Review by John Boch
Rawles gets you ready bills itself as a comprehensive course to help you weather a long-term disaster or breakdown of society.
A copy was made available to me to review and I was surprised when presented with a large binder with about 230 pages of 8×11 copy paper, printed on a single side, plus a CD that contained an interview of sorts with Mr. Rawles. Considering the list price on this was $149 + $12 shipping, I was shocked.
It’s not short on wasted space and paper. With some formatting and the use of 10pt. font instead of about 16pt, this tome could easily fit on 50 pages front and back.
Now, I’m a big fan of James Wesley Rawles. I’ve been a follower and consider him an acquaintance. Heck, I’ve even swapped Christmas cards with him in the past.
I dislike castigating people I like and respect, so I’m going to direct a majority of my criticism at the author Jake Stafford.
This book was an abysmal disappointment.
Sure, there was some good information for beginners and experienced preparedness-minded folks alike, but almost half of it was how to shop at Cosco or Sam’s. Another quarter of it was appendecies on storage life of foods, charts and the last quarter consisted of lists.
Everything in this book can be found on the Internet for free at websites such as Frugal Squirrels, The Survival Podcast Forums, SurvivalTopics.com and Rawles’ own Survivalblog.com to name a few.
If I had paid $149 plus shipping for this, I’d have called and secured a return merchandise authorization number and mailed it back.
Frankly, this book has little more value to me than the paper and binder it arrived in.
Stay away from this one, folks.
My message to Mr. Rawles if you’re reading: make sure the final product on anything you license with your name in the future is better than this one.