Atlanta Alive! (Atlanta Alive!)

Rating:
Summary: A Recommended Guidebook to Atlanta
Review: Atlanta Alive is a comprehensive, concise, and easy-to-follow guidebook to Atlanta's sights and entertainment. As a reference tool, it is as useful to Atlanta residents as it would be to visitors. Recommended!

Rating:
Summary: The best guide to the city and its surroundings
Review: Atlanta is a destination with something for everyone, whether you are traveling on business, taking a family vacation, or looking for a romantic getaway. Ann Burgess' well-written guide is fully indexed and includes maps of Atlanta's downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. Atlanta Alive! contains detailed information in every category, including family activities to please children from toddlers to teens, with theme parks, sports, and outdoor adventures to keep everyone busy; sites and tours, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond; restaurants, from traditional to trend-setting; hotels in every neighborhood, from budget to extravagant; nightlife, shopping, and cultural activities for every taste.

Rating:
Summary: Details well known places
Review: I felt the organization of this book left much to be desired. The table of contents is a full six pages long - and you need it. The book sometimes organizes locations by region, sometimes not.

For a book that depends on the regions so much for it's organization, they are not well explained or mapped. There is a description of neighbourhoods about 40 pages into the book - but several neighborhoods (Ansley Park, Inman Park, etc.) are listed that are not included in the regional organization, so it is hard to determine which ones are important (at least for finding things in the book) and which ones are not.

I also found the restaurant section to be lacking in both the amount of text allocated to each restaurant as well as missing a huge host of good restaurants. Fodor's Cityguide Atlanta is head and shoulders above this book in that respect.