The Vegetarian Traveler

Rating:
Summary: Do more research before you write a book, Bryan Geon.
Review: It seems as if the author did not always have good first-hand source to write this book and wrote this guide from generalizations about other countries. For example, a supermarket in Japan carries almost anything you would find in a supermarket here. Convenience stores like Seven-Eleven are even more convenient than you think for the variety of prepared food available. Oh, there are a lot of decent bakeries too, which Mr. Geon fails to mention.
Even though I can't really tell how useful this book is because I have never been to many foreign countries, I can tell you at least some of the information in this book is misleading.

Rating:
Summary: Do more research before you write a book, Bryan Geon.
Review: It seems as if the author did not always have good first-hand source to write this book and wrote this guide from generalizations about other countries. For example, a supermarket in Japan carries almost anything you would find in a supermarket here. Convenience stores like Seven-Eleven are even more convenient than you think for the variety of prepared food available. Oh, there are a lot of decent bakeries too, which Mr. Geon fails to mention.
Even though I can't really tell how useful this book is because I have never been to many foreign countries, I can tell you at least some of the information in this book is misleading.

Rating:
Summary: A wise purchase for any traveler
Review: Let me begin by noting that I am not a vegetarian. I am, however, something of a culinary traveler. When abroad I enjoy sampling local delicacies and specialties. However there are some items to which I have an aversion. This handy guidebook enables the culturally sensitive traveler to attempt to meet his gracious host half-way.

The book's greatest strength is its tremendous variety and range. It covers over 125 languages to one degree or another. The author is clear and faithful in his purpose to compile a general handbook for quick reference. He provides brief, and at times delicately humorous, introductory remarks on each country and language offered in the text.

The book is not meant to be a complete travel guide to the world. Rather, it is a necessary and very useful supplement to other geographical and cultural travel books which often present only the most pedestrian of coverage on dining abroad between references to "nightlife" and "illness." I highly recommend it to travelers both vegetarian and carnivorous alike.

Finally, and I must add thankfully, the author is not the ludicrous buffoon pictured on the cover - his image appears on the back cover of the book. The poor scrivener had little to no control over the graphic desgin of his otherwise excellent text. The publisher is advised to abandon placing mad hatters juggling clip art from Corbis on other covers. It is a shame that it detracts from an otherwise worthy contribution to travel reference literature.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good for General Background and Guidance
Review: The ideal vegetarian travel book has yet to be written. Vegetarian travel books seem to fall into one of two camps: The destination-oriented guide (e.g., these are places you can eat, sleep, etc. if you are vegetarian or vegan), and the broad guidebook/phrasebook (e.g., a phrasebook giving veggie phrases in various languages a set of flashcards for vegetarians and vegans covering major languages; a Vegan phrasebook that may only be available in the UK; etc.). Each of these types has its limitations. This book is one of the latter.

I actually found this book very useful and informative and(surprisingly) funny. The author purports to include virtually every country in the world, and while I can think of a few that aren't in there (e.g., the Falkland Islands--probably not very vegetarian-friendly in any case), he comes pretty close to that ideal. And he includes phrases in something over 100 languages. Some people might view this as overkill, but it is one of the strengths of the book.

Basically, the author discusses the veggie situation in each country in a general way; there are NO extensive lists of common vegetarian dishes or of vegetarian-friendly restaurants/hotels (look to the destination-oriented-type guide for these), then gives a list of mix-'n'-match phrases in that country's language("I would like something without X, I eat Y," for example) with the pronunciation spelled out.

This book may not be necessary for, say, Western Europe--although it couldn't hurt to take it along or rip out the relevant pages--because many new phrasebooks for European travel have at least one or two token vegetarian phrases (e.g., "I do not eat meat."). Some are better than others. But for other areas of the world, especially Africa and Asia, this would be really handy to have. He includes languages for which I've never seen phrasebooks--has anyone even heard of "Bambara-Dioula"?--and that is the really valuable thing about this book. I am not aware of any other vegetarian guide with this scope.

And that is a weakness of the book, too: Because the author has included so many countries and languages, he doesn't devote huge amounts of coverage to any of them, although the descriptions can be fairly comprehensive. But it's hard to see how he could do otherwise without turning the book into a massive tome. Perhaps separate volumes for each continent? Other changes I'd like to see are the inclusion of other forms of writing for non-Roman script languages (so one could point and order rather than going through the phonentic pronunciation), and also the inclusion of more terms. (The book pretty consistently lists the words for meat, chicken, fish, eggs, and cheese, but not "meat stock," "dairy products," etc.) I'd also like to see this and other vegetarian/vegan phrasebooks list the phrase for "I am allergic to ____", which is a good way to get out of otherwise awkward social situations.

I give this five stars not so much because it's perfect (it's not), but because there aren't really any other books like this out there and a lot of this stuff is not available on the Web.

Rating:
Summary: Too scattered to be helpful.
Review: This book is fairly worthless. It describes how to order vegetarian food in about 30 or 40 languages. Never gets in-depth with any.

It really doesn't tell you much about any particular region. I can't believe it doesn't have the same title as his other book. I was really disappointed in this book. Pass.