This was very useful on our recent trip to Italy. We had both the Lonely Planet phrase book and this one with us, but this is the one we ended up using. We found it easier to navigate and more comprehensive than the other. It had more information and was organized more clearly than Lonely Planet. In particular, I thought the Rick Steve's pronunciation guide was easier to follow and got me closer to the correct pronunciation than the Lonely Planet book.
However, what really tipped it over the edge was its section on health and medical care. My husband and I -- who travel frequently and rarely get sick -- contracted some kind of horrible flu/sinus infection/plague on the way out or Rome and needed to seek urgent medical consultation and care from a pharmacy on the Amalfi coast. The Rick Steves guide came to our rescue because it had more than three times the amount of health and medical vocabulary than the Lonely Planet book, which we desperately needed because we had a lot of specific symptoms to communicate and the pharmacist/doctor only spoke a few words of English. Thanks to Rick Steves, we were able to explain what was going on and get the right medical information (and medicine) to help us recover quickly. I don't know what we would have done if we had only had the Lonely Planet phrasebook to go on. We might have been given cough drops instead of antibiotics.
If you are on the fence, this is the way to go.
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