If you're going to Boston and don't know you're way around, you will need this book. You will need to sit down and really look at it, and then keep it with you. If you get lost, don't try and use logic or common sense to unravel your path. Just pull over and get your map out, and make a plan before you try and inch your way back into traffic.

This has got to be the most user-unfriendly town in America. If you are not from here, good luck trying to get around. Even my buddy with GPS gets lost because the thing cannot react fast enough, and doesn't know how to convey directions such as "stay in the left lane, lane markings will disappear and reappear later on slightly different planes, but stay left because the road will suddenly split, but then immediately take a left turn, but not the first left but the slightly more obtuse left turn radiating from just ten yards further down the street." If you a make a mistake, do not imagine for a moment that you can fix it easily. You can go on unimaginable adventures just trying to turn around. For example, if you want to make a left on to Mass Ave from Somerville road, well, you just can't, but that shouldn't be a big deal, you just make a right and find a place to turn around. However, you will literally drive from city to city before you find a place to turn around. I know everybody thinks their own town is eccentric, but Boston is hands down the most passive-aggressive city to newcomers or visitors. Streets change names multiple times in a short stretch, have different names on different sides of the street, all while multiple streets will have the same name. Which is all irrelevant because if you are fortunate enough to see a street sign, it is probably too late to react to it. People here don't seem phased by it, they are often surprised to find out that other cities are laid out in a grid, where the streets hit each other at right angles, four corners only per intersection, and you can actually point yourself in the direction of where are going and find your way there with reason and will alone.

These maps are a nice guide for pedestrians too. And, actually, walking is the easiest way to get around Boston. The challenge of course for pedestrians would still be the Boston drivers. If the cars do stop before hitting you, the drivers will give you a look that let's you know that you've been fortunate. It's a look that says, "I'm not going to hit you with my car, but please understand that this is a choice I have made, at great sacrifice. Your life is henceforth a privilege I've granted you."

One more little thing that complicates getting around Boston. Let's do this in the form of a quiz. Give your best guess at how to pronounce the following neighborhoods: Berlin, Billerica, Cochituate, Leicester, Leominster, Peabody, Woburn, Worcester. Aren't you silly, where y'from, Iowa?

I purchased this book for my son who is moving to Salem, Mass., from Michigan in August 2006. He took it with him when he went apartment hunting and said it was "a great help." He also used it to explore Boston. He found it to be very detailed. He liked the fact that it is spiral bound, staying open easily on the needed page. For myself, I found the print just a tad too small, but being 52, my eyesight is not what it was... My son did not find this a problem. In fact, he felt that with bigger print, the book would be increased in size unfavorably.