Rating: 
Summary: Okay, but not Pelton's best
Review: As a huge fan of Robert Young Pelton's World's Most Dangerous Places, I was really looking forward to reading this book. But while it was entertaining enough, I didn't feel that it was up to DP's usual standards...so I found myself being mildly disappointed.I guess that when it comes down to it, I felt that the book was not meaty enough for a Pelton offering. The chapters were fairly short and I don't really feel that enough specifics were given about any given survival situation for the book to be truly useful in the field. Often, I felt like I was being given the "executive summary" rather than the specific details I would need to stay alive under trying circumstances. Because I'm a DP fan, I know that Pelton can do better than this. This book won't stop me from reading other Pelton offerings, but I'm hoping that, like DP itself, it will evolve year by year and edition by edition into a truly excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, but not Pelton's best
Review: As a huge fan of Robert Young Pelton's World's Most Dangerous Places, I was really looking forward to reading this book. But while it was entertaining enough, I didn't feel that it was up to DP's usual standards...so I found myself being mildly disappointed. I guess that when it comes down to it, I felt that the book was not meaty enough for a Pelton offering. The chapters were fairly short and I don't really feel that enough specifics were given about any given survival situation for the book to be truly useful in the field. Often, I felt like I was being given the "executive summary" rather than the specific details I would need to stay alive under trying circumstances. Because I'm a DP fan, I know that Pelton can do better than this. This book won't stop me from reading other Pelton offerings, but I'm hoping that, like DP itself, it will evolve year by year and edition by edition into a truly excellent book.
Rating: 
Summary: An exploitive capitalization on people's fears.
Review: Capitalizing on America's "culture of fear", this book is about as realistic as a Stephen King novel. It's not much more useful either. The only purpose I can imagine for this book is a reaffirmation for *not traveling* for someone who wasn't going to travel anyway. Also a great book for anyone who loves exploitative and nonsensical television shows like "How to Survive" and "When Animals Attack". Oh well, fools like that keep the rest of the world relatively uncrowded for those of us who actually do enjoy traveling.
Rating: 
Summary: This Book Changed My Life, Thank You, Mr. Pelton
Review: Clarity, true perspective, sanity; all are gained from perusing this "handbook". The most gratified reader of this book would be a non-adventuresome, meek and mild great-grandmother; she's been right all these years, one should be wearing their seat belt and thinking twice about driving after dark. And now, empowered by her righteousness and the sensibility of true facts in "Come Back Alive", she will finally take that solo trip to Africa she's dreamed about her whole life.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of Time
Review: Don't waste your money on this book. This book tries very hard to be amusing without succeeding, nor does it really tell you anything of any use. This is the first review I have written, but this book is so bad that I felt that I had to write one.
Rating: 
Summary: Very real and informative
Review: Have to agree with one of the other reviewers that questioned the accuracy of the advice contained within. As a self defense instructor, former body guard and Foreign Legionnaire I was particularly interested in the chapters on self defense and kidnapping. Mr Pelton wheels out the old "you can kill someone by driving their nose through their brain." which is about as true to life as is "registering your hands with the police if you're a black belt." Ask any doctor, ramming the cartilage through the brain is a medical impossibility. The absolute best you could hope for is causing a sliver of the nose bone (where the cartilage joins) to penetrate the cribiform plate which would permit mucus to get into the brain fluid. Without medical attention the victim might eventually die of bacterial infection. Chances of pulling this off would be about 1 in a 100,000. He then claims this is the only way to kill someone with your barehands from the front. Please!! If you punch someone in the throat there's a very good chance you'll cause the trachea to collapse and they'll assume room temperature fairly rapidly. Same thing if you hit the xyphoid process hard enough. Next time Mr Pelton ventures outside of his specialty I suggest he call in the experts.
Rating: 
Summary: OK 2.5 but just
Review: Have to agree with one of the other reviewers that questioned the accuracy of the advice contained within. As a self defense instructor, former body guard and Foreign Legionnaire I was particularly interested in the chapters on self defense and kidnapping. Mr Pelton wheels out the old "you can kill someone by driving their nose through their brain." which is about as true to life as is "registering your hands with the police if you're a black belt." Ask any doctor, ramming the cartilage through the brain is a medical impossibility. The absolute best you could hope for is causing a sliver of the nose bone (where the cartilage joins) to penetrate the cribiform plate which would permit mucus to get into the brain fluid. Without medical attention the victim might eventually die of bacterial infection. Chances of pulling this off would be about 1 in a 100,000. He then claims this is the only way to kill someone with your barehands from the front. Please!! If you punch someone in the throat there's a very good chance you'll cause the trachea to collapse and they'll assume room temperature fairly rapidly. Same thing if you hit the xyphoid process hard enough. Next time Mr Pelton ventures outside of his specialty I suggest he call in the experts.
Rating:
Summary: Very real and informative
Review: I really disagree with most of the reviews here. I found this book fascinating and potentially useful. I live in the U.S., but if I were to travel anywhere outside the "First World", I would read this book 4-5 times. I can't really say about the rest of the chapters (not enough personal experience), but the chapter on self-defense is dead on. Most books will tell you that you can defened yourself well, but the reality is, as Pelton says, you are up against guys who: a. make a living 'jacking people', and b. are pre-prepared for the assault, whereas you are on your cell phone or counting your travelers checks. Very true. The cards are so stacked against you most of the time. This book is just trying to tell the truth about that, from Pelton's experience, and trying to give you some 'cards' so that you are not so outgunned. For example, his advice about "using a sense of humor" in the Third World to get out of jams is very useful, and could save lives. Just smiling at someone or making a hand gesture could save you. I have seen it in action myself, and have used it. Like I say, against someone bent on jacking you, your chances are slim, but in most other situations, humor could work. Like I said, if I had one book to take on a "Third World Tour", this would be it.
Rating:
Summary: Very real and informative
Review: I really disagree with most of the reviews here. I found this book fascinating and potentially useful. I live in the U.S., but if I were to travel anywhere outside the "First World", I would read this book 4-5 times. I can't really say about the rest of the chapters (not enough personal experience), but the chapter on self-defense is dead on. Most books will tell you that you can defened yourself well, but the reality is, as Pelton says, you are up against guys who: a. make a living 'jacking people', and b. are pre-prepared for the assault, whereas you are on your cell phone or counting your travelers checks. Very true. The cards are so stacked against you most of the time. This book is just trying to tell the truth about that, from Pelton's experience, and trying to give you some 'cards' so that you are not so outgunned. For example, his advice about "using a sense of humor" in the Third World to get out of jams is very useful, and could save lives. Just smiling at someone or making a hand gesture could save you. I have seen it in action myself, and have used it. Like I say, against someone bent on jacking you, your chances are slim, but in most other situations, humor could work. Like I said, if I had one book to take on a "Third World Tour", this would be it.
Rating:
Summary: Worse than worthless
Review: I would hope that a book with this title would at least have its facts straight, but with even my limited knowledge, I found errors in almost every chapter. Where were the editors and fact-checkers?? Some of the errors are just silly: "water weighs about sixty pounds a square foot" (!). Some of them are confusing: one tablet of Potable-Aqua "should disinfect about 16 liters of murky water" (the label calls for 2 tablets per quart!). It's not correct that 7.5-minute topos always have 20-foot contour lines (in fact, it varies, depending on local terrain). The advice on overheating is potentially life-threatening, since it doesn't give the simple and clear diagnostics that you'll find in any first-aid manual between heat prostration (pale and clammy... rest and drink fluids) and heatstroke (red and hot... call an ambulance, rather than fanning yourself, as the author recommends!). Get a copy of the Boy Scout Handbook instead of this book.
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