The Best Route 66 Guide Books, Compared (2026-27)

The best Route 66 guide book depends on the job you need it to do. For turn-by-turn directions, the EZ66 Guide for Travelers by Jerry McClanahan, now in a 6th edition updated for the centennial, is still the standard. For the deepest catalog of sights and side trips, it's the Route 66 Adventure Handbook by Drew Knowles. For a mainstream travel guide with itineraries, Moon Route 66 Road Trip, whose 5th edition came out in September 2026. For history, Michael Wallis's Route 66: The Mother Road. And for choosing where to sleep and eat on your budget, with coordinates that work without a signal, the Field Manual, which I wrote. Most people who drive the whole road end up carrying two: one for directions, one for planning.

Before the list, a disclosure you should have. This Journal is published by Europe Trip, the makers of Route 66, The Definitive Field Manual, and I'm its author. I'm not a neutral judge, so weigh my ranking with that in mind. Here is how I tried to keep it fair: every fact about the other guides comes from their publishers' or sellers' own pages, linked in the sources at the bottom, and where another book does a job better than mine, I say so plainly.

The best Route 66 guide books at a glance

Prices are what I saw on publisher and seller pages in October 2026. They move, especially in the centennial year, so treat them as a range.

How I compared them

I didn't score these guides on a 10-point scale, because they aren't trying to do the same thing. Instead I asked five questions of each one:

1. When was it last updated? On a road where diners and motels close every season, a 2022 printing and a 2026 printing are different books.
2. Does it give directions, maps, or both? Directions tell you when to turn. Maps show you where the old alignments run. You need both, but rarely from the same book.
3. Does it work offline? Long stretches of the western half have weak or no cell signal.
4. Does it work in both directions? Most material is written Chicago to Santa Monica. If you're driving east, that matters.
5. Will it help you decide where to sleep and eat? This is the question most trips actually turn on.

EZ66 Guide for Travelers: best for turn-by-turn directions

If you're asking which single book will keep you on the old road, the answer is the EZ66 Guide. Jerry McClanahan wrote, designed and illustrated it, and it's published by the National Historic Route 66 Federation. The 6th edition was updated for the centennial, with revised maps, new attractions and updated advisories, according to the Federation's own listing.

What makes it work is the layout. The directions are written for travelers coming from the east or from the west, so you can drive it either way without reading backwards. It's spiral-bound at 5.5 by 8.5 inches, which means it stays open flat on a lap or a console. The 218 pages include area and detail maps for the tricky intersections and old alignments that a phone's GPS tends to skip, plus short notes on mom-and-pop motels, restaurants, roadside attractions, and even car games and scavenger hunts for kids.

• Strengths: the clearest directions on the market, both directions, a format built for the car.
• Limits: it's a navigation book first. Motel and restaurant mentions are brief, so it won't plan your nights or your budget for you.
• Price seen: $28.95 at the Federation's store and $38.95 at Butler Maps.

If you were searching for an EZ66 PDF or an EZ66 app: the Federation sells it as a printed, spiral-bound book, and I didn't find an official digital edition on its store. If you want navigation on a screen, look at the app further down.

Route 66 Adventure Handbook: best for sights, side trips and trivia

Drew Knowles's Route 66 Adventure Handbook is the book for the traveler who wants to know about everything along the shoulder. The Full-Throttle Sixth Edition, from Santa Monica Press, came out in summer 2023. Route 66 News reported it was the first update in six years.

It runs town by town across all eight states, Illinois to California. The sixth edition added more city maps showing the multiple paths the road took through each town, a 24-page color insert, GPS coordinates for virtually all of its photos, and QR codes that link to extra photos, video clips and scans of vintage memorabilia. At 404 pages it's a reading book: architecture, museums, neon, odd attractions and the stories behind them.

• Strengths: depth. If a giant statue or a forgotten bridge is near the road, it's probably in here.
• Limits: it's not a directions book, and the 2023 edition predates the closures of 2024 to 2026. Check anything you plan a day around.
• Price seen: $24.95 list from the publisher.

Moon Route 66 Road Trip: best mainstream guide for first-timers

Jessica Dunham's Moon Route 66 Road Trip is the most conventional travel guide here, and right now it's also the newest. The 5th edition went on sale on September 8, 2026, written with the centennial in mind. It runs 336 pages and comes in print and as an ebook.

Moon's publisher, Hachette, lists 38 maps, site-to-site mileage, driving times and detailed directions for the entire route, alongside the usual travel-guide lists of places to eat, sleep and stop. The itineraries include the whole road in two weeks and shorter trips around Chicago, St. Louis, Santa Fe, the Grand Canyon and Los Angeles. If you've never planned a road trip of this length and you want a single, familiar-looking book to start from, this is a sensible choice.

• Strengths: fresh 2026 printing, itineraries, an ebook option.
• Limits: 38 maps for 2,448 miles is a light map load. In towns where the road split over the decades, you'll want the EZ66 or the Here It Is! maps as backup.
• Price seen: $21.99 in print, $12.99 as an ebook.

Lonely Planet Route 66 Road Trips: is it still current?

Short answer: it's the oldest of the travel guides on this list. Lonely Planet Best Road Trips Route 66 is in its 3rd edition, published in November 2022, at 128 pages. The publisher's description says every business was rechecked before publication after the 2020 pandemic closures, and the ebook includes downloadable maps for offline use. I didn't find a newer edition as of October 2026.

It's compact and inexpensive, at about $13, and it's built around shorter trips you can link together, which suits someone driving a single section. But four years is a long time on Route 66, so verify the businesses it lists before you count on them.

Route 66 map books and map sets

Some travelers don't want a book at all. They want a map on the passenger seat. Two sets are worth knowing.

Here It Is! The Route 66 Map Series

Jerry McClanahan and Jim Ross have kept this set in print since 1994. It's eight fold-out road maps, one per state, drawn with a "treasure map" look and illustrated with original art, points of interest and short historical notes. The 5th edition added reverse driving directions for anyone heading west to east. Each map folds out to 21.5 by 17 inches. The Oklahoma Route 66 Association sells the set for $15, and the Federation lists it at $16.40.

If you're on a budget and you only need to stay on the road, this is the cheapest serious option. It doesn't try to pick your motels.

Butler Maps Route 66 Experience Series map

Butler's single-sheet Route 66 map is printed on waterproof, tear-resistant synthetic paper and highlights the stretches of the road its makers consider most meaningful, with inset ride boxes and points of interest. It starts at $21.95, and Butler also sells it in a bundle with the EZ66 Guide. It's a good overview for a motorcycle tank bag or a wall, but a single sheet can't carry the town-level detail the EZ66 or the eight-map set can.

Route 66 Navigation app: the phone option

If you'd rather hear "turn left" than read it, the Route 66 Navigation app is the dedicated option. It's made by Touch Media and offers voice turn-by-turn navigation designed to keep you on historic Route 66, with notifications for significant sites. It's free to download, but navigation is a paid feature: on the iPhone App Store I saw $19.99 for 7 days and $39.99 for a year. It has a full offline mode once you've downloaded the app data and maps, works with Apple CarPlay, and there's an Android version on Google Play.

• Strengths: real voice navigation that follows the old road rather than the interstate.
• Limits: reviews are mixed; the App Store rating was 2.8 out of 5 from 198 ratings when I checked. Download everything before the desert, and carry a paper backup.

Whatever you use, don't let a regular navigation app choose for you. It will send you up the interstate every time, a problem I explain in Route 66 vs I-40.

Best Route 66 history book: Route 66: The Mother Road

Michael Wallis first published Route 66: The Mother Road in 1990, and its publisher credits it with sparking a revival of the road's forgotten towns, diners and motels. St. Martin's Griffin released a 100th Anniversary Edition on August 25, 2026, with a new chapter for the centennial. It's a 288-page trade paperback at $29.

It isn't a guide and doesn't pretend to be. Read it before you go, so the ghost towns and empty motor courts mean something when you pass them. If you only buy one book about the road rather than for the road, buy this one.

The Field Manual: what it does, and what it doesn't

Here is my own book, with the disclosure repeated: I wrote it, and Europe Trip publishes it and this Journal.

The Field Manual is a planning book. It covers 2,448 miles across 8 states with 169 maps and 105 GPS waypoints, and for each state it lists 9 restaurants and 9 hotels on three budgets. The motels, diners and coordinates were checked on the road in April 2026, on the drive from Chicago to Santa Monica for this Centennial Edition. The rule was simple: if we couldn't verify it, we left it out. You get the printed book and the digital edition in one order for $47. The printed copy ships in 2 to 3 days, and there's a 14-day money-back guarantee.

What it isn't: a turn-by-turn guide. It won't tell you to turn left at the third light in every town, and I'd never claim it does. For that job, buy the EZ66 or the Here It Is! maps, or use the app. Where the Field Manual earns its place is the question every evening on this road comes down to: where do we sleep tonight, where do we eat, and is it still open? And because the coordinates are printed on the page, they're there when your phone shows no bars.

• Strengths: a 2026 on-the-road check, sleeping and eating choices on three budgets in every state, GPS coordinates you can use offline.
• Limits: not a directions book; it costs more than most guides on this list; it's from a small independent publisher rather than a big guidebook brand.

The pairing I'd suggest for a full end-to-end drive is simple: the EZ66 on the console for directions, and the Field Manual for the nights.

What to look for in a Route 66 guide in 2026

The edition date matters more than the brand

Route 66 changes every year, and in the centennial year it changed fast. A few examples from 2026 alone: in Albuquerque, the city red-tagged Lindy's Diner as unsafe on April 20, and an exterior wall collapsed a week later. Kap's Coffee Shop, a Central Avenue fixture since 1968, announced it would close on October 11. In Groom, Texas, The Grill, formerly the Golden Spread Grill, closed on September 13 because of the owner's health. No book printed in 2022 or 2023 can know any of that. Check the copyright page before you buy, and see my list of Route 66 diners still open for the closures I've tracked.

Maps versus directions

Directions are a sequence: turn here, follow this street, cross the tracks. Maps are a picture: they show where the 1926 road ran, where it moved in the 1930s, and where it now sits under an interstate. New Mexico is the clearest case, with two different alignments to choose from, which I walk through in Route 66 stops in New Mexico. For the big picture of which towns sit where, start with my Route 66 map with cities.

Offline use

In the western desert your phone can lose signal for long stretches. A printed book or map can't drop out, and an app only helps if you downloaded its maps before you left town. I cover fuel, water and signal gaps in the Route 66 road trip planner.

Physical versus digital

Paper wins in the car: spiral binding, no battery, easy to hand to a passenger. Digital wins at the kitchen table and on the motel bed, where you can search and zoom. That's why several guides now come both ways, and why I'd avoid choosing on format alone.

Which direction you're driving

Most material assumes Chicago to Santa Monica. The EZ66 and the 5th edition of the Here It Is! maps both include directions for driving west to east, which makes them the safer picks for an eastbound trip.

Which Route 66 guide should you buy?

• You're driving the whole road for the first time: the EZ66 for directions, plus either Moon or the Field Manual for planning. Pick Moon if you want itineraries and a big-publisher format; pick the Field Manual if your main worry is where to sleep and eat, and what's closed.
• You only want to stay on the road, cheaply: the Here It Is! map set.
• You live on your phone: the Route 66 Navigation app, with a paper map in the glovebox for the dead zones.
• You love the stories: Wallis for the history, Knowles for the roadside detail.
• You're driving one section on a long weekend: Moon or Lonely Planet are enough. My guide to how long Route 66 takes helps you pick the section.
• You're on two wheels: a spiral-bound guide or a waterproof map is easier to manage; my Route 66 motorcycle trip planner covers the rest.

Once you've chosen your books, settle the season and the number of days. My notes on the best time to drive Route 66 and the 14-day Route 66 itinerary are the next stops.

Route 66 books as a gift

A guide book is one of the easiest Route 66 gifts to get right, because it turns "someday" into a plan. The centennial year makes it better: Wallis's 100th Anniversary Edition, the 6th edition of the EZ66 and the Centennial Edition of the Field Manual all carry the anniversary. For a history lover, wrap Wallis. For the person who will actually drive it, pair a directions book with a planning book. I've put together more ideas, from state passports to a night in a historic motel, in my Route 66 gift ideas.

The short version

There's no single best Route 66 guide book, but there is a best book for each job. For staying on the road, the EZ66. For the stories, Wallis and Knowles. For a familiar travel guide, Moon's fresh 2026 edition. And for deciding where to spend each night, checked in 2026 and usable without a signal, the Field Manual. Whatever you buy, look at the edition date first.