City Smart: Baltimore

Rating:
Summary: Great city, great guide
Review: A comprehensive guidebook of all the wonderful things to do in Charm. A well researched, well written guide that will not leave the user with any loss for activities to do, see and experience while in Baltimore. Hopefully, Sugarman will live in every city around the world and keep us abreast of all the attractions within each one.

Rating:
Summary: Negative Undercurrent
Review: Besides this book, I purchased at the same time The Insiders' Guide to Baltimore, which is $2.00 more and 150 pages longer. I give this City Smart guide 2 stars, compared to a 5 star rating on the Insiders' Guide. The reason for the wide difference in rating the two books: This book, City Smart, is trying to be hip, flippant, and tounge-in-cheek. Instead, it comes off as very negative. I purchased the two books at the same time, read this one first, and when I was done I really wasn't sure I wanted to visit Baltimore. And that would be a mistake because Baltimore is indeed Charm City, and the other book really brings that out. It has a much more upbeat, positive, optimistic, good-natured style; as well as more depth and details in the extra 150 pages. The Insiders' Guide was true to the Baltimore I discovered, this City Smart guide was off-putting and off the mark.

Rating:
Summary: Negative Undercurrent
Review: Besides this book, I purchased at the same time The Insiders' Guide to Baltimore, which is $2.00 more and 150 pages longer. I give this City Smart guide 2 stars, compared to a 5 star rating on the Insiders' Guide. The reason for the wide difference in rating the two books: This book, City Smart, is trying to be hip, flippant, and tounge-in-cheek. Instead, it comes off as very negative. I purchased the two books at the same time, read this one first, and when I was done I really wasn't sure I wanted to visit Baltimore. And that would be a mistake because Baltimore is indeed Charm City, and the other book really brings that out. It has a much more upbeat, positive, optimistic, good-natured style; as well as more depth and details in the extra 150 pages. The Insiders' Guide was true to the Baltimore I discovered, this City Smart guide was off-putting and off the mark.

Rating:
Summary: Tells it like it is
Review: The thing I like about this guidebook is its honesty. I've lived in Baltimore all my life and I recognize my city in this book's pages. It's genuinely entertaining and exposes a few warts as well as the good stuff. Plus, it has top 10 lists from Gov. Shaefer and from John Steadman, my all-time favorite Baltimore sportswriter.

Rating:
Summary: Sugarman, a surname that says it all...
Review: This guide is sweet!
Again Joe Sugarman, in a light and appropriate tone for a city guide, points out the best in town... If you want to visit Baltimore without fear of loosing time and wasting money walking in circles: read this guide.
Read it and you will enjoy Baltimore; loose it and you will not be aware of the beauties you're loosing in this marvellous city.

This guide might not be the *most* extensive, but all the info that has been packed in it is selected: I don't want to see everything there is to see - I want to see the *best* there is to see!