Moon Las Vegas strikes me as targeting bargain-basement-seeking travelers rather than ones eager for a hedonistic holiday. Instead of celebrating the city, it's disparaging in places.
Whether you like the tone or not, there's a bigger problem dedicating a book to places that constantly change and evolve. Such destinations are difficult to cover in print, since information goes out of date almost as soon as it hits bookshelves.
- Basic intro for couples who are first-time visitors
- "Rat Pack Retro" pages provide a quick overview of where to find the city's past
- Brief Vegas history in the back of the book
- Poor coverage of better Vegas restaurants
- Shopping information is skimpy and badly organized
- Major chapters are devoted to sights, gaming, restaurants, entertainment, shopping, recreation, and hotels.
- Information within each chapter is organized geographically.
- Only one page is devoted to weddings, and the address of the Clark County Courthouse, which issues licenses, is incorrect.
Moon guidebooks usually do a good job of introducing readers to faraway places such as Borneo or Bora Bora, where information isn't at travelers' fingertips. But Las Vegas is hardly exotic, from a travel perspective. Between books, movies, and Web sites, it's a well-known destination. So I want a book that tells me things about it that I don't already know.
The book's biggest problem is its organization. By dividing the Las Vegas Strip into South, Center, and North Strip, it may mislead newbies to believing that the distances are greater than they actually are and potentially discourage them from venturing far from their hotels. And that would be a shame.
The book's weakest section, where its lack of sophistication shows, is devoted to restaurants. The author bemoans the disappearance of the $1.99 buffet and dwells on the sticker shock he feels when perusing menus created by the world's best chefs. It's no secret that Vegas has become a gastronomic capital, and this book simply doesn't do it justice, as in when he describes prices at one of the city's top restaurants as "ranging from 'Ouch' to 'Oh my God.'"
Should you shell out $17.95 for this paperback? I'd say "Ouch," since there's nothing exclusive here. If you can, wait till 2009, when CityCenter opens, to buy a guide book. That massive real estate project is going to change the face of Las Vegas, adding myriad hotels, shops, restaurants, and attractions to a visitor's choices — and then you really will need a guide book.
