Customer Rating: 
Summary: confusing
Comment: maybe it is just a confusing trip but this book didn't help a whole lot.
Customer Rating:
Summary: small
Comment: I will be traveling cross country and bought this for that purpose. It's smaller than I expected but I will use it as a reference.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A window to the past you travelling
Comment: First off, this book is not a map. It's a guidebook to Route 66 written in 1946. However, it's something you WILL want on any Route 66 trip. Why? Because you'll be passing ruins and dried-up blown-away towns, and this book was there before they blew away. This book will tell you what you're seeing now though the eye of "then".
Team this book up with the "Route 66 Adventure Handbook (3rd Ed) by Drew Knowles, and you'll really add something to your trip.
We used the "Adventure Handbook" to tell us what's in each town now, then referred to the Rittenhouse to see what each town used to offer many years ago. It was facinating! Some towns offered so much back in '46, and today there's nothing there, or very little. Other towns seem to not have changed much in 60 years. I give it 5 stars for the history it will impart to you along the way.
It's a cheap addition to anyone's arsenal for travelling Route 66, and one you really will be glad you had when you're done.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fun historical kitsch guide
Comment: The road out west from Chicago to LA can be tedious at times, and this cheap and fun little guide was a great way to pass the time. It's an exact reprint of the 1946 first edition about HIghway 66. I was able to call out towns and gas stations that were now in a shambles or abandoned on the side of the road. Fun book, right price, and it made my trip more interesting.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful artifact of the dawn of automobile travel
Comment: This reproduction of the original 1946 guide to Route 66 is an invaluable companion for any trip on the Mother Road. Not only does it give you a feel for what the road was like at the dawn of America's love-affair with automobile traffic, but it gives you a feel for the psychology of those pioneers who attempted to drive the Route.While we're now accustomed to well-marked Interstates with easily located on and off ramps, early cross-country routes were less highway and more stitched and patched collections of local roads, filled in with connectors and dotted with small towns. The map was, in essence, the route itself. Following these early routes was not trivial, and drivers had to take caution not to find themselves stranded without food, lodging or fuel.
Rittenhouse's guide was the first comprehensive effort to assuage fears of long-distance car travel, and provide a mile-by-mile guide to services and sights along Route 66. While most of the sites (and most of the services) he documents are long-gone, the sense of wonder that is Route 66, and the thrill of coasting into the cities through which it threads, remains fully intact. No one should drive Route 66 without a copy of this in the glove box. Doing so would rob your of a good deal of the road's history.
Note to West Coasters: though the book is arranged from Chicago to LA, it can just as easily be read backwards for the Eastbound trip.
