Making the Best of Basics Book Review By Dr. Prepper

Lisa and I recently had the pleasure of being on the CPR talk show with Dr. Prepper and he was kind enough to send us a copy of his book Making the Best of Basics and I want to do a quick review of the book. He has been involved in the preparedness movement before it was even a movement. The first edition of this book was written in 1974 and has since be revised 12 times. You can also listen to the CPR talk show with James (Dr. Prepper) here at PreparednessRadio.com

This is not one of those books that is going to tell you how to survive the zombie apocalypse, or lead you into buying it by playing or your fears. This book will give you ideas and incite about how to live a more self reliant life.

This is why I found Making the Best of Basics so interesting, to me surviving a “zombie apocalypse” requires you to live a more self reliant life. It’s great if know how to survive any sort of disaster that would cause people to lose their minds, but what are you going to do afterwords? Your food storage will only last so long and you’re going to need the skills to replenish it.

A lot has changed in the world in the last 40 years and so has this book. Here is how James explains the most recent editions of Making the Best of Basics…

The 10th Edition of “Basics” was written for the previous generation. Now it appears the need for self-reliance may be even more important tomorrow than today––as we face the newest problems of natural disasters such as weather-related conditions, people-caused disasters such as the dipping economy, increasing political polarity problems, unprecedented stock market and investment corruption, entire industry losses, and business failures, and personal disasters such as job loss, divorce, death in the family, accidents, and the effects from the previously-mentioned natural and people-caused disasters.

After retiring in 1999 I was often asked by many of my friends, several publishers former distributors, and preparedness retailers to return “Basics” to the marketplace. It is not what I had planned for my future. But then, none of us saw the 911 event or the economic conditions this country has faced since that event.

Now that the 12th Edition of Making the Best of Basics has been published for this generation, I have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what causes the need––If you are prepared, you need not fear!

IN THIS ARTICLE (Jump to a Topic)

What You Wont Get From the Book

Like I said Making the Best of Basics is not going to tell you how to build an underground bunker or how to set up land mines in your front yard.
This book is almost all about food storage and “being your own convenience store” as James puts it. So if your looking for a book about defending your castle this is not the book for you.
You will not find any prophetic references about how the world is going to end tomorrow so you need to buy everything today. This book is about becoming self reliant, not a magic bullet that fixes all of your problems today.

What You Will Get From the Book

Don’t let the name Making the Best of Basics fool you. Although this book is well written and will lead you from the very basics to the more complex areas of preparedness it is far from Basic.
It is a great reference book and a fantastic resource to add to your preparedness library. As a matter of fact the section titled “Building a library” has a huge amount of resources that in my opinion makes this book worth the money all by itself.
To me, this is not a read it from cover to cover and put it on the shelf book. This is a book you can go back to time and time again. Best of the basics has recipes, gardening and food storage plans and ideas, charts, lists, and illustrations which all make this a valuable resource to add to our preparedness library.
There is so much listed in this book that even if everything does not apply to you and your living situation you will come away with some ideas about how to become more prepared and how to do it without forgetting about the small details that you can easily lose sight of like food loss due to poor quality or bad packaging.

My Take on Making the Best of Basics

In my opinion this is a must have in your prepping library. Even though some of the information in Making the Best of Basics book does not pertain to my current situation you never know what the future will bring, this is why we prepare for the worst and hope for the best. This is a book that I can go back to time and time again when my situation changes or when I am ready to take that next step forward to becoming more self reliant.

You will hear all of these self proclaimed “prepping gurus” tell you how qualified they are to give you advice, Dr. Prepper has walked the walk for almost 40 years and sold 80,000 copy’s of his book to me that gives him credibility. If you are truly great people will tell you, and if you have to tell people how great you are you probably have something up your sleeve.

If you are going to spend money on any survival or prepping books do yourself a favor and buy this one first, this book has more information than you ever dreamed of and will save you money and time in the long run.