Book 28: The Complete Outdoorsman's Handbook

The Complete Outdoorsman's Handbook: A Guide to Outdoor Living and Wilderness Survival

Jerome Knap
Pagurian 1976


I've read a lot of books like this one. The SAS Survival Handbook, the NOLS Wilderness Guide, Ronald Eng's Mountaineering, and maybe half a dozen other titles over the years.

Never in my life have I come across a more condescending book.

As annoying as it is to be around holier-than-thou/ more-punk-than-thou/ more-well-read-than-thou types, you can usually just make fun of them in your mind and dismiss them as the children they are. When you're reading something they've written and are trying to glean real, meaningful information from them, you can't. You have to pay attention. And it's a nightmare.

On top of the author's dickish sensibilities and down-the-nose glance towards newcomers to the great outdoors, this is by no means a complete handbook. The topics covered are either just barely touched upon, or gone into with a maddening level of detail. The detailed chapters are almost completely meaningless, and the generalized ones are the chapters which would be of benefit to the most people.

For instance, the author spends an inordinate amount of time on the different designs and materials of snowshoes, but barely touches on water preparation or expedient shelters. For a book that claims to be about "outdoor living" and "wilderness survival," much is left to be desired.

I didn't learn much from this book, which was maddeningly disappointing. I felt like I was enduring Knap. I get that this book is 35 years old, and I've had all of my life to independently research the things I wanted to learn on my own.

I would not recommend this book to anyone, ever. It would be like recommending Deuteronomy as a guide to field first aid. Got leprosy? Sprinkle some dove blood on it.

This volume was clearly written for people living north of Montana. All of the literature dedicated to dry or warm climates can be summed up on one page, and that information is pretty much useless. One of the more startling omissions in the book is on a chapter about poisonous spiders. The Brown Recluse spider is not mentioned at all as a poisonous spider of North America.

The author continues on to explain the importance of snares for catching small game, but goes into absolutely ZERO explanation for snaring:
"Birds can be caught in the Ojibway bird snare."

What the fuck is an Ojibway bird snare? I don't know. And my guess is that you don't either. Thank Google that the internet exists and I can figure it out, because Knap makes absolutely no effort to explain it to his readers. I guess taking the time to explain things would make him look like less of a hipster.

"I'd use an Ojibway bird snare. It's effective, but you've probably never heard of it."

Pictured: The Author

Overall, I'm annoyed with this book. So far, it's only the second book I've read during this adventure that will go on the crappy books list. Right next to The Art of War.


A sentences which appeals to my juvenile sense of humor:

"Many injuries have been caused by backward-flying butts."

A sentence which appeals to the author's lack of ability as a writer:
"The most important maneuver in snowmobiling is turning."


To be fair, there were a few entertaining moments in the book, but I would not go so far as to say that they justify the experience of being talked down to for 200 pages.

Zero masturbating monkeys.

Book 15: The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch with Jeffery Zaslow

Hyperion 2008

I was totally disappointed in this book.
It was given to me by my boss's boss as an office Christmas present 2 or 3 years ago.  I thought then that it would be a good read.
Boy. Was I wrong.

I'm not trying to knock on the guy. His lecture became famous because it was kind of moving, but moreso because the dude giving it knew he was dying. That's, in my opinion, the only reason this book got as far as it did.

One might think that it took a tremendous amount of courage to do what Pausch did, and it might have. But if you watch the lecture and read the book I think you'll see that this is how Pausch would've just rolled. He seems to be a pretty really cocky dude. I might be reading him all wrong, but I don't think so.

Humility is not one of the traits one thinks of when describing a professional academic.

The book seems to be an afterthought. If this guy wasn't about to die when he wrote this, people would have said, "Well, he's just trying to capitalize on the success of his speech."  Well, the speech wouldn't have been that successful if he wasn't about to die when he made it.

So, lets forget about the whole dying thing and judge this book on its own.

It's not that great. Even if you do consider the man's mortality at the time he was writing this.... meh. It's not particularly interesting, and a lot of the "morals" of the little chapters are quite a bit of a stretch.

"Blah blah blah, I found an empty plastic bottle, blah blah blah, then I realized that being nice is a good thing."

I was wholly unimpressed.
Again, if the dude hadn't been dying, this wouldn't have even made it to press. This book was an exercise in situation exploitation.

Book 9: The Art of War

The Art of War

Sun Tzu

Meh.  

 I don’t see what the big fuss is about.   

Is it because it’s old? Is it because his contemporaries just meandered about hacking and slashing with no plan or clear course? Is it because it’s a written work from a time when little works of this nature survived?

At least Beowulf had Grendel. 

To be fair to my dear readers, it should be noted that this is more of a pamphlet than a book. It includes wisdom nuggets like:

 "Mountain forests, rugged steeps, marshes and fens-- all country that is hard to traverse: this is difficult ground."

Ahh... the wisdom of the ages.

Who could forget this gem: "Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive."

O! What revelation!

There are a few pieces of bumper-sticker philosophy that, while obvious when you think about it, are interesting anyway. For instance:

"To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."

If you take this out of  the military context, you can see how people might take some kind of life inspiration from it-- My ability to succeed lies in my own hands...

But that doesn't really mean anything.  I'm sure that if you tried hard enough, you could find this kind of pseudo-intellectual claptrap in the Twilight series or the The Raleigh Soliloquies.

Or on the trapper keeper of any 8th grader.

My advice: don't waste your time on The Art of War. 

Sorry, pudgy high school kid in fatigues with a collection of "ninja stars." It's overrated crap.