Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This review will be ongoing as this book is huge!!! Initial thoughts are listed now and I'll update as I go through reading it. Please note that I've included several of my personal likes and dislikes as well as information to better help you understand where I'm reviewing it from. My copy of this tome arrived today. I say tome because it's like the frickin yellow pages for a moderate to bigger city! The pages strangely aren't much thicker either lol. Before I start attempting to review this book allow me to lay down a few things for you dear reader. -I have read dozens of books on survival. -I've ran the internet ragged searching for new info and ideas. -I've been interested in survival long enough to remember some dearly departed experts who were truly experts and seen other self proclaimed experts build reputations by emulating them in key terms and speech. -I am not an expert, published author, etc and no matter how much or little I may go to my maker someday knowing I will NEVER consider myself an expert. I will ALWAYS be a learner!!! -I dislike black and white drawings of things so potentially deadly important as edible and medicinal plants especially in today's world. -I dislike survival manuals that have to repeatedly copy and paste from the US Army etc survival manual. -I dislike survival manuals that show techniques using store bought items in their how to and descriptions or illustrations. If you have access to those items you're likely not in a survival situation. -I dislike survival manuals that mix imperial and metric systems. Celcius here in the USA rather than Farenheit and centimeters yet use miles. Pick a damn system and stick with it and provide the conversion factors or better yet two charts where applicable!!! -I dislike manuals that list extremely regional things like fish poisons that only exist in tropical and jungle environments not in the majority of the world. -I dislike a lot of things. Lol -I like color drawings and better yet pictures of edible and medicinal as well as poisonous plants. -I like clear systems of measurement and sticking with that system. Imperial/Standard if you will because I'm an American. If we were in Europe then I'd say metric. -I like thoroughness and innovation in topics and information. -I like to read something and say oh I didn't know that or haven't seen that before! -I like to feel my money was well spent and the topics I read were thoroughly covered in depth and detail and a common person of common intelligence and education can understand it all. I think you can somewhat get a feel for me without my continuation. So I do like I normally do with a new book on survival. I go straight to the table of contents and read. This one seems promising. I then go to an area of interest that I know something about and I start reading. Ok this one covers that reasonably well or really well. I then go to an area where I may not know very much about and read. Hmm I learned something or well nothing groundbreaking here. I then go to the edible and medicinal plants section because if I go here first and don't like what I see I'm likely to put the book away and not read it. So I'm my initial evaluation of this book I'm going to initially call it a dang good primer on survival that a person can go to, read, learn something, and then further research it to gain knowledge and understanding. My feelings might change as I drag myself through reading this one and I'll update along the way. Why do I feel this way? Well let's see... Black and White drawings of plants.... This virtually kills a survival manual for me. Use of wire mesh in a turtle trap. They should've revamped it showing natural resources rather than a hardware store project. Repeatedly they copy and paste from the US Army survival manual. Not enough to say you should just read that but enough. While I understand citing your sources and not reinventing the wheel as well as quoting so as to not plagerize I prefer to see copy and paste kept to a minimum. No manual no matter how complete compares to hands on learning and skills. I do like that they have a section on water work with small craft etc. I like their explanation of bow making which I just browsed rather than read. I do like that they have a section in cold weather that contains input from cold weather campers etc. I'll read this book cover to cover. I find it increasingly difficult to read survival manuals and books anymore because the majority just remind me of reading someone else's work again for the umpteenth time. However if I learn something then it's time and money well spent. I just dislike the amount of time it takes to find that nugget or two sometimes!!! All in all it appears to cover a wide variety of topics and sub topics and I hope that it's as thorough as it's size would indicate. For now I'm giving it five stars and even though they do a lot of things I dislike I'm hoping I'll continue to feel good about this initial rating. I bought my own copy with my own money for full asking price off Amazon receiving no discounts compensation or sexual favors for my review. I review honestly and attempt to show the good bad ugly and indifferent to better help others make educated buying choices. My whole intent and goal is to help others being I already spent the money!!!! If you find my review helpful please let Amazon and others know by clicking yes. If your think it's a big steaming pile then please by all means let them know that too!!! There are too many junk reviews on Amazon that help no one and the last thing I want is for one of mine to be one!!! Thanks for reading and I hope this work in progress helps someone out!!!