Best backpackers books 2007 - new travel books and old travel guidebook favorites for student travelers, backpackers and any young or young-at-heart traveler on a hiking boot string budget. Party Europe, Rough Guides, MTV Travel guides, a new page-turner from Tony Wheeler -- you'll like 'em all. Know that guidebooks make great travel gifts for backpackers, too.
1. Party Europe
© PartyEarth
Pack a Party Europe guidebook and you'll be playing around Europe with indispensable insider info dispensed by travelers already on the ground you want to pound. Party Europe's unique interface works like this: pick one of four partying traveler's personas, and the book's real world writers tell you what you'll like. The guidebooks' very current facts, crucial to any urban trek, and sassy slant make for fun and totally educational reading. Covers European hot spots, clubs, coffeehouses and cafes in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, London and a lot more places you probably want to be. Keep scrolling for more of our fave backpacker's books from 2007.
2. MTV Travel Guides
© Frommer's
MTV travel guides from guidebook powerhouse Frommer's (and MTV, of course), like "MTV Italy" and "MTV Europe," are great all around travel guides and extremely decent backpackers guidebooks for those with a yen to get a bit beyond the Eiffel Tower and into the more interesting parts of any town. The MTV travel guides cover countries very well (and do include the mainstream sights, too) -- great travel books for anyone under 30, really.
3. Rough Guide "First Time Around the World"
Photo courtesy Rough Guide
"Rough Guide First Time Around the World" is just what the title tells you: a rough (meaning adventurous) guide book to accompany your first trip around the world. Travel advice told in the trademark Rough Guide rock and roll tone.
4. "Not For Tourists" US Travel Guides
The "Nor for Tourists" series from Langenscheidt Publishing really are for tourists, but it's that whole be-a-traveler-not-a-tourist thing going on with the concept. Explore the back alleys and byways of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, LA, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, DC with the NFT guidebooks that are right up any adventure traveler's alley.5. "Bad Lands" - Tony Wheeler's Guide to Spots the Guv Sez You Can't Go
© Lonely Planet
At last year's WYSTC in Australia, a highlight for me was Tony Wheeler's presentation: the Lonely Planet founder, who was getting ready to publish "Bad Lands - A Tourist on the Axis of Evil," remarked that on hearing about President Bush's Axis of Evil choices for nations most deserving the badness designation, his thought was, "I've got to go there." And thus the book. Whether or not you've the cojones to go where your government says you mustn't, you'll enjoy the read.
