Author Kurt Vonnegut asserts in his groundbreaking novel Cat's Cradle: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." This quote has served yeoman duty as my oft-repeated mantra ever since the Nixon years. And each spring, as the weather begins to warm up, the maps get spread out across the living room floor and the familiar process of choosing a summer travel destination repeats itself as surely as the swallows' return to Capistrano. Cappadocia, Marrakesh, Kabul (well, maybe next year), Auckland, Chiang Mai, Johannesburg . . . the list is never-ending.

So, let's say you have the income to make your first voyage abroad at age 20, and the health to keep on traveling comfortably until age 70; that means you get 50 good two-to-three week vacations in which to pack a lifetime of travel experiences. What are the 50 things you most want to see? The Pyramids, the Great Wall, Easter Island? How can you possibly choose among the myriad alternatives? Fear not; help is on its way in the form of the travel guidebook, a treasure trove of facts and anecdotes about the places you most want to visit, written by someone who has been there before you and checked out the situation (and gotten paid to do it; is that a cool job or what?). But how do I choose the right guidebook, you ask? Read on.

The DK Eyewitness Travel Guides deliver a logical approach to the pleasures of foreign travel, combined with sensual photographs to whet your appetite. Each guide starts with a map of the country, followed by a general overview (landscape, flora, fauna, culture, history, literature, etc). Then the country is divided into regions; typically the capital and surrounding areas are explored first, with the scope moving farther afield as the pages are turned. The final 20 percent of each guide deals with the practical needs of travelers: getting there and getting away, when to go, getting around while you're there, where to stay and eat, banking and currency information.

Also addressed are several of the things you might not think about, such as how to use a pay phone or how to locate a public restroom (quite handy to know in many third world countries). Each guide is reasonably sized, with durable covers and glossy pages that resist the humidity of warmer destinations. One new entry in the series, Eyewitness Travel Guides: Cuba (328 pages, $24.95, ISBN 0789483270), is peppered with delectable tidbits of habanero color, like this one about literary icon Ernest Hemingway: "A lover of cocktails, Hemingway was a regular at Bodeguita del Medio and El Floridita. Both bars were a stone's throw from his room on the fifth floor of the Ambos Mundos Hotel. The writer helped to invent the daiquiri."

Also new this year from DK are the Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides, a series of compact books offering top 10 lists for many of the world's major travel destinations, ranging from the sublime to the hilarious. There are, of course, the obvious ones, such as the top 10 museums, the top 10 restaurants and nightclubs. But consider this listing from Top 10 Guide: Venice - the top hotels in tranquil locations: "Hotel Falier: This cheery place is named after the beheaded traitor Doge Falier 'as a warning to guests who fail to pay!' Sunlight streams into the comfortable if small rooms, all with shower, and there's a courtyard dripping with wisteria." (I am so there.) Other lists in the Venice guide include the "top 10 Medici rulers," "top 10 Venice for the disabled" and my personal fave, the "top 10 things to avoid" (which includes entering Venetian churches in T-shirts, shorts or beachwear).

Insight Guides, perennial favorites of the Informal Worldwide Society of Intrepid Trekkers, are published in conjunction with the Discovery Channel. As such, they offer an exceptionally balanced overview of ecology, history and cultures. The photography is outstanding, and the text accessible and informative. There are guides for Tuscany and Taiwan (and nearly everywhere in between). Insight Guide: New Zealand ($22.95, 348 pages, ISBN 9812342222) entertains with "The Birth of Bungee," a sport invented by a New Zealander who once bungee-jumped off the Eiffel Tower (yikes!). Perhaps nowhere in the world is the "great outdoors" so widely revered, and Insight Guide: New Zealand displays it all: the unusual wildlife (the kiwi, whose feathery countenance has graced shoe polish tins for decades), the beaches and mountains, and the thermal springs - just the thing for relaxing after a long day's journey. (Oh, and did I mention the sheep? There are sheep everywhere!) Insight also publishes a smaller, traveler-friendly guidebook series known as the Insight Pocket Guides; several of these, such as Insight Pocket Guide: Thailand ($13.95, 104 pages, ISBN 1585731641) include detailed road maps that fit in their own handy-dandy pocket inside the back cover. Much of the same ground is covered as in the larger books, albeit in a smaller typeface and with fewer illustrations. Their useful "star system" grades the main attractions.

Fodor's Exploring Guides offer terrific pics and piles of great information for the novice and the seasoned traveler, but where these guides excel is in the text. They are chatty and accessible, and laden with anecdotes about such diverse topics as recent volcano eruptions, petroglyphs and surf conditions. In Exploring Costa Rica ($22, 208 pages, ISBN 067690162X), there is a short but captivating blurb on the charmingly named gumbo-limbo tree, known to the locals as the "gringo nose" tree. In another segment, the "mystery spheres" of Palmar - strange spherical rocks measuring as large as six feet in diameter - are investigated. "The significance of their function and their fabrication - accurate to within 0.07 - continues to puzzle archaeologists," says the guide. Fodor's Exploring Guides are available for most of the known world and a number of places that are comparatively unknown.

Another Fodor series, Fodor's Pocket, is indispensable for serious travelers. Fodor's Pocket Bermuda ($9.95, 288 pages, ISBN 0676901204) is crammed with virtually every piece of information you will ever need to know as a visitor to that country: the origins of the pink sand beaches, the story of the Gombey dancers, the reason for the picturesque white roofs, even a brief history of Bermuda shorts (as opposed to a short history of Bermuda briefs). All this, and up-to-the-moment information on the best places to stay, eat and amuse yourself. No pictures, but hey, if you're going to Bermuda, you can take your own pictures! Fodor's Pocket Guides are among the most portable travel books on Earth, significantly smaller than an average paperback.

Note: All of these series are aimed at readers in the middle or upper-middle income groups; in some of the guides, "inexpensive" hotels are "under $100." (Caramba!) Copyright 2002 BookPage Reviews