I have had the fortunate opportunity to read Les Stroud's survival book titled "Survive! Essential Skills and Tactics To Get You Out of Anywhere - Alive" And I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Les Stroud covers a lot of important aspects to survival such as the mental challenges that you will face. He covers many things that you see in his popular television show "Survivorman." He continues throughout the entire book to remind you that it does not matter how skilled and strong you are, if you are defeated mentally, then you will not survive. He goes over many important skills such as:

• Shelter Building
• Water Procurement
• Food Hunting and Gathering
• Fire Building
• Navigation
• Signaling for help

And many other skills that are necessary to get out of anywhere alive.

This book is laid out in a very intuitive manner. It is broken down by each skill such as Water, Food Procurement, Fire Building, and Shelter Building. Each chapter is then broken down by climate type like desert, arctic, and tropics. This makes the book easy to read and understand as you do not have to pick out which methods will only work in the desert and which ones will work in the arctic.

Survive! Is well written and easy to understand. In many instances there are black and white photos included to help you understand some of the harder concepts. Another thing that I respected about this book is that Les Stroud allowed some of his friends that specialize in various fields to write excerpts to better explain some things. This helps to provide a little more legitimacy to what is written in this guide.

Another great feature in this book is that Les Stroud is always providing multiple ways to do things. He does not explain one method of fire starting, he explains many methods because some methods may not work in a given situation. Les Stroud took many precautions to make sure that this book fit everyone and not just hardcore survivalists. He even went as far as to include an often forgotten about subject in survival; one that many ordinary people would experience if put in that situation: the mental aspect. He explains how you might be feeling, how it is okay, and how to cope with it.

The book is very well laid out and I think a must for any survivalist library. Les Stroud also preaches one of the most important messages in survival, a message that people like Bear Grylls leaves out in his show because his show is meant for entertainment. Do not do things that you do not have to do. Do not run if you can walk, do not walk if you can stand, do not stand if you can sit, do not sit if you can lay down, and do not jump across a chasm when you can walk around it. Les Stroud reminds you of how grave an injury can be in a survival situation, and to not do running leaps across gorges, like you might see other television survivalists do (ahem).

This is a very well put together book and I am happy to have read it. Yes, the book covers many things you have seen or heard before, but that is because those are tried and true tactics. This book is fantastic and I highly suggest it!