Travel Guides

Europe through the back door is an attitude and travel skills guide. I have a copy on my Kindle, and it is useful for referring to from time to time. It is generally not nation specific.

If you only have 2 weeks for three countries, I don't think you would need much detail, so the overview provided by the Best of Europe guidebook would suffice. I am a guidebook freak, however, and would generally purchase many more books for my Kindle library.

For Germany I recommend the website of German travel board. It gives you really one of the best overviews and sorting possibilities for nearly every interest. Very valuable is the map in which regions and special interests be selected. A perfect tool for diy itinerary planning and day trip explorations. Also the top 100 list voted by travelers is really interesting.
http://www.germany.travel/en/index.html

They also provide inspiring guide book ebrochures which can be dowloaded to mobile or also an ereader to have it with you without carrying a real book:
http://www.germany.travel/en/ebrochures.html

Furthermore I recommend the regional and local tourist websites in Germany which have a huge variety of information or such in case of Berlin also a blog with selected events of the coming weekend.

Depending on where in each country you plan to travel will determine which guidebooks you will need. Why don’t you visit your local library and check out books you think you might need? You can see what each one covers and then decide which one(s) you may want to buy.

If your library has guidebooks you like, you could even just borrow them for your 2-week trip (I carried the Switzerland book in a Ziploc bag to keep it clean in my daypack during our week in Switzerland.) Or photocopy the pages applicable to the cities you will be visiting.

If you go to the web page on this website for each book, you'll see a section called "Is This The Right Guidebook For Me?" In that section, you can see a comparison of overlapping titles (for instance, Best of Germany compared to Germany 2018).

https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/p/germany-guidebook

Europe Through The Back Door is a travel skills book, with the "nuts and bolts" - what to expect from hotels, how to get around, money matters, etc. It's very useful if you haven't traveled to Europe before, or haven't gone in years. However, it has only limited information on specific destinations.

Note that even Rick's "whole country" books like Germany 2018 or Switzerland do not cover the whole country. They are deliberately selective; they have a lot of detail on some places and totally omit others. So, do make sure the book covers the places you are going. If you want information about Geneva or Stuttgart, you'll need another guidebook. In the "What's Included" section of the web page for each book, you can see the table of contents; if a place is not listed, it's not in the book.

I agree with using your library to get a variety of books on your destinations, then buying the ones that will be most useful for you. Everyone has different likes and dislikes in travel guidebooks, so make sure the books you buy mesh with your needs.

Thanks everyone for the tips. I will go to the library and check out my options.

I recommend the " Rough Guide Germany" and the " Rough Guide Berlin," which are the two I use almost exclusively and which you can look up at the library too along with the others.

For me Rough Guide is often too roughly, speaking of Berlin. It is good for "been there, took a picture" but a lot of places in Berlin go much deeper and there is much more. Example Museum Island. Not a place to go and make a snap. You can spend easily a week in these museums and Berlin has over 170 museums which are not mentioned but may be even closer to a traveler's interest.