If you are interested in exploring New York's vibrant, delicious underbelly, and are willing to venture deep into the boroughs to experience the many cultures of this great city, this book is a good place to start.
I thank the author for getting me into neighborhoods that I might not have otherwise ventured into. I have used it to explore about a dozen locations in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. You are pretty much guaranteed an interesting afternoon if you follow one of these walks, in spite of the book's many weaknesses.
The organization of information around neighborhoods is a good starting point, but beyond that the infomation is not presented in a way that is easy to follow on your feet. Yes there are maps, but the maps do not delineate the routes of the walks nor do they show any of the places mentioned in the text. The text gives addresses of restaurant and shops but rarely gives cross-streets. A little more information on the maps that visually shows the route of the walks and location of the points of interests would have made a huge difference here.
The book is bulky and just not well designed for walking tours. It is very difficult to find your way walking while trying to keep your place in a page of text. And besides the weaknesses in design, many of the points of interest are inaccurate or outdated. It just seems like the book was put together very quickly and cheaply. It is obvious that some neighborhoods were not researched very extensively when the author mentions that a restaurant looked interesting but she did not try it on her [single] trip to the neighborhood.
Overall, I do recommend this book simply because I know of no other guide like it for NYC. But use it just to put yourself in the right neighborhood, don't waste too much time searching for specific places listed here. I use this book as a starting point and supplement it with more current and intensive infomation from chowhound.com.