I know everyone calls the Lonely Planet guides the travel bibles, but in my experience the Top 10 guides are the really indispensable books for when I travel. I'm usually traveling for work and have 3 days max to sight-see in anyplace new, and the Top 10 guides are always the ones that come through for me. The Beijing guide showed me the big sights that I needed to see (and how to get to them), as well as the cool markets that get me out of the giant tourist sites and further into the local feel of China. These guides are always consistent and high quality. ( )

This travel book is a slim and focused guide to Beijing, using the structure of top 10 lists to organize all its information. It begins with the top 10 sights to see in Beijing, and then focuses on the top 10 attractions within those sights, followed by various lists of ten, such as restaurants, bars, shopping districts, and so on. We used this book on our recent trip to China and I found it very useful. It was nice not to be overloaded with too much information, most of which goes to waste because you have limited time. The best part of the book, for me, was the main top ten list, because it helped me choose the big attractions I wanted to visit, and they were all well worth it. The Forbidden City, Summer Palace, and Great Wall were amazing. I also went to one of the restaurants that was listed as a top ten and it was my favorite from the entire trip. This was much easier to read than other books in the genre, and had the high quality production that I've come to expect from DK publishers, with fantastic photographs throughout. I did get tired of the gimmick of top ten lists by about halfway through, though. Also, the maps for the individual locations were rather vague, and we had to use my brother-in-law's guide book for that kind of information. An excellent guide book for one city, but it is very limited, and could need supplementing. ( )