy and others all proposed varying uses for the site). The structure itself is physically impressive and beautiful. Furthermore--speaking personally--my favorite composer, Gabriel Faure played at this church every Sunday, making it worth a trip on that score alone.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what it's cracked up to be
Review: I'm a fan of Steves' guides, but this one wasn't up to my expectations. First, let me say what I liked. Steves' recommendations for sights to see are excellent. Also, his hotel and restaurant recommendations are on target. Also, his city walks in Paris are very enjoyable. This book is a great source for this kind of information. The part which I found useless was the section of museum guides, which take up half of this book. Steves seems to have written his museum guides for junior highschool dropouts. I can't respect a guide which uses, for example, "cultural fart noises" to describe the Dada movement. Throughout the museum guide section, he continues to make these kinds of childish remarks. You get the impression that Steves doesn't like to spend time in museums, and he tries his best to rush you through them too. As for the content, it't very light and tends to be of trivial nature. He never goes into why the art is great. If you get this book, just skip the museum guides. One other thing that really bothered me was an out-of-place political comment in the section about the Babylonian collection in the Lourve. He mentions that the area of Babylon has bee plagued by war and violence for over 5000 years (true enough). Then he makes the unbelievable comment that in 2003 the violence came to an end when "peace, prosperity, and democracy were established . . .by George W. Bush." First of all, Iraq doesn't have any of those qualities in 2003, so it's just plain accurate. Second, any progress made in Iraq is thanks to the American soldiers who risk their lives every day, not to Bush. Lastly, strong political comments like that don't belong in a guidebook unless Steves plans to change the title to "Rick Steves' Paris 2004 for Republicans". As for my rating, the three stars are for the useful information in this book. THe two missing stars are for the museum guide section which takes up half of the book. The political comment didn't cost any stars, but a little bit of Steves reputation was tarnished. Aside from the museum guides, it's a good book.
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