The usual Lonely-Planet goodness for the Promised Land, but one who's usefulness is only marred by its, and America's, relative sizes. At 600-plus pages, Lonely Planet USA probably won't fit into your backpack; at 300 million people and four time-zones, neither would the US's scale and ambition fit into a backpack-friendly book.

The price-discerning backpacker, then, would be better served by going to a smaller, backpacker-friendly nation such as Thailand, or perhaps, Lonely Planet's other ode to the Promised Land, "USA on a Shoestring" (assuming there's a recent edition). All others would probably want to be ripped off by five-star hotels, strip-malls, tourist-traps, celeb-hunts and everything else Americana that the book _hasn't_ mentioned.

Full cred to this effort though, it's only when you take the book and get on the road that you realize US' jaw-dropping scale. ( )

Invaluable on my trip to the lower states of New England. One day I'll go back and see the parts of the country I missed ;) ( )