Category: Book, Movie, and Web Reviews

Tomorrow, When the War Began (by John Marsden) ISBN 0-419-82910-0 This young adult (“YA’) novel of adventure, romance and survival is a modern classic. The setting is in rural Australia, with lush and descriptive backdrops. The vision Marsden paints of Australia is wondrous and pictorial. A group of unsupervised teens set off on a high adventure camping expedition, alone for a week in the wilderness. (Yes, my eyebrows rose on that one, too.) Upon returning from the holiday they find their homes empty, pets and livestock dying or dead and communications down. Most of the town has been captured and …

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why by Amanda Ripley Crown Publishers, New York, 2008. 266 pages including eight pages of color photos, source notes, bibliography, and a thorough index. ISBN 978-0-307-35289-7 Paperback edition is available at Amazon.com and other booksellers. This is not a psychobabble volume readable by a few academics. The author writes in plain English about a complicated subject that she makes easily understandable. She has interviewed hundreds of survivors, scholars, and scientists to obtain her information. The book is divided into three parts: Denial, Deliberation, and The Decisive Moment. Inside the three parts …

I had long been interested in buying Mr. Ballou’s book Long-Term Survival In The Coming Dark Age: Preparing to Live after Society Crumbles. He has several compelling titles out there about survival skills. I selected  this one because the cover caught my eye: a Foreword by Ragnar Benson. For those who don’t know this author, he has written many excellent books on the subject of Survival and Preparedness. He is considered one of the originals along with Mel Tappan, and Kurt Saxon who were among the main Survivalist writers  in the 1970s.  Benson also often disagrees with his contemporaries, making …

Author: Keith McCafferty Copyright Date: February 2012 Publisher: Viking ISBN: 978-0-670-02326-4 Audio, e-book or foreign translation avail? Yes–Kindle Suitable for children? No, and probably not for the ladies either. When I received my stack of fiction books to review for SurvivalBlog, the novel The Royal Wulff Murders caught my eye right away.  From the description of the murder victim and of Sean Stranahan’s studio I knew this book would have an element of humor worked into the mystery.  In fact, given the author’s day job (Survival Editor of Field & Stream) and the setting for the novel I seriously wondered …

Apache Tactics 1830-86 by Robert H. Watt. ISBN: 978-1849086301  Battles between Europeans and Native Americans in North America started with the first landfall and continued until the late 19th Century. Typically, the wars were limited in duration as the mass of European immigrants expanded into and pacified new areas.  Tribes decimated by war and disease had few alternatives.  In most parts of what is now the United States, peace followed settlement by not too many years. The deserts of the West were another story. Vast distances and non-arable land meant that for many years more people transited the land than …

James, I’d like to share a great resource with your readers: www.eReaderIQ.com. The site does two things: first, it tracks the price of ebooks on Amazon so if folks have a book list they want to purchase they can add that list and purchase them when they go on sale. The second advantage (and this is what I primarily use it for) is that it tracks all of the ebooks that have gone from a paid price to free. I check it every morning and normally pick up about fifteen books a week. Many of these I’ll get ten pages …