The Meateater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival

 

The Meateater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival is a general guide to wilderness and emergency survival skills presented by Steven Rinella. Due out 1st Dec 2020 from Random House, it's 512 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

For readers unfamiliar with the author, the title MeatEater refers to his online presence and brand.  This is a general guide for emergency and self-sufficiency wilderness skills and is an impressively comprehensive treatment of the subject. The book is arranged in logical sections starting with what to pack and wear, securing water and food, avoiding being something else's dinner, securing shelter and staying warm, navigating in the wilderness, and medical/safety. 

One of the most impressive parts of this guide is that besides being a comprehensive treatise on keeping body and soul physically moving and alive, the author also expends a great deal of effort talking about and illustrating the importance of psychological preparedness for survival - evaluating situations, minimizing (as much as possible) mistakes, and compensating for unforseeable situations which crop up. 

This is probably the best overall survival guide I've ever seen. This would make a sensible addition to the smallholder's library, self-sufficiency folks, off-grid, campers/hikers/wilderness and the like.  It would make an excellent gift for the outdoorsy folks as well. Very well written and accessible.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.