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Holder of a Pulitzer for funny commentary, Barry (Dave Barry Slept Here, 1989) follows the footsteps of Baedeker and Marco Polo and offers a travel book that is more current and just as useful. In a time-honored and noble tradition of comical assessments of the world away from home, Barry presents a light text, augmented with the customary cheesy charts, footnotes, and diagrams. (Maybe it's just coincidence, but the handy street-maps of Cairo, London, Berlin or Munich [one map], Vienna, Paris, and downtown Ireland all appear alarmingly similar.) There's advice on planning a trip (the author differs from his wife about packing a waffle iron), foreign languages, air travel, family travel (the best time to visit Disney World: 1962), and camping. There's a guide to all fifty states, Canada, and Mexico. Then there are also foreign countries, located in Europe. (See ``How to Use a Bidet.'') ``Most of these countries,'' Barry astutely points out, ``eventually realized the marketing advantage of not being so foreign.'' Little-known foreign fact: ``England manufactures most of the world's airline food.'' Filled with shameless fabrication (we happen to know, because we checked the road atlas we got from the insurance company, that Alaska is not in Canada, for example), but Barry's lies, like all good comedy, are emblematic of some kind of truth or other. Besides, ``you can trust us,'' he says. ``We're a guidebook.'' The title is accurate. Get this travel guide and you'll never want another. Funny stuff.
