MAPS AND GUIDES Pocket books make your traveling easier

Pocket-style guides contain a surprising amount of information.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Sometimes you need an encyclopedic reference to help you plan a major excursion. Other times, you just need the basics -- a map, a list, a phrase.
Several different travel publishers have come out with compact, easy-to-use and downright beautiful pocket-style guides for people who want to travel light.
U"Let's Go City Pocket Guides" survey dining, nightlife, shopping, culture and other sights in 10 cities: Paris, London, Berlin, Venice, Amsterdam, New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. Each $8.95 guide is no bigger than a slim brochure, but the sturdy, glossy cardboard covers fold out to reveal surprisingly detailed maps. And while the indexed 38-page booklets inside can only skim the surface of the best of each city, they manage to include a great deal of information while weighing just a few ounces.
ULooking for the bathroom in Berlin or perfume in Paris? Or maybe you'd like to know how to ask, "Do you have vegetarian dishes?" next time you're dining in Rome. You need "Berlitz MiniGuides," which come in three different subjects -- "Surviving in ...," "Eating and Drinking in ..." and "Shopping in ..." -- and in four different languages: French, Italian, German and Spanish. The $3.95 guides fold up to the size of a credit card, with sturdy, glossy outside covers to keep them from getting damaged in your pocket, purse or wallet. They unfold to 11 1/2 by 16 inches, with the information provided on 36 easy-to-read four-color panels, broken down into appropriate categories for instant retrieval. The "Surviving" guides help you tell time, find lodging and use money. The food and drink guides help you decipher menus and order your favorite foods, literally from soup to nuts. And the shopping guides give you words for locating items, bargaining, shipping, complaining and asking for help in everything from antiques shops to grocery stores.
UKnopf "MapGuides" are handy, practical and perfect for those of us who are slightly impaired when it comes to map-reading. You don't have to search a huge crackling sheet with a microscopic index for one of 10,000 dots on the map, because the maps are organized by neighborhood and drawn in small scale, each one accompanied by text about the restaurants and attractions in that immediate area.
The quality of the books' hues and heavy paper also give these $8.95 guides an evocative quality that stands apart from the glossy, garish look of most travel books.