Baedeker's Sicily

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good updated version of a classic travel series
Review: The Baedeker guides are less well known in America than they deserve to be. They are harder to find in bookstores than the very good Rough guide or Michelin Green guide series or the awful Fodor series.
This guidebook very pleasantly surprised me. There is a wealth of information here with profuse colour illustrations and details I haven't seen in other guidebooks. The book provides excellent in-depth supplemental information in the Baedeker's special sections. In this book there are helpful sidebars about the Mafia and the famous tonnara off Favignana (refereed to here as the "mattanza.") The small mountain town of Corleone made famous in the Godfather movies is nowhere to be found in other guidebooks but is given ample attention here. The fabulous Norman sites of Palermo are described in great detail. I was inspired to read John Julius Norwich's excellent history "The Normans in Sicily" by the information presented in this book. The short lived Norman dynasty of the 11th and 12th century left monuments in Sicily and especially Palermo that are still important features today. William the Conqueror's (Guillame le Conquerant) half brother Otho, bishop of Bayeux (who commissioned the Bayeux tapestry) came to Sicily after falling out of power in England. He died in Palermo in 1097 enroute to participating in the first Crusade.
The guide gives well-deserved great detail to the fabulous Greek ruins of Sicily. I became less satisfied with my other Sicily guides after seeing all that they left out compared to this book. The Baedeker guide is a pocket sized 16mo and comes with a plastic jacket and a small map that is inadequate for driving directions but okay for familiarizing yourself with the geography.