Rick Steves eastern coast of Italy

No. There are many areas in Italy not covered in his books.

The guide to Venice contains over 20 pages on Ravenna. It's a stealth entry, not mentioned on the cover. I don't consider Ravenna a reasonable day-trip from Venice. As Rick warns, the morning trains from Venice to Ravenna likely to appeal to day-trippers take between 2 hr. 47 min. and 3 hr. 36 min. (one way). There are at least seven medieval-mosaic sites in Ravenna; Rick identifies the ones he considers most important. A day-tripper would not be able to see all of them.

This is what I wrote about Ravenna in a trip report in 2018. I found the town to be charming and would happily go see it again. In fact, I had included it as a day trip from Ferrara for a trip in Italy this year, but I decided to cancel the trip for this year. Planning to go again next year.

Ravenna – 2 Days: When I was initially selecting towns for this trip, a friend mentioned her cruise and seeing a snippet of Ravenna. I’m so glad that two days in Ravenna were in this trip! When I walked into the first location of the Mosaic Combo Ticket, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, I just stopped in my tracks! Wow, the mosaics are so vivid and sparkly – just amazing! The second morning, I toured the TAMO museum which was very interesting and informative after seeing the mosaics the day before. I also walked through the underground museum, Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra. I stayed at Hotel Centrale Byron, and the best feature of that hotel is that it’s located next to Papilla, the best gelato in town! I had read that one way to counteract the feeling of being lonely when traveling solo is to buy a gelato and walk the streets with everyone else. I wasn’t lonely in Ravenna – ha! I enjoyed exploring Ravenna and found the people to be friendly.

None of Rick’s guide books are comprehensive like a Fodors or Frommers.

We used the Lonely Planet and Eyewitness Guides for Le Marche. Also, did a lot of research on line. Really liked the area.

Going to day trip Ravenna out of Bologna next spring - trip postponed (for some odd reason) from 2020! Using a Emilia-Romagna guide by Bradt and a bunch of interweb stuff. No Rick has nothing relevant to Bologna, Ravenna, Modena, Ferrara, but there is much to see there.

Again, Ravenna is covered in the Venice guide book.

There are no books that lump together the “Eastern Coast”. Actually no Italian would refer to it as “Eastern Coast” and they wouldn’t understand what you mean. Italians would call it the Adriatic Coast, but since it is so long, nobody would consider it to lump it together in one trip. You probably have to rely on one a comprehensive guidebook covering all of Italy, or multiple ones covering the individual regions along it.