The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel [Paperback]

Piven and Borgenicht's Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel is, like their previous bestseller The Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook, a pithy, witty and surprisingly useful guide to getting through life's stickier patches with body, soul and even dignity intact.

The difference here is that the authors have addressed the kind of glitches, pitfalls, disasters and conundra one might encounter when sojourning in distant or hostile lands. Hence there are sections offering advice on: How to Control a Runaway Camel; How to Survive in Frigid Water; How to Pass a Bribe; How to Deal with a Tarantula; and so on. Some of the problems and chapters might seem a little far-fetched and remote (How to Cross a Piranha-infested River); others all-too local and everyday to be confined to a travel book (How to Survive a Mugging). Each and every chapter is clearly written, accompanied by simple but effective illustrations, and derived from the accumulated wisdom of top survival experts in various armies, navies, academies and universities. There's also a very handy appendix dealing with general travel tips, such as which thumb-gestures to avoid when you don't want to insult the natives, and how to say, "Hello, I have been seriously wounded" in Japanese. This is a must-pack for all modern adventurers. --Sean Thomas

Just in time for summer travel, the hyperimaginative and slightly paranoid authors of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, 1999's favorite gift book, deliver what will no doubt become popular airport reading for stranded passengers in 2001. Starting with the cheery statistic that "more than 50 percent of all travelers run into problems," and the basic advisory to "always be ready for the worst," the book presents concise and extremely knowledgeable "how-to" assistance on a range of topics: e.g., stopping a runaway train, surviving a hostage situation, escaping from a car hanging over the edge of a cliff, surviving in a plummeting elevator, navigating a minefield, crossing a piranha-infested river, treating a severed limb, removing a leech and even foiling a UFO abduction. Like their earlier handbook, the success of each entry is based on the authors' ability to provide detailed and truly helpful advice on even the most outlandish or horrific situation and make the reader think, "Sure, I could successfully crash-land a small propeller plane on water, or easily climb out of a deep well, or locate and treat individual bleeding arteries on the stump of a severed arm. Nothing to it!" Their delivery evinces a calm precision that even the most worried traveler will find reassuring if faced with one or more of these eventualities, such as trying to escape when tied up ("When your captives start binding you, expand your body as much as possible") or encountering an extraterrestrial biological entity (EBE), unlikely as that might be: "Firmly tell the EBE to leave you alone... Go for the EBE's eyes (if they have any) you will not know what its other, more sensitive, areas are." Although some appendixes on strategies for packing, etc., seem boilerplate, overall this is another eminently practical, enjoyable survival guide. Watch out for those tsunamis! Illus. (May)Forecast: The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook was a runaway bestseller. This will be, too.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.