Places Rated Almanac: The Classic Guide for Finding Your Best Places to Live in America,   ISBN:9780979319907

Customer Rating: 

I have used the Places Rated Almanac for multiple moves in the past since about 1980.

It has always been very helpful to me in getting the information I needed to assist in making a decision between multiple places of interest.

Customer Rating: 

This is a great source of information. If you are planning to make a change and you want to compare where you are with other places in the country, the will provide clarifying insight.

Customer Rating: 

While full of arcane but useful info, this edition does not do as good a job of evaluating/comparing taxation and cost-of-living as previous volumes. If $$$ data is important to you I would suggest CITIES RANKED & RATED, 2nd ed. Bert Sperling & Peter Sander

Customer Rating: 

As long as Americans are in love with lists and insecure about keeping up with their neighbors (in some far off state in this case)...books like this will continue to prosper, regardless of whether they actually make sense.

I found the weather section less than helppful as it didn't give any real information (days above 90 degrees snowfall etc) but opted for a 50 page breakdown of "regional weather environments"??

Not taking into concideration that weather can change signifigantly between neighboring cities just a few dozen miles apart.

I wrote them to express my dissatisfaction with this and other aspects and I was told that a new edition will be on shelves next year and that I should just buy the next one and hope for the best.

I donated the book to my local library.

Customer Rating: 

My family is in process of moving, and this book has been a great help in figuring out where is a good place, and where isn't based on what we think is important (crime rates, school systems, etc) and things we don't think are important. Other lists from magazines are loaded with "totals" of what they feel are most important, but that doesn't mean it's relevant or most important to us. With the breakdowns by category of the "best places" and why, it makes it easier to understand, too. And, it's nice to see that where I grew up rates so well, too. The only thing I thought that should be added or different: growing up in the Northeast, within an hours' drive, there are many other rated regions that rated better (or worse) than others. For example, it would have been nice to see that although some areas didn't have a high concentration of universities, that within a 30-mile drive, there actually were a lot, might help people who aren't as familiar with the areas as some that lived there or grew up there.