Book Review: Emergency by Neil Strauss

It only seems fitting that the book which had the largest influence on Sean and I to start this site should be our first up for review. Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life is a non-fiction story about how author Neil Strauss went on an epic journey of transformation. Neil started out with ZERO skills and admittedly couldn’t even change a flat tire. Over the course of the book he goes through every kind of survival skill training that you can imagine and some you couldn’t to become a real-life Jason Bourne. The stories are illuminating and hilarious and keep you turning the pages until the wee hours of the night. I personally read the entire book in 2 days!

Do not expect this to be a how-to manual for specific skills and techniques though. It’s a story about Neil and the past few years of his life but a nuts and bolts tale it is not. We’ll be reviewing some of those books in the near future though so stick around. What this book is really good at providing are the steps it takes to get seriously prepared for just about anything. What he did, who he went to and why will save you days and weeks of research, but don’t skimp on research of your own! Neil’s story is almost a point by point checklist to follow for people who are serious about preparedness. What really hooked me though was the telling of his thought processes which led him to make the decisions he made. The first part of the book touched on a lot of observations of the world and where he saw it heading. It just happened that there was a lot of overlap in mindsets of mine and others I know so it was a lot more enjoyable. It also helped that Sean and I both had started taking a lot of the training Neil mentions in the book long before so to me it really feels and reads as completely authentic. There are many things in the book that mere mortals would have a hard time affording but are still fun to know are possible.

I really don’t want to go into specifics of the stories in the book because I expect every one of you who haven’t already read it to get it immediately and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you. Sean and I did go out and take one of the classes that is discussed in the book on Urban Escape and Evasion and it was a life changing course that we’ll be talking about quite often I’m sure. There are also clues hidden through-out the book that lead to a survival cache that Neil left on one of his adventures that at last time I heard hasn’t been found yet. Good luck with that one

Neil offers a preview of the book which you should definitely check out then just go buy the damn thing.