Lonely Planet Georgia, Armenia & Azerbaijan (Lonely Planet Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) Paperback – January 1, 2000

Very solid guidebook, packed with good information, maps, tips, and very good detail. I highly recommend it, especially for Armenia which I am most familiar with.These 10 year old reviews for the first edition need to be removed, or associated only with that ISBN number, they are doing customers on Amazon a disservice here.For those who want to supplement this book, "Rediscovering Armenia" is a free online wiki guide to Armenia's monuments.

It was sadly out of date; newer version, which I perused, didn't seem a whole lot better. I visited these countries in May 2012, and the guide was only useful for some historical facts, which, really, could be obtained elsewhere.

I purchase travel guides for work and have been regular buyer of Lonely Planet publications and Discovery channel's Insight Guides for virtually all Western European countries. Recent addition to the area of responsibility forced me to start looking for a guide for Azerbaijan and this was one of the items I tested.As I am quite knowledgeable about this region, having read this guide I was seriously concerned about the inaccuracies in wording, translations, geographic references. Like that sloppiness was not bad enough, the authors go on to "sneak in" some political statements by putting Nagorno Karabakh under Armenia (I assume LP would not be a part of this, had they know). While this is a disputed region, neither party to the conflict believes it is apart of Armenia, so the authors are taking a bit of a political license, by doing what would be similar to listing Taiwan under United States.This is an eye-opener. Travel guides, by their nature, require that the reader had faith in the publisher's reputation. With this book I have a benefit of an insider knowledge...and if this is the standard, then I have permanently lost all faith...LP failed miserably... my rating is Zero. You are better off picking up a local tourist board publication at the Baku International, at least it will tell you of all the cheap hotels that have mushroomed over the last few years.

This guide book follows the standard Lonely Planet format of providing not only information about the country, but a wide selection of accommodation and tips for the independent traveller. In my opinion, it does a fair job. The book, however, has to compare to other guide books on the same region. And there are a few very good ones around, e.g. Roger Rosen and the Bradt book on Georgia, which did better. I found the book rather thin. It is full of useful facts, but failed to convey the magic of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. A good guide makes people who do not know the country at all want to go there. This one doesn't. Perhaps it would be better to beef it up a little in the next edition rather than concentrate only on listing towns.

I tend to be a fairly big fan of Lonely Planet's style of travel guidebooks - I've used them for travels many times, simply because I like the way they're structured and enjoy all the background information that accompanies their guidebooks. Unfortunately, there are a few duds that slip through the cracks, and this one is unquestionably one of the big ones. Granted, this is a guidebook to one of the most rapidly changing areas of the world when it comes to tourism and travel, but this book doesn't even seem like it was ever in synch with the reality in the South Caucasus. The Azerbaijan section is basically satisfactory, but hardly overwhelming. Sadly, that's the best can be said, as the other two sections are very much lacking. While the Georgia one is sloppy and not at all geared towards what a traveler really needs or wants, the Armenian section is downright awful, with a glaring lack of practical information and even basic facts.Maps go from fuzzy and confusing to completely unreliable, and restaurant listings often lack any sort of notion of prices (or are repeatedly geared for people hardly on a shoestring budget). Sometimes author recommendations are even non-existent - like the 'most recommended restaurant' in Batumi, which seems to have been bulldozed. The author for the Georgian section speaks of a gradually developing agro-tourism and homestay industry in the country, but somehow doesn't bother researching it almost at all (although you get plenty of listings for defunct Soviet hotels!). Illogically, sections on towns and other areas never include the names in Armenian and Georgian (apart from a few in an inadequate glossary in the back of the book), leaving you clueless as to what they'd be unless you spent a long time actually learning the national alphabets thoroughly. And, why throw the individual countries' history sections together into one general, regional history, especially given the unique backgrounds of each people? So much more depth could have been added to the book, but one gets the impression that the authors were racing towards a publishing deadline (especially the one for Armenia!). There's supposedly an update in the works, and it is much needed. For now though, check out instead the Trailblazer guide to Azerbaijan (*much* better coverage, even in the small section on Georgia) and the Rediscovering Armenia book, which is available either in country or on the internet - both of these actually do justice to the region.

Dear Mr. MeneshianBe careful when writing reviews. Unfortunately, you are ignorant about the fact that there is no Armenian Region of Nagorno Karabakh. For more information look at the official maps. You probably have no idea about other conventional maps, but the map of the "Great Armenia" on your wall.Thank you

Lonely Planet fumbled on this one...much of the information is out dated. The Armenia and Karabagh sections are particularly weak. There are more comprehensive books for this region with better maps and business information. Try again LP.

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