Score: 8/10

pros:
fairly well organized; great coverage of wide range of themes & situations; helpfully relevant to Italy; color-coded sections & blue Italian text make searches quick; intro to basic Italian grammar & Italian-English-Italian glossaries; nice extras include sample travel requests to send via e-mail, questions to ask, pics of gestures; although some of the culture notes are generic & boring, others offer useful tips & info

cons:
some of the vocabulary gets too detailed too fast and won’t help many readers; would have liked to see more robust coverage of basic Italian, including more examples in the grammar section cross-referenced with vocabulary lists; glossary could have doubled as an index to quickly find specific words, but page numbers are missing

Barron’s Traveler’s Language Guide: Italian is in many ways a typical phrasebook affair, helping you translate your travel thoughts and needs into Italian. But what it does that is typical, it does well, and even manages to squeeze in some nice extras to make the purchase worth your while.

Like other travel phrase books, this one’s divided into themed sections. Topics include shopping, sightseeing, health, accommodations, on the move, interpersonal matters (thanks, introductions, preferences and small talk) and the all-important “gastronomy (culinary customs)”.

The side tab of each right page is color-coded to one of these topics, and vocabulary list headings share that same color. In other words, it’s easy to locate your desired topic just by flipping the pages.

Vocabulary translations set out the English text in black and Italian in blue. Sample sentences are in bold, with English on top and Italian in blue directly below. Cultural, social and historical notes occur regularly throughout the text, and read as expected.

A brief, approachable introduction to Italian grammar will help beginners make sense of the language. The Italian-English and English-Italian vocab glossaries make for nice, short little dictionaries in a pinch. All of these can be found at the back of the book. The front of the book has a very short pronunciation chart, useful abbreviations and general tips about Italy.

As mentioned, a few extras stand out. The “travel preparations” topic gives sample Italian e-mails you can send to ask Italians about booking a hotel room or renting a car. There are also questions to ask about lodging, what’s included, cost, etc. The “interpersonal matters” includes two pages of color photos demonstrating the basics of Italian body language.

I’ve seen phrasebooks with more vocabulary, or ones that do a better job of organizing topics, or ones that offer an index, or ones that… Sure, in many ways, the Traveler’s Language Guide: Italian is typical. For its extras and its good coverage of the basics, I don’t find it hard to recommend. Travelers looking for more vocabulary could pair this alongside word-building books like Must-Know Italian. These two recommendations together give you an expansive arsenal of topical Italian vocabulary. That’s enough to handle most any situation.