Rick Steves Books

If your trip is 2 weeks or less the Italy book would do. For longer stays, add on the major cities where you will be visiting

I see it the other way up. The regional books, like the Rome one and the Venice one, have much more local detail than the much more comprehensive, yet more thinly spread Italy book.

I like the regional books for the detail and the national books for the overview.

Just by the way, I have two entire bookcases of guidebooks, with one and a half shelves of Rick Steves books....

Look on the shop online section of Rick's website and go to the guidebooks. He has some information about most or all of the books under Is This the Right Book for Me? I found this to be quite helpful.

Go to the library and pull out as many books as you can. Read over them and decided which one fits best with your style of travel and then invest in 2 of them. I personally use some of rick steves small city ones which I can throw in my purse or backpack, but I also like frommers and others.

I buy guidebooks based on the size of the city, length of time we'll be spending in it, and often have both city-specific and national books along if our trip includes both longer city and shorter smaller-town stays/day trips.

If a trip only involves a single day trip or two, I'll sometimes dispense with the national book, use my own pre-researched notes, and maybe supplement those with a materials from a visitor center, if one is available.

LOL, I have a couple of guidebooks by different publishers each just for Rome and Florence, and will probably buy thirds (Blue Guides) for them before the next trip...although I won't take ALL of them with me!

Rick would recommend that you take the bigger, black & white editions of Venice, 15th Edition and Rome 2018 for maximum info on those destinations. There's also a colorful "Pocket" version for each city, which is abbreviated, covers plenty of sightseeing for a short stay, and perhaps is easier to read, but not necessarily lighter to carry.

The big Rome 2018 covers Naples and Pompeii but not Sorrento, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast. You could supplement it (or Pocket Rome) with Snapshot Naples & Amalfi Coast, which is those full chapters, not abbreviated, pulled from Italy 2018.

Or you could buy the 1,200-page Italy 2018 and cut out the parts you don't need. The main thing not included in this book is the more detailed info (3-4 pages each) for self-walking routes in cities and museums. But some of those are also available as recorded versions at https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/audio/audio-europe.