Do you want to see if America is still out there? Then this is the book to avoid. I've used Lonely Planet Guides before and really wanted to like this book. The truth is, you'd do well to purchase instead Jamie Jensen's Road Trip USA (avail thru Amazon) which is the best guide out there right now.
Typical of Lonely Planet, only very pronounced in this volume, writers' comments are often riddled with sarcasm and condescension, and worse--are too often incorrect. These writers will have you looking for places that may have existed years ago, and it is now clear to me that their reissues are not carefully updated, but reprinted with new covers. If you've used Lonely Planet Guides before, you've probably noticed these qualities, and while a travel guide cannot be perfect in all directives, it surely can be much less rude and lazy than this one. I left their East Africa book in Tanzania as its lack of accurate information was a complete joke, and although the book made for a pretty coaster, it became a burden.
The purpose of a travel guide is to guide readers to highlights of each place and to inform and educate at the same time. One quickly learns to read between the lines (for example, if a particular hotel is given rave reviews, it will probably be crowded by others with the same travel guide), but it is difficult to forgive L.P. writers their holier-than-thou attitude. I found in this volume that they are too quick to insult and degrade even the most sacred places. Stay away from this book--unless you just want to see a lot of pretty pictures, which is the primary reason I gave it the one star. They do make one of the best travel series on televsion. Maybe they should apply some of those talents to their written guides. It's been a long time since I noticed them being conscientious in their travel guides--which is a real shame, especially for such an expensive guide. There are a lot of better, more accurate guides out there.