The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival by Steven Rinella

The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival

by Steven Rinella

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An indispensable guide to surviving everything from an extended wilderness exploration to a day-long boat trip, with hard-earned advice from the host of the show MeatEater as seen on Netflix

For anyone planning to spend time outside, The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival is the perfect antidote to the sensationalism of the modern survival genre. Informed by the real-life experiences of renowned outdoorsman Steven Rinella, its pages are packed with tried-and-true tips, techniques, and gear recommendations. 
 
Among other skills, readers will learn about old-school navigation and essential satellite tools, how to build a basic first-aid kit and apply tourniquets, and how to effectively purify water using everything from ancient methods to cutting-edge technologies. This essential guide delivers hard-won insights and know-how garnered from Rinella’s own experiences and mistakes and from his trusted crew of expert hunters, anglers, emergency-room doctors, climbers, paddlers, and wilderness guides—with the goal of making any reader feel comfortable and competent while out in the wild.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

5 of 5 stars

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Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Meateater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival is a general guide to wilderness and emergency survival skills presented by Steven Rinella. Due out 1st Dec 2020 from Random House, it's 512 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

For readers unfamiliar with the author, the title MeatEater refers to his online presence and brand. This is a general guide for emergency and self-sufficiency wilderness skills and is an impressively comprehensive treatment of the subject. The book is arranged in logical sections starting with what to pack and wear, securing water and food, avoiding being something else's dinner, securing shelter and staying warm, navigating in the wilderness, and medical/safety.

One of the most impressive parts of this guide is that besides being a comprehensive treatise on keeping body and soul physically moving and alive, the author also expends a great deal of effort talking about and illustrating the importance of psychological preparedness for survival - evaluating situations, minimizing (as much as possible) mistakes, and compensating for unforseeable situations which crop up.

This is probably the best overall survival guide I've ever seen. This would make a sensible addition to the smallholder's library, self-sufficiency folks, off-grid, campers/hikers/wilderness and the like. It would make an excellent gift for the outdoorsy folks as well. Very well written and accessible.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 24 September, 2020: Finished reading
  • 24 September, 2020: Reviewed