Rating: 
Summary: Always lively,always logical,always helpful.
Review: Every time you visit New York City you notice how many changes have occurred since your last time. Wurman's guide is the best way to update current information within each neighborhood and integrate historical sites with new places in a lively, logical manner. Coherent, easy to read and fun to have around, this book is like a good knowledgeable friend who knows everything about the place and loves to show you around it in a fun way.
Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointed in the newest edition
Review: First of all,let me say that I have always been a big fan of the Access series of books, and usually buy one for every city I am visiting. I live in Manhattan and my NYC Access book is used ALL the time, esp when visiting new neighborhoods or when I have visitors. I could always count on Access to provide great recommendations for places to eat and visit. I just purchased the newest edition and am extremely disappointed. I live on the upper West Side and the information provided for my neighborhood in the 2002 edition is SO OUTDATED and not useful. They list stores that closed more than four years ago, very few of the fun restaurants where the locals eat are mentioned and many of the "unknown famous landmarks" are no longer listed. My neighbors and I cannot figure out how they chose the restaurants that are listed. Since I know that the information for my neighborhood is full of errors and omissions, how can I trust it for exploring new neighborhoods? The new format is horrible. Previously, whenever friends moved into the city, my housewarming gift basket ALWAYS included the latest edition of NYC Access, but no longer. There are better guides available.
Rating:
Summary: Access New York City (Access New York City, 9th Ed)
Review: I did not find this book to be a helpful guide to New York. Instead of interesting tidbits about each neighborhood, I found that this guide is comprised mostly of lists of restaurants and businesses. In addition, commercial logos are printed all over each page, making the guide seem more like a touristy advertisement. If you're looking for an "insider's guide," this is not it!
Rating:
Summary: A Frenchman's New York
Review: I found this book to be an excellent guide for New York because it focuses on places to go, not so much the history of the place like other guidebooks. I don't know who comes to New York just for the history, anyway! (There's Paris for that.)But for restaurants, hotels, and even some clubs ACCESS was better than even my hotel concierge. Although there was no way to try everything mentioned in the book, every place I did go to, or restaurant I dined at, was current and good even though sometimes the chef was different. Maybe even more details on the downtown scene would be good, instead of pages on boring Upper West Side, etc., but overall this is a tres bon map to a good time to what is still the greatest city in the world. And that's coming from a Frenchman...vive le New York!
Rating:
Summary: Not just for tourists
Review: I lucked into buying this guide when I first moved to New York seven years ago, and it served as a perfect introduction to the city. Even in a city that changes as rapidly as New York, I continued to find this book useful for several years after I bought it, and I still frequent some of the off-the-beaten-path restaurants that the author recommends. (But I'm not telling you the names; you'll have to discover them for yourself!) As much as I liked this book, I can see how it might not be ideal for everyone. For one thing, unlike a lot of guidebooks, it doesn't go out of its way to prioritize the different sites and to dictate what you ought to see as a visitor. Unless the book has changed since the edition I bought, you won't find any walking tours or suggested itineraries. But if you have enough time and are willing to give serendipity a chance, the best way to experience in New York is on foot, exploring neighborhood by neighborhood, with this book in hand. Whether you're interested in architecture, shopping, arts, or history, you will find this book an excellent travel companion.
Rating:
Summary: Glad I bought it.
Review: In preparing for 3 day sightseeing trip to New York City with my wife, this was the first book I bought. It helped me determine where to stay, some sights not to miss, & a couple excellent restaurants to try. I was very satisfied with the information I learned from this book & I'm glad I bought it. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy other books on NYC because I bought 3 or 4 others and I learned some addition things from each of them. For me, I don't know if I'll ever get back to NYC and I wanted to make sure I would see all the spots I felt would be important to me. Other very good books are "Eyewitness Travel Guide New York,", "Lonely Planet New York City,", & the "Zagat Survey on NYC Restaurants."
Rating:
Summary: cool
Review: New York City is a place that can easily overwhelm. The sights, the bustle, the lights, the sounds can confound even the most experienced traveler, more so an easily disoriented country bumpkin like me. I remember the time I was uncomfortable of strolling down to Broadway from Grand Central to see a musical- everything seemed larger than life, and that made a few blocks seemed many times farther. Yet it is the very same complexity that makes New York exciting and a place everyone should experience. Access New York, so aptly named, dissects New York to its core, that made New York less daunting and more inviting to my taste. Color-coded descriptions, great pictures, and a jaunty style of writing made it a breeze to read, and should make it a wonderful travel companion to anyone visiting New York. Even now that I know my way around New York, it still helps me enjoy a bit more my wanderings to the Museum of Natural History, the seaport by the Brooklyn Bridge, and Central Park, to name a few. Indeed, Access New York does go a long way in making New York your neighborhood.
Rating:
Summary: A clarification
Review: Of course it is a great book. However, Richard Saul Wurman is not the author - at least not of the current edition. (Wurman's name appears on all Access guides but this does not necessarily mean that he wrote them: he licensed the concept to the publisher). The credit for keeping the 9th edition current, as well as the forthcoming 10th edition, is not due to Wurman but to the individual identified as "Writer and Researcher" on the book's back cover. This is not pictured on Amazon.com
Rating:
Summary: A Frenchman's New York
Review: The Access guides for London and for Paris are some of my favorite guides for those cities: I think the problem here is that New York is just too big. The overall city map in the book is useless, but Access concentrates on giving alot of detail for the individual geographic locations within the city. At the begining of the chapter there is a detailed map with numbers showing the locations of the places described in that chapter, mostly done in geographical order so they are listed as you would come upon them if you were walking. There are more restaurant listings in this guide than any other I have seen, and you will find small out-of-the-way stores detailed, as well as information on parks or buildings or statues you would pass as you strolled along. There is always an address and phone number listed, but hardly ever hours of operation or websites.
Access is a walking guide. New York is such a big city that more than likely on your first trip or two in your going to hit Times Square, then subway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then subway down to the Staten Island Ferry, then subway to the Empire State Building, and so on. If you are going to be taking time to spend a whole day to walk in the Village, this would be a good book to carry along. But because the city covers so much space, the effecitveness of this book is lost. This would actually be a very good book for someone who lived in or near New York City. It is hard to imagine how big the city is until you get there.
Rating: 
Summary: A tourist guide for natives
Review: The Access guides for London and for Paris are some of my favorite guides for those cities: I think the problem here is that New York is just too big. The overall city map in the book is useless, but Access concentrates on giving alot of detail for the individual geographic locations within the city. At the begining of the chapter there is a detailed map with numbers showing the locations of the places described in that chapter, mostly done in geographical order so they are listed as you would come upon them if you were walking. There are more restaurant listings in this guide than any other I have seen, and you will find small out-of-the-way stores detailed, as well as information on parks or buildings or statues you would pass as you strolled along. There is always an address and phone number listed, but hardly ever hours of operation or websites.
Access is a walking guide. New York is such a big city that more than likely on your first trip or two in your going to hit Times Square, then subway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then subway down to the Staten Island Ferry, then subway to the Empire State Building, and so on. If you are going to be taking time to spend a whole day to walk in the Village, this would be a good book to carry along. But because the city covers so much space, the effecitveness of this book is lost. This would actually be a very good book for someone who lived in or near New York City. It is hard to imagine how big the city is until you get there.
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