The Monocle Travel Guide to Berlin: The Monocle Travel Guide Series Hardcover – February 15, 2017

This was the most useful out of all the travel books I used for a recent trip, which I did not expect. If you enjoy art and culture this guide is for you. I was worried that it would be outdated since it hasn’t been updated in a few years, but the vast majority of the recommendations were still open.

As someone who lived in Berlin and will be returning here shortly, this guide really hits on both the typical sights you need to see in Berlin and the more cultured, underground scene you should see. The concept stores, pop-up shops and restaurants every Berliner respects are in here. Great job as usual, Monocle.

Great guide! Can’t wait to get to Berlin!

Its been a long time since I read a print travel guide book (as opposed to using a digital version/app), but I'm really enjoying this. It was recommended to me, especially for the essays and I really like the perspective they provide.

A very different travel book with great tips and short essays about the city.

Fun and informative book!!!

To its credit, this book is a bit different than Lonely Planet style guides, and like many tourists, that was appealing to me. However, I didn't find it to contain much of any use. The intended readership seems to be people who either can't use the internet and need a book to give them very basic information, or for readers of the Monocle magazine who really like the style of their writing. If you haven't heard of Monocle magazine (I hadn't), then I don't think you'll like this book.I was looking for a book that would organize information for me. For example, if find myself near a certain museum, I'd like to be able to look in the guidebook to find nearby recommend museums. Or similarly, have the book recommend certain tours that don't require going across town. Or recommend a good restaurant near my hotel.Instead, the book lists a few things, but not that well organized by area, and not enough things listed to be comprehensive (it's a very thin book). It suggests 20 restaurants for all of Berlin!For practical information, there was one paragraph about Trains, and one paragraph about Bus and Trams. There's a "Vocabulary" section that lists 10 words in "local lingo", from "Guten tag" to "Kiez".The essays were nice, and there are a few amusing/useful things on the "Need to know" section (which was only 2 pages long unfortunately).What the book does have is lots of pictures, and recommendations on shopping. Not super useful to me, but could be useful to some people. If I were an expat living in Berlin, then I might get some utility out of this book (but in that case, it might as well be a thicker book). For short-term visitors, I can't really recommend it. During my trip, I ended up using a blog post which was a lot more useful than this book.