Fodor's Exploring Provence, 4th edition

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous Provence
Review: This glossy guide is an upscale version of the standard Fodor's guides, chock full of beautiful photographs. It's all you need if you're going on an organized tour, where hotels and meals are taken care of, and you really want some flavor for the people, food, history and culture. Scattered throughout are sections called "Focus On" discussing the mistral (both the wind and the poet!), ecology, cuisine, and of course wine. The maps are unusually good too. But the hotel and restaurant lists are cursory at best, and if you're an independent traveler you'll want to supplement this book with more comprehensive information. For this well-traveled part of the world the internet is a great resource. No one guide has it all!

Rating:
Summary: Very useful
Review: This guide has helped us tremendously before and during several trips to Provence. It is easy to read, comprehensive in its description of the sights, and reasonably calibrated in its ratings (allowing you to distinguish between "must sees" and other sights). Its city maps are very good; I found them better than the ones in the Michelin guide, which is also good. The only drawback of this guide is that it is a pretty heavy paperback, so carrying it with you all day gets old after a while. Great for trip planning, though. Certainly highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent guide
Review: We just spent 10 days in Provence with three other couples. Each brought our own guidebook but we quickly ditched 3 of them and used the Fodor's. The site descriptions were dead on and their rating system was very helpful in deciding what to see in the limited time available. Their maps and suggested drives were also useful. We didn't use the hotel and restaurant recommendations much (we cooked our own), but when we did they were perfect.