(Travel Guidebook)Lonely Planet Vs. Let's go

These two guidebooks are travellers' bible. Most backpackers carry either one of them. It is quite heavy to carry both,but sometimes are necessary.
For me, most difficult and challenging daily route while on the road is that every morning I have study both and design my own daily itinerary which incorporate factors like transporation, accomendation, restaurants, everything all together with the goal of maximizing the time, money and adventure experience.
In the end, both guidebooks didn't disappoint me.
Lonely planet actually led me find a nice boutique courtyard hotel in Beijing which I didnt know before even I grew up there.
lets go led me into a lot of adventure experience in Europe, including some shortcuts.
Regarding europe, Rick steves's backdoor through Europe is another excellent guide series, which was so popularon druing the prime time on USA pbs channel.
http://www.ricksteves.com/
Lonely Planet:
is one of the largest travel guidebook publishers in the world. It was the first popular series of travel books aimed at backpackers and other low-cost travellers. As of 2008, it published about 500 titles in 8 languages, with annual sales of more than six million guidebooks, as well as TV programs, a magazine, podcasts and websites.
Lonely Planet has a television production company, which has produced four series: Lonely Planet Six Degrees, The Sport Traveller, Going Bush, Vintage New Zealand and Bluelist Australia. Lonely Planet is headquartered in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, with affiliate offices in London and Oakland, California.
Since 2007, the company has been controlled by BBC Worldwide, which owns a 75% share, while founders Maureen and Tony Wheeler own the remaining 25%.
The company name comes from a misheard line in "Space Captain," a song by Joe Cocker and Leon Russell. The actual words are "lovely planet" but Tony Wheeler heard "lonely planet" and liked it.
The founders, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, have written a book titled Once While Travelling: The Lonely Planet Story (known as Unlikely destinations: The Lonely Planet story in North America) telling how they met and married, how they travelled from London to Australia overland and how Lonely Planet was formed.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/
let's go:
Let's Go is a travel guide company run entirely by Harvard University students, founded in 1960 and headquartered in Cambridge, MA. The first Let's Go guide was a 20-page mimeographed pamphlet put together by an ambitious Harvard freshman named Oliver Koppell, to be handed out on student charter flights to Europe. The first professionally published guide was issued in 1961. Early guides tended to be freewheeling, for example advising travelers on motorbiking through Southeast Asia in the late 1960s and financing travel in Europe by singing in the street. The first edition included tips on traveling from Europe to Asia on just four cents, by taking the ferry across the Bosphorus. In 1982, Let's Go travel guides began to be published by St. Martin's Press.
Ever "witty and irreverent," Let's Go books are produced by traveling student researcher-writers, who send raw copy to teams of editors and cartographers (also students) in the United States. Researcher-writers are hired and trained in the spring, with the bulk of travel and research conducted from June to August. In order to keep the writing true to the budget heritage of the series, researcher-writers are paid a daily stipend intended to cover only basic expenses. Every establishment listed in the guides has been visited and recommended by researcher-writers, meaning that tens of thousands of cafes, castles, hostels, hotsprings, nightclubs, national parks, waterfalls, and wax museums are visited every summer. The guides are edited and published over the summer and are often on bookstore shelves by October.
As of 2008, there are 55 books in the series, casting light on places from Australia to Turkey. These guides range from regular country guides to adventure, city, and roadtrip guides, many of which are updated annually. Let's Go also has 10 pocket city guides in its series. Let's Go: Europe is the world's bestselling budget travel guide title.
http://www.letsgo.com/