The Best Travel Guides & Travel Books

Even in the digital age, travel guidebooks are an important part of my travel planning journey. I have read and tried many different travel books and online travel guides. And I pulled together a list of what I think are the best travel guides.

I return to my favorite travel guides again and again with each trip that we plan. Once you find a travel guide series that you know and trust, it can really speed up the travel planning process. At the end of this post, I’ve also included a list of some of my favorite general nonfiction travel books that I think you might enjoy. 

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Travel Guidebooks 

Rick Steves guidebooks 

Some seasoned travelers look down their noses a bit at Rick Steves guide books. There’s no reason for that. Rick Steves knows Europe inside and out from decades of traveling, leading tours, writing books, and producing episodes of his wonderful series Rick Steves’ Europe. 

Rick Steves books are excellent guides and well worth the money. I highly recommend them, especially for travel planning beginners or for anxious travelers who are looking for an expert to tell them where to visit and how. 

His books are kept up to date and quite detailed, even to the point of including full guided walking tours (often several) and detailed guided tours through major sites. 

Rick Steves online 

You can also get a lot of good free travel tips and help on the Rick Steves website, including the forums. There are forums specifically for countries, reviews, and several forums about general travel tips topics. 

They’re a great way to get insight and tips from other experienced travelers…even those who disagree with Rick Steves itinerary suggestions. (Shocked face.)

Rick Steves Audio Europe Travel App 

I also highly recommend the Rick Steves Audio Europe Travel App. It’s loaded with audio guides for walking tours and top travel destination sites like the Colosseum in Rome and The Louvre Museum in Paris.  

Rough Guides: my favorite travel guidebooks overall 

Super practical and easy to read, Rough Guides are my top choice for any destination that isn’t in Europe (for which I prefer Rick Steves guidebooks). 

The UK-based company was founded in 1982 with the Rough Guide to Greece. Since then, they have published travel guidebooks for well over 100 destinations all over the world. 

Fodor’s 

The great travel writer Eugene Fodor once said, “You don’t need to be rich to travel well.” And that’s been kind of my mantra for the last several years. 

In 1936, Fodor wrote the first modern travel guidebook. It was for British audiences, and he wrote all 1,200 pages himself. The book was On the Continent: An Entertaining Travel Annual.

According to Fodors.com, “The guide went beyond reporting on the sights and for the first time included information about Europe’s culture and people, practical information like how to tip, and was the first to be annually updated.” 

Since On the Continent was first published, Fodor’s has been a trusted name in travel guides. They now claim that their travel writers have covered more than 8,000 destinations around the world. 

Frommer’s 

The venerated Frommer’s travel guides were launched by Arthur Frommer in 1957 with a guide to visiting Europe on $5 a day (yup. $5.). That guide followed his book about how to travel Europe as a GI (Frommer was in the Army at the time). 

Frommer’s quickly grew to become one of the most trusted names in travel guidebooks. 

DK Eyewitness

I enjoy reading DK Eyewitness guides, especially when I’m looking for information about the history and culture of my destination. The glossy full-color books feature beautiful photographs and illustrations perfect for inspiring your travel itinerary. They cover more than 100 destinations. 

DK was founded in 1974 by Christopher Dorling and Peter Kindersley. They published their first travel book in the early 1990’s, promising to show you “what others only tell you.”

They also cover all the usual ground for travel guidebooks: itineraries, maps, dining and accommodations recommendations, top sites, etc. 

Insight Guides 

For more than 40 years, Insight Guides have published guidebooks covering more than 200 destinations. 

In my experience, they’re quite a bit heavier on destination history and culture than any other travel guide I’ve encountered. So, if that’s not something you enjoy, then these guidebooks might not be your top choice. 

Atlas Obscura 

Atlas Obscura book 

Unlike all of the other travel guidebooks listed above, Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders is not a series of guidebooks but rather one book that details an incredible array of oddities and wonders around the world. 

Here’s how the authors describe their book and website (more on that below): 

“The site, and this book, are a kind of wunderkammer of places, a cabinet of curiosities that is meant to inspire wonderlust as much as wanderlust. In fact, many of the places in this book are in no way ‘tourist sites’ and should not be treated as such. Others are so out of the way, so treacherously situated, or (in at least one case) so deep beneath the surface, that few readers will ever be able to visit them. But here they are, sharing this marvelously strange planet with us. 

Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras & Ella Morton, Atlas Obscura, revised second edition, (New York: Workman Publishing, 2019) vii

The revised second edition (published in 2019) added more than 100 new sites to the 2016 first edition. The book is delightful reading if you’re into oddities around the world. I definitely recommend picking up a copy.

👉 Check out more Atlas Obscura books here.

Atlas Obscura website 

Make sure you stop by the Atlas Obscura website during your travel planning if you like finding out-of-the-way sites, unusual places to visit, or want to make it a priority to get off the beaten path. 

Nonfiction Travel Books

The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss was my introduction to great travel writing. I read this on the recommendation of my mother (thanks, Mom!), who read it when she was in a Borders bookstore book club (remember Borders??). 

Weiner, a former NPR foreign correspondent, covers thousands and thousands of miles in search of what it is that makes people happy and makes some surprising discoveries along the way.  

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

You’ll find Eat, Pray, Love on a LOT of top travel book lists for a reason. It’s well-written and absolutely makes you want to jump up from your comfy couch and start packing. 

This book made me yearn to be back in Rome. And this was not just a “oh, I’d love to go back to Rome someday,” but a deep longing to be in Rome…like a physical pain almost. I suppose that’s what good travel writing is supposed to do. 

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

I have to admit that before I picked up Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country, Australia was not really near the top of my travel bucket list. This book changed all that for me. Now, I can’t wait to see Australia for myself. 

If you’ve never read any Bill Bryson before, this book is a great place to start. And if you have any kind of sense of humor at all, you will laugh out loud. 

Bryson’s descriptions of the places he visits, the people he meets, and how he describes all the terrible and dangerous ways one can die in Australia still make me chuckle when I think about them.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

Think of this as the East Coast version of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. Just kidding. It’s not that. 

Bryson’s classic book about walking the Appalachian Trail (or parts of it), A Walk in the Woods, should really be required reading for American travelers…just because.  

I think I had somehow gotten it into my head that the Appalachian Trail, while really, really long, was somehow easy to walk. Yeah, I don’t think that anymore. You probably won’t catch me gearing up and heading out on the trail anytime soon, at least partly because this book made Bryson’s experiences on the Trail come quite alive for me.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Into the Wild is the story of Chris McCandless, who cut ties with his family and took off. Later found dead by a party of moose hunters, this book demonstrates that “striking out on your own” when you really have no idea what you’re doing can and often does have deadly consequences.

This book definitely displays the dark side of going solo and in search of yourself. 

Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

Frances Mayes’ surprise bestseller about buying and fixing up a Tuscan villa so she could live in Italy part-time while on breaks from her university teaching job should be in every wanderluster’s “to be read” pile. This book was on the New York Times best-seller list for more than two and a half years. 

I never read a book that made me want to pick up and move to another country (in this case, Italy) more than Under the Tuscan Sun. Well, Eat Pray Love did also. A lot. Okay, this one is a close second, then. 

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Wild is the story of how Cheryl Strayed took off to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mojave Desert to Washington State…with no hiking experience. Distraught at the death of her mother (her father left when she was a young child), Strayed set off on an epic journey to find healing for her grief.