Books like Deep Survival

Few books have reminded me more powerfully that our circumstances and our inner life are not the same thing.

I first read Man's Search for Meaning years ago, and its impact has only deepened over time. Frankl's willingness to look directly at suffering without becoming defined by it challenged many of the assumptions I carried about happiness, success, and what it takes to live a meaningful life.

I return to this book because it continually reminds me that meaning is not something life hands us once everything finally goes our way. It is something we discover in how we meet what life places before us.

During difficult seasons of my own life, Frankl's perspective helped me remember that even when we cannot control our circumstances, we still have a relationship with how we respond to them. Few books have given me more courage, perspective, and hope.

Known as the father of the new science of Positive Psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman shows how optimism enhances quality of life. He refutes the idea that some people are simply born more optimistic and shares how anyone can adopt a more positive outlook on life. This book is filled with simple techniques to break depression, boost your immune system and make you happier.

Learned Optimism offers simple, straightforward solutions to help anyone embrace a healthier mindset as they face and embrace challenging times. Applying the content of this book, anyone can learn to view life through a different lens, changing their perspective and navigating life’s difficulties more effectively.

Survival books these days tend to be more flash and gimmicks than qualify information, just selling an author’s image rather than providing practical, valuable tools that can be immediately put to use by any inquisitive and motivated reader. Brown not only eschews such silliness, but he also provides the information in a tone and with an attitude sadly unusual in the genre and at large, inspiring curiosity, awe, and respect for the world around us rather than a clumsy attempt to dominate it.

Violence of Mind is the only book I can remember immediately reading a second time upon finishing it. While the title is somewhat misleading and will likely dissuade too many people from picking it up, the content is straightforward, intelligent, and far more insightful than any other book in the genre I’m familiar with. Freeborn delivers succinct but critical lessons in self-defense from a philosophical perspective—this isn’t tough guy fantasies squeezed into ill-advised recommendations, but a quest to help us understand how to successfully navigate dire situations in ways that align with our values. 

This book takes readers into the swamps of Florida where wild things eat people. I’m a huge fan of Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, and John D. McDonald, all of whom write (or wrote in the case of McDonald) about south Florida. So it’s great to find a YA book for boys set in the Everglades. Like with most of Tim’s books, the characters push the boundaries of what they know to be right, but do not cross the line. Boys take chances. Or at least the boys I grew up with did. We explore the outdoors, go it alone, test things, break things, and often get trapped in situations of our own making. Escape from the Everglades allows me to enjoy being a kid again without, you know, getting gobbled by a gator.

This book is the bushcraft classic. Although it focuses on northern bushcraft, most of the information in it is very useful in other areas of the world.

Many important techniques and skills are covered in this book that are applicable to wilderness survival and wilderness living. The legendary author was one of the most well-respected survival instructors in the world.

I personally cherish this book due to the level of detail and depth of the subjects covered. Whenever I read it I can always feel that a great deal of experience and research stands behind what is written.

I love the grittiness of this—an account of a walk along the South West Coast path, when terminal illness and poverty haunt the walkers and everything is in a state of flux.

It doesn’t glamorize the walk; it’s often uncomfortable with lots of biting wind and pouring rain. At times, there are even threats from others they come across who are sleeping rough. Overall, it’s a description of nature at its most raw and authentic.

Although we glimpse moments of inspiration and beauty, I like the fact, as well, that it doesn’t have a big, blowsy Hollywood ending—at the close, the future appears uncertain, although there is a definite sense that a new energy has been discovered.

It ends on a simple, perfect moment as the author describes her and her husband as “lightly salted blackberries hanging in the summer sun” and adds significantly that’s “all that is… show more.

I read this novel in one sitting, swept up and carried away to a world I never knew and a place I’ve never been: New Zealand’s West Coast, a rough and rugged land where after just five days in the country, the entire Chamberlain family disappears.

With the parents dead, what will become of the children? And what will they do to survive? Complicated moral choices elevate this richly drawn, intensely atmospheric, and absolutely stunning story of loss and endurance.

I’m always up for a page-turning thriller that’s set in the outdoors, and The River at Night kept me awake late and eager for more. This story follows four women who decide to jazz up their annual girls’ trip by whitewater rafting in the Maine wilderness. What could go wrong? Just about everything. When a freak accident leaves them stranded, they’re eager for help. But are their rescuers the saviors they first believe? Grab this book for an energizing read you won’t soon forget.  

Although set in a near-future America, I related to the way these two sisters had to live, conserving electricity and resources, running a generator, and always having to think carefully about whether to drive the 30 miles into town. Most haunting to me were the scenes where Eva, a dedicated dancer, practiced over and over an audition routine without the benefit of music, having to rely on the soundtrack in her head.

These two women were at the precipice of their adult lives, just beginning to actualize their talents, when they experienced a societal collapse. As the reader going along with them, it made me think about priorities, relationships, and who I would be without modern technology.