Rating: 
Summary: Good but too much unnecessary information
Review: This is the only book you need for a trip to Tahiti, catering to luxury travelers right on down to backpackers. The author separates the Polynesian island chains into different sections, giving complete coverage to history, accomodations, food (including cooking local cuisine), getting there, getting around and more for each island. The maps are simply spectacular, starting with the entire region (including air travel routes) all the way down to individual island and primary city maps. In fact, individual maps even have exact, pinpointed hotel and attraction locations, an extremely useful reference during your actual trip.The Tahiti handbook also contains useful background on this region. Topics include the coral reefs of the Pacific, typhoons, Tahiti's climate, plants, animals and local customs. Show me another guidebook that has such unique content like Polynesian dance diagrams or instructions how to buy a black pearl. The book concludes with a complete bibliography, related Internet web pages and some useful direct email addresses of contacts in the region. Overall, I highly recommend this guide book to anyone planning a trip to Tahiti/French Polynesia, Easter Island or the Cook Islands.
Rating: 
Summary: Most comprehensive Polynesia coverage available
Review: This is the only book you need for a trip to Tahiti, catering to luxury travelers right on down to backpackers. The author separates the Polynesian island chains into different sections, giving complete coverage to history, accomodations, food (including cooking local cuisine), getting there, getting around and more for each island. The maps are simply spectacular, starting with the entire region (including air travel routes) all the way down to individual island and primary city maps. In fact, individual maps even have exact, pinpointed hotel and attraction locations, an extremely useful reference during your actual trip. The Tahiti handbook also contains useful background on this region. Topics include the coral reefs of the Pacific, typhoons, Tahiti's climate, plants, animals and local customs. Show me another guidebook that has such unique content like Polynesian dance diagrams or instructions how to buy a black pearl. The book concludes with a complete bibliography, related Internet web pages and some useful direct email addresses of contacts in the region. Overall, I highly recommend this guide book to anyone planning a trip to Tahiti/French Polynesia, Easter Island or the Cook Islands.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good book for the money
Review: We used a combination of the old version of this book, the Lonely Planet book, and Jan Princes book on our trip in 1998. We found a few things in all of the books that weren't in the others. I'd say we used this one the least. We had the old version though. I've reviewed the new one. It has some additional info in it. Since I didn't use it when travelling it's hard to compare with the others. It's nice to get a book that covers the Cooks as well. If you didn't know what islands you wanted to go to, you might try this one or step up to the Moon S. Pacific Book. Check out our trip report which details how we used these books at DiveAtlas.com
Rating:
Summary: Moon Handbooks: Tahiti (4th Ed.)
Review: We used this as our only book for 30 days of travel in French Polynesia July, 2001, and found it to be excellent. It got us on freighters, to inexpensive lodging and to the best sites to see. Lots of detail that you need when you are not a typical "buy it from a travel agent" traveller. Highly recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: Stanley Lectures and Imposes His Political Views on Readers
Review: While he provides a great deal of useful information to the reader, it is necessary to sort through Stanley's gratuitous political viewpoints in order to reach the useful advice. In his discussion of health Stanley spends an entire column discussing how AIDS is contracted and moralizes upon the appropriate treatment of HIV positive individuals -- while good advice, it was misplaced in a book entitled the 'Tahiti Handbook.' Similarly, in a discussion of mahus (Polynesian males who take on the role and often appearance of a female), Stanley asserts that the emergence of 'Miss Male' beauty contestants and mahu prostitution 'may be seen as a degradation of a phenomenon that has always been a part of Polynesian life.' In so asserting he imposes his opinion on the reader and discounts countless anthropological papers which have made a thorough study of the place of the 'third sex' in Tahitian culture. Furthermore, Stanley's grammar is horrible -- occasionally to the point of obscuring his meaning. While his insights into travel in Tahiti are invaluable, I was aggravated by the feeling that Stanley was placing himself on a moral pedestal and preaching to his reader.
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