Outdoor Survival Skills

Rating:
Summary: good book
Review: All the chapters were difinitely helpful. The colorplate of plants in the back stated what you could use each plant for. However, when it mentioned if a plant was medicinal or not, it didn't give you any info on how they where medicinal or what they could do or how to use them. Overall a Very informative book about surviving in the wilderness.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Primitive Living Book
Review: An interesting book on how to live in the wilderness, but the book does not place enough emphasis on the survival mentality. For instance, the sections on fire and water, which echo information that can be found in any respectable survival manual, are very useful, while the sections on shelter and food contain methods which are too elaborate and time/energy consuming to be useful to anyone in an actual survival situation. The book also lacks any information on the main goal of survival: GETTING OUT ALIVE. A section on signaling and navigation would really improve the book's value as a survival text.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting material but not survival oriented
Review: An interesting book on how to live in the wilderness, but the book does not place enough emphasis on the survival mentality. For instance, the sections on fire and water, which echo information that can be found in any respectable survival manual, are very useful, while the sections on shelter and food contain methods which are too elaborate and time/energy consuming to be useful to anyone in an actual survival situation. The book also lacks any information on the main goal of survival: GETTING OUT ALIVE. A section on signaling and navigation would really improve the book's value as a survival text.

Rating:
Summary: Survival skills
Review: I have read many survival books including: Wilderness Survival; the October 1970 edition of the Army Feild Manual; Living off the Country;Tom Brown's Feild Guide to Wilderness Survival;and this one as well as many others. Aside from Tom Brown's feild guide, this book is definately one of the best I have read. I would rate Tom Brown's feild guide higher than this one, but the two together make a great pair. Both cover topics such as the four great needs: shelter, water, fire, and food, as well as weapons, edible plants and animals et cetera, but they both explain different techniques and different ways of doing the above mentioned topics. The back of this book has color photos of many plants that are edible.
I strongly reccommend buying both books, they are very similar yet you can learn more from both than you can from just one.
If you don't wan't both then I reccommend Tom Brown's Guide. Either way you go, try to use your library and the internet in conjunction with the books.

Rating:
Summary: Very nature oriented. Excellent book!
Review: I was impressed with the number of snares that were contained in this book. There were also very good sections on primative archery,hunting skills,and water aquisition. The pictures of plants in the back of the book are nice, but would have been better in color. Great book for getting back to the very basics and roughing it.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Primitive Living Book
Review: I was very impressed when I read this book. It has great sections on fire, water, shelter, etc. On the other hand, this is not a book for those people who are on the go unless they have mastered the art of survival to the point where they already know how to efficiently gather food and water. On the other hand, if someone does not have the intention of going anywhere and is just waiting to be found, I would be surprised if there was a better book on the market, as this lacks a section on navigation. Also, do not expect to go out in the woods and be able to do everything in this book on the first try, because no book can tell you how to do that. Experience must teach that.

Rating:
Summary: A very good survival book.
Review: If you are strapped naked in the wild and ten thousand miles away from civilization, Larry's book will show you how to survive with the tools that mother nature has given us. Good pictures and layout. A great piece of work. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: I can't believe......................
Review: On reading some of the foregoing reviews, I can't believe we're talking about the same book. I received my first copy of Outdoor Survival Skills in the late 60's and it was the first of the best. There have been many excellent survival/primitive living skill authors since - Tom Brown Jr., John McPherson, Richard Jamison, Kochanski, Mears, Graves, Janowski, more recently, Cody Lundin, and the list goes on. By the way, the reason it was my first copy, was because I lent it to someone, who I guess, appreciated it as much as I did, so I never saw it again.
Even though the first edition came out sometime in the late 60's
the information is just as thorough, valuable, and accurate as it was then. Anybody that does not find this book so, should stick to outdoor writer's like Cliff Jacobson, who it appears, believes the only reason to carry a knife in the outdoors is to spread peanut butter.
Well done, Mr. Olsen, I thank you.

Rating:
Summary: good book
Review: Personally, I thought the book was rather good. Some of the ideas this book provides are so simple and effective that you are amazed that you never thought of it before. The person who wrote it clearly has much experience in living in the woods with nothing, though. I didn't find many of the explanations to complete or clear enough. In addition, I live in Connecticut. The author really focuses on surviving in the desert and similar areas. This would make sense, as he was born in the Southwest, but for people like myself, this applies very little to the completely different woodland terrain.

Rating:
Summary: Good Information but out of my range
Review: Personally, I thought the book was rather good. Some of the ideas this book provides are so simple and effective that you are amazed that you never thought of it before. The person who wrote it clearly has much experience in living in the woods with nothing, though. I didn't find many of the explanations to complete or clear enough. In addition, I live in Connecticut. The author really focuses on surviving in the desert and similar areas. This would make sense, as he was born in the Southwest, but for people like myself, this applies very little to the completely different woodland terrain.