Official Book Thread!

[TheWind777]

Here is a listing of books. Most have been talked about in this forum... but I am doing the list based on what's available out there in PDF format (although very difficult to find sometimes).

It synopsizes the best of the Wilderness Survival books, also.




50 Outdoor Skills Everyone Needs to Know (Videos)
AF Regulation 64-4 United States Air Force Search and Rescue Survival Training (Reprint)
Bushcraft - Outdoor Living, the 10 Bushcraft Books - Richard Harry Graves (1972)
Camping and Woodcraft - A Handbook for the Wilderness - Kephart (1917)
Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival by Jack A. Spigarelli
Deep Survival - Who Lives, Who Dies and Why Laurence Gonzales W.W. Norton & Company 2003
FM 21-76 Survival Field Manual - U.S. Army
Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, Second Edition - James A. Duke
Holy Bible - King James Version
How to Stay Alive in the Woods - Bradford Angier
How to Stay Alive in the Woods - Bradford Angier
Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places - 'Wildman' Steve Brill
Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook - James Talmage Stevens
Mountaineering - The Freedom of the Hills - The Mountaineers
Northern Bushcraft - Mors L. Kochansk
Outdoors Survival Handbook - Ray Mears
Prescription for Natural Cures - James Balch & Mark Stengler 4 MB or 35 GB
Prescription for Natural Cures: A Self-Care Guide for Treating Health Problems with
Prescription for Nutritional Healing - Phyllis Balch
SAS Survival Guide - Collins Gem Edition - John Wiseman
SAS Survival Handbook: For Any Climate, in Any Situation
Survival, Evasion, and Recovery - Multiservice Procedures For Survival, Evasion, And Recovery - 1999, Air Land Sea Application Center http://www.equipped.com/multiservice...anual_1999.pdf
Survive! - Les Stroud
Survive! – Les Stroud
Tappan on Survival - Mel Tappan
The American Boy's Handybook Of Camp Lore And Woodcraft - Dan Beard
The Dangerous Book for Boys - Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden (Audio Only)
The Encyclopedia of Country Living - Carla Emery (Far and away the most often-mentioned book. This book is an absolute "must" for every well-prepared family!)
The Forager's Harvest - A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants
The Foxfire Book Series - 1 - 6
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 - William Clark and Meriwether Lewis
The Survival Handbook - This Book Could Save Your Life - Essential Skills for Outdoor Adventure
Tom Brown Jr - The Search (with William Owen)
Tom Brown Jr - The Tracker (as told to William Jon Watkins)
Tom Brown Jr - The Vision (1988)
Tom Brown Jr - Tom Brown, Jr. - The Science and Art of Tracking - Nature's
Ultimate Guide to Wilderness Living Surviving With Nothing But Your Bare Hands and What You Find in the Woods - John and Geri McPherson
When All Hell Breaks Loose - Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes - Cody Lundin
When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikesby Cody Lundin
Wilderness Survival for Dummies
Woodcraft - George Nessmuk Sears

[TheWind777]

There are many scanned books, all copyright-free because they are from the end of the 1800s and early 1900s that can be very helpful (and fun) to read.

http://www.archive.org/

is one of the best place to download them, because they organize it well. Click on the 'HTML' link and it will show all formats available (PDF, TXT, etc.)

Search for keywords like 'Wilderness', 'Outdoor', Boy's Book, Woodcraft, etc.

There are hundreds of books that are all free.

Another website which is good for finding free PDF files on everything imaginable, go to

http://www.bergfiles.com/

The way I remember this site is... Iceberg, (Like you're only finding the tip of the iceberg when you're searching for Survival Books).

Here is a synopsis of some of the best sites for downloading books:

http://ebookbrowse.com/
http://www.bergfiles.com/
http://www.archive.org/ (Google Books and Old 1800's and 1900's Scans)
http://isohunt.com/ (find by hash number)
http://pdfdatabase.com/
http://www.pdfsearchs.in/
http://avaxsearch.com/
http://www.pdfgeni.com/
http://findpdf.net/
http://www.pdfgeni.org
http://www.torcatch.com/
http://www.limetorrents.com/
http://ebookee.org
http://rapidlibrary.com/
http://www.rapid4search.com/
http://www.rapidog.com/

[Mischief]

I have a very nice outdoor library that I started over 50 years ago,however,I just can't wrap my reading around any of the Tom Brown Jr stuff. Tried, just not my cup of Tea.

[TheWind777]

Yeah, that listing isn't necessarily the best of the best of Wilderness Survival. It is a listing of the books which are out there which are quite easy to find in PDF format.

Unfortunately, because much of the material out there is either from those who believe the world is ending in a nuclear holocaust, or those who think we're about to have a polar reversal, or those who think the worlds is going to end in 2012, or those who wish to overthrow the U.S. Government and think a Coup d'etat is imminent, or it's people thinking that Jesus is returning this week (sorry if I just stepped on the toes of some of the people on this forum; I have read very few of the posts and - who knows - maybe there are some on here that believe some of those things)... therefore, any listing of PDF files that are available all tend to be rather reactionary, revolutionary, non-realistic, apocalyptic or fatalistic.

I probably am not going to need to know how much exposure to plutonium I can stand on a bike trip.

However, I look at it this way, when you're out in the wilderness... you need the information no matter who put that information together.

Just as with a white picket fence, when you pass it and look at the picket fence, you see a picket fence. If you look past the fence you can see the background quite easily.

Bandaids I'll need. Sutures I might need. Civil defense brochures won't probably help me when just as I've broken my leg a growling grizzly strolls into camp. Morse code charts and plans on how to make a still out of old Clorox bottles won't help much.

... As for Tom, he's more lucid than most. At least his stuff doesn't read like H. G. Well's War of the Worlds and there are no diagrams of aluminum foil hats.

It's funny, but the best tends to still be the U.S. Army 21-76 Field Manual. If you get the version which is split into chapters instead of being all one PDF manual it helps to read it if you're reading it on a computer as PDFs.

[TheWind777]

Second is probably the SAS Manual.

[whitis]

Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea
http://www.amazon.com/Adrift-Seventy.../dp/0618257322
A best seller by a man who set the record for survival in an inflatable life raft when his boat sank on a solo voyage. Not easy when sharks are eating barnacles off your butt, bite off the inflation canister rupturing the raft, and the patch kit says "make sure both surfaces are clean and dry." Life rafts are only designed for a few days use. He, fortunately, bought a six-man life raft after trying them out at the store and finding them ridiculously undersized. Big commercial ships didn't monitor the maritime distress beacons (this was before satellite beacons) and weren't watching where they were going so they were more likely to run you down than rescue you - even if you shot off a flare. nine ships passed him by. By improvising a solar still and rainwater collection, he was able to get a pint of water per day. He caught some fish and preserved some. A small ecosystem evolved around him.

When another party spent 119 days on the wreckage of their trimaran , he coauthored their story:
Capsized/the True Story of Four Men Adrift for 119 Days
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006...cm_cr_asin_lnk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Callahan

[el-amigo]

I just finished the Living Wild (Bear Grylls) and bought the SAS Survival Handbook (John Wiseman). John's book is more detailed, he explains a lot of things.

[sh4d0wm4573ri7]

Here is the mother load enjoy :http://www.survivalebooks.com/usmilitarymanuals.html

[Rick]

Is it just me or is a military manual titled Post Attack & Post Disaster Plan sound a bit defeatist? Yeah, probably just me.

[Sparky93]

Here is the mother load enjoy :http://www.survivalebooks.com/usmilitarymanuals.html

Awesome link!

[TresMon]

"Faith Hunt" By Gary Keesee. Now I have read ALOT of survival books, But I termed this one- "The best ever." I did a write up about it on my webby.

[gitaway]

Cache Lake Country, Wilderness Edition, John J. Rowlands. Lots of things to make incuding snowshoes, radio... My favorite Winter Read. G

[Sarge47]

My wife ordered 3 books from Amazon that recently arrived and they contain a wealth of info that would apply here:

Wildwood Wisdom; by Ellsworth Jaeger. Almost 500 pages, 1st published in 1945; shows how to live off the land, put up a tipi, make buckskin clothes portage a canoe, pack a mule, build a bed in the woods, and many other helpfull stuff! Nicely illustrated!

Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties: The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters: by D.C. Beard;1st published in 1914; a great resource for primitive shelters!
Making Plant Medicine: by Richo Cech. A modern book on making medicine from plants.

[lovesfreedom]

Going through my bags getting ready for annual operational training, I found my copy of "The SEAL Handbook." They gave them to us at my last command, but there may be an updated version, mine's the NSWHNBK 1-01 from December 2010. I did a cursory search on google using the handbook number and nothing came up, although the handbook is UNCL and is probably out there somewhere. The chapters are:
1: Intro (history, org charts, mission statements, etc);
2: Operations (more specific info on principles of war, taskords, mission planning basics, planning, troop leading procedures, METT-TC, OODA);
3: Leadership (Principals, elements, core values, laws of war, ROE, risk, code of conduct);
4: Intelligence (Overview, intel process/cycle, NSW targeting cycle (I teach this! ), intel support and reporting);
5: Communications (Overviews, lessons on comm gear, procedures, the science, etc);
6: Land Warfare (Gear, gear line levels, camo/conc, movement patterns, hand and arm signals, patrol orgs, perimeters, etc, etc, HLZs);
7: Weapons Systems and Accessories (all the usual info you'd need to know to be a good shot and safe with weapons, care and maint, etc);
8: Demolition (how to breach and/or destroy with various materials);
9: Maritime Ops (OTB, nav, types of maritime missions);
10: Mobility (types of air, maritime and ground mobility);
11: Fire Support (IDF support, planning, tasks, capabilities and risk assessments, CAS, call for fire, CAS report);
12: Tactical Combat Casualty Care and First Aid (self explanitory, all kinds of wounds from all kinds of things, CASEVAC/MEDEVAC format);
13: Land Nav (maps, grids, scale, distance, direction, map care, navigation techniques, map reading, altimeter nav, night nav, environment and terrain);
14: Evasion and Survival (normal uncl SERE/wilderness things);
15: Chem, Bio, Rad, Nuc Defense (use of equipment, operations in CBRN environment, ops in desert, jungle, mountain, urban (MOUT), cold-weather, maritime and riverine, and decon procedures).
References are a bunch of NTTP 3-05 segments, NTTP 3-11, NTTP 3-06.10, NSW command instructions, and USSOCOM manuals and publications.
If someone's interested in a particular section, I'd be happy to take pictures of those pages and send them to you. I don't have access to a scanner right now :\

[lovesfreedom]

By the way, looking at the books that are out there for sale, none of those covers are the same as the book I have, which is the first in the line of these handbooks. Anything published before December 2010 isn't what you're looking for, although some of the 'related books' are referenced by the manual I have. The cover should be od green with a big gold budweiser front and center and the title above is "The SEAL Handbook" with those quotation marks, in black. Under the SEAL pin, the subtitle is "The Only Easy Day was Yesterday" with the quotation marks, in black lettering. The upper righthand corner has the pub number (at the top of my last post) and in very small caps is Naval Special Warfare Center with December 2010 underneath.

[Winnie]

I came across these a little while ago.

http://www.pioneerhandbooks.com/

[Darkevs]

I did not read through the whole thread, so I hope I do not post books already recommended.

I did see that someone had recommended the Readers Digest book..Back to Basics! It is a GOOD one for sure, it is one I have.

here are a few others....

The Homesteader's Handbook by Martin Lawrence.

Country Women, a handbook for the new farmer by Jeanne Tetrault and Sherry Thomas

Cloudburst a handbook of rural skills and technology ISBN# o-88930-008-9

Country Comforts, designs for the homestead by Christian Bruyere and robert Inwood

The New Way of the Wilderness by Calvin Rutstrum

Bush Craft, Outdoor skills and Wilderness Survival by Mors Kochanski

[zombiemomma175]

Just finished an outstanding book. would love to have the set-up these people had when TSHTF. I felt like I was a part of this book.
I'm not a big reader but I have to admit, this book keep me reading from cover to cover.
I'm waiting for book two in this series now.

Blue Plague:The Fall by Thomas A Watson
I got the kindle edition for $3.95 on amazon, and seriously thinking about ordering the paperback when I get some extra money.

[Faiaoga]

i have the army survival manual if anyone but FVR wants it :} hit me up. PDF format

This book is not the usual "bushcraft" survival book, but it seems to be very good concerning the psychology of survival and mental preparation. As I read it, it seems a bit like pop psychology or a best-seller book, but the author has done good research. He has survivors of catastrophes, SERE trainers and other professionals.

The Survivors Club (2009) by Ben Sherwood. 380 pages, paperback.

[BENESSE]

This book is not the usual "bushcraft" survival book, but it seems to be very good concerning the psychology of survival and mental preparation. As I read it, it seems a bit like pop psychology or a best-seller book, but the author has done good research. He has survivors of catastrophes, SERE trainers and other professionals.

The Survivors Club (2009) by Ben Sherwood. 380 pages, paperback.

This is one of the most important books you might ever read, it's that good. I brought it up in another book thread and can't find it now but it's good to be reminded of it again.
It'll really make you think.

http://www.amazon.com/Survivors-Club...y+ben+sherwood