Where’s Whitey Bulger? Don’t ask your travel guide...

As someone who seems to believe every word printed in guidebooks, I wondered: What do they say about Boston?

First off, they say a lot of nice things. Boston is a terrific city to visit, as we often fail to appreciate, primarily because you can walk around and see stuff. Here is some puffy palaver from the Lonely Planet: “The Cradle of Liberty. The Hub of the Universe. The Athens of America. These are big words for a mid-sized city. But Boston lives up to them. With its rich history, grand architecture and world-renowned academic and cultural institutions, the city retains and radiates the glory it has garnered over the last four centuries.’’

“Twenty-first century Boston is a hot destination,’’ Frommer’s reports. “The city has nearly shaken off the well-deserved reputation for stodginess that dogged it for most of its first 4 centuries of existence; the Boston area enjoys a reputation as a hotbed of innovation, its economy slowed but not crippled by the recession that started in 2008.’’

They love us. They really love us. Mostly.

In a brief moment of lily de-gilding, Frommer’s calls Boston “a famously parochial, insular city’’ with “an intractable reputation for racism.’’

The Frompeople likewise report that “Bostonians Walk Everywhere,’’ which is a bit of a stretch. The plutocrats on Beacon Hill and the cool kids in the South End walk a lot, it’s true. Given the choice, I’d rather take the subway or have lackeys ferry me to my destination in a palanquin.