Time Out New York (Time Out Guides)

"This guidebook has a good mix of attitude and nice photography, and it also does something which some other books don’t do, because they are more staid or institutional: it finds some of the smaller places that you wouldn’t ordinarily think of, like clubs and less well-known galleries. There is a kind of big-lumbering-elephant way of doing the city, which is visiting the Met, Central Park, the Guggenheim, etc.—and this is not really that. ( Time Out also do a separate restaurant guide, so if people are coming and they really want to eat their way through the city, there’s a separate book for that.) But generally, I just think this is a good book that’s not cluttered by stagey history or long back-stories of buildings—and it’s very good on neighbourhoods. It’s smart about getting you through the actual geography of the city."