rawles new book

RAWLES NEW BOOK
How To Survive The End Of The World As We Know It. Subtitled, Tactics, Techniques, and technologies for uncertain times. By your favorite James Wesley Rawles. Being a very special person, along with the other forty seven publishers of survival blogs that get more than three readers, I received an advance copy of this book in the hopes that I would review it and help spread the word on it. You, being one of the great unwashed, can wait until late September to buy a prettier, more polished copy from the publisher. If you buy it from Amazon, which would be preferable since you of course will get it through my web site and thus get me my 4% commission, and if you buy it with another book so your order equals $25 and thus qualifies you for free shipping, than the cost will only be around ten or twelve bucks. For three hundred pages that is a pretty good deal. But, is it worth buying at any price?
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I know, you know, and even Ross Perot knows ( of course he knows, I constantly update him about my life as we sit and drink beers in his mansion- which, because of his heightened security to thwart North Korean Ninja Death Squads, is not as comfortable as you would think ), that my preparations/survivalist outlook and that of Rawles are total opposites. We rarely agree on anything. In fact, I think I got a bit uppity there for awhile and rubbed him the wrong way. But, since unlike myself he is a real gentleman, he offered an olive branch and we seem to get along now. If in fact my existence has any impact on his life and I’m not blowing out of proportion my own importance ( in my defense, if you were me you would realize how easy that is to do ). But the quality of his book has nothing to do if I agree with him or not. I could pick apart a hundred things about this book I don’t agree with. Which I eventual will, I’m sure. But the question remains, not if I agree with Rawles, but how was his book. To be honest, it is pretty darn good. If you accept the Rawlesian Survival Universe then this book is great. Even if you don’t agree with a lot of his conclusions, this book still has a heck of a lot to offer you.
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HTSTEOTWAWKI covers a lot of ground. If you knew nothing about preparation for the collapse, this would be the book to consult. If you’ve been studying the field for awhile, this book is a nice update which is twenty years overdue. Even if you are in total disagreement with the basic philosophy underlying these plans, you can still learn a heck of a lot from this book. Let’s face it, no matter if you are a pacifist gardener self sufficiency type, a heavily armed fallout shelter dweller or an urbanite stocking up for a storm, a lot of prepping overlaps and is useful to everyone. There is plenty that is useful for everyone here. I’m a book fanatic. I’ll eat less savory food to be able to free up my budget for books. I mail order books nearly every week. And I get very excited when they arrive. However, I usually don’t get as excited when I’m reading them. As of late, I’ve had a hard time finding and really enjoying a good book. This book was one I couldn’t wait to keep reading, one I finished as quick as I could because I enjoyed it so much. That is as high of a compliment as I can give it. Near equally complimentary, this is a book I will be reading again and again.
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Is it the best? Of course not, mine are. Is it the best mass market survival book to come out in awhile? Most likely. Now, you do have to keep in mind that because so much ground is covered, very little gets covered in detail. Which is okay. That is what the Internet is for. This book lays out all you need in a concise form. A lot of what you weren’t thinking about is presented so that a complete course is available. If everything was given in more detail, you would quickly get lost and have no direction. And for the price, this is a very good bargain. A manageable, precise course to cover all that you need to study to be truly as self sufficient as possible. Don’t expect a lot detail on guns, either. The barebones are given, and the advice to consult the Boston Gun Bible ( damn good advice, no one does it better ). Each section of each chapter is only about two or three hundred words. As I said, this covers a lot of ground. I would have liked a lot more detail on certain things, but everybody’s list is different, and you can’t really publish a much larger book for mass market. The D&D crowd might shell out $30 for a nine hundred page hardback for part six of The Molester Magicians Majestic Misadventures, but I don’t think quite a niche market was envisioned for Rawles book.
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Is this book suitable for my readers, the trailer park redneck survivalist crowd? Yes. It covers everything, a lot of which you may not have been thinking about. It is much better to buy a laundry list book like this for $11 than try to read four years of Rawles’ blog, or the three years of mine to get this information free. Once you see a section you like, then search his site for more information. Then you can Wiki or Google even more. He covers Peak Oil in this book in about a hundred words. Go online if you need further details and you can spend the next decade reading full time about it. But you don’t have that kind of time. I do, since I love this doom and gloom stuff. It is my hobby as well as my second job. I eat up that kind of detail. You have actual lives to live, wives to beat and dogs to kiss. Rawles book does the heavy lifting for you.
Chapters are The Survival Mind, Priorities, the Retreat, Water, Food Storage, Fuel and Power, Gardens and Livestock, Medical, Communications, Security and Defense, Firearms, GOOD, Investing and Barter, Comes Down To You, and then three appendix and an index ( chapter names are listed here in abbreviated form, in the book they are longer and more detailed ).
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I manfully restrained myself from heaping criticism and scorn on any idea I didn’t agree with in this book. This isn’t about me, but about if you should invest your money and time in this book. I don’t think you will regret buying this book, and I think most of you will greatly enjoy it. Even if the above proves too optimistic, this book does present several years of Survival Blog in an easy to read form. I don’t see you going wrong getting this book. Not at its low price. Even if you don’t overly much enjoy reading, the Readers Digest length of most subject make this an easy to manage book. You can do a little at a time. Please note that it would please the author mightily if you all waited for his announced “Book Bomb” day to buy the book. You read his blog free every day, so it wouldn’t kill you to do him that solid. Will I be buying this book, even after getting a free copy? Yes, I too must pay my dues for the free info on his blog. If I don’t I’ll apply the funds to buying his retreat book, which I’ve lusted after for some time ( but the $30 price fills me with fear ). Even if you are a cheap bastard, look at this book purchase as insurance that the Survival Blog will continue to be published and you can suck up even more free information.
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