Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills (Back to Basics Guides) Kindle Edition

Back to Basics is a wonderful manual on how to live a life free of all the modern distractions. How many people want to return to a time when things were different: people felt good about working hard, living in close connection the the seasons, and worked with the environment instead of trying to conquer it? How many people have tried this way of life, but failed? Here, in one simple book, you have all the information you need to succeed.The book includes how to choose land, build a house and out buildings, create energy, raise your own food, preserve foodstuff, crafts for the home, and a section on old time recreation. The writing is clear and instructions easy to follow. There are plenty of pictures to help you create your own bit of paradise.As a child, I had an earlier version of this book. It was a big, heavy, hard cover book and I spent hours mulling over how different life use to be like. Life was so much more work, but in many ways easier. This book nurtured the simple thought that we could recapture some if not all of that life. Maybe if we adopted some of these ideas then we could find a place for ourselves in the world. If I had to choose just one, I would say this is the most influential book of my youth.So, you can imagine my surprise to see this available for my Kindle. I thought, "This is a book about getting away from technology and living a life full of pre-electronic traditions. What's it doing as an e-book?"My curiosity peaked, I downloaded this and started reading. I have to say, I LOVE it!The book takes full advantage of the Kindle format. The pictures, and there are a lot of pictures, show up clearly on my Kindle 3. They are in colour when I read the book on my PC. Although, the huge number of pictures makes this book really slow to download. The index is interactive, the sections are easily navigable via the 5-way controller.

A great overview of the traditional skills our generation is lacking.I am reading this book for an ethnography project. An ethnography project is done by unbiasedly studying a particular culture. Through studying one learns what aspects define the culture of choice. For my project I chose to study self sufficient living. The book Back To Basics edited by Abigail R. Gehring relates to my ethnography topic by explaining step by step how to do basic living skills by yourself. These skills in turn enable a person to live self sufficiently. For example chapter one explains where to buy land and how to build on it, this section includes how to guides for items such as raising a barn, creating a stone wall, and converting trees into lumber.In my opinion Back to Basics edited by Abigail R. Gehring is well worth the money. The book is able to cover almost every basic essential living skill. Each skill is depicted accurately with visual graphics to go along. For example pictures of country plants are shown and below them is a blurb about what plant shows what water, “Saltbush: Indicates water near the surface, but the quality may be poor.” The only drawback to the book is that since so many skills are covered many skills are not explained as in depth as needed to learn the skill or do the project. While this may seem to be a problem, sources and resources can be found after every skill/project. These sources and resources can provide the depth needed to accomplish the skill. For example in the building a log cabin section a source can be seen as “Nash, George. Old Houses: A rebuilder’s Manual. Needham Heights, Mss.: Prentice Hall, 1979.”Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who is considering starting a self sufficient lifestyle.

I bought this book based off the recommendation of a You Tube video. This book was in a list of book recommended. I bought this first because of the high reviews and it is something that I am interested in.If you are looking to buy a book and become an expert in all or any of the topics that this book covers, this book is not for you. This book is not small, has plenty of pictures, and does cover the topics quite nicely. This book looks to give you a general idea about a lot of topics that any one of them could be a series of books on their own. This book did give a decent amount of information on each topic that gave you a general idea on how something was done and allowed you to make a decision if it was something you wanted to research further.As I read through the book I found myself think I would love to learn to do that, and that, and that. I come to the realization that if for some reason all of our modern conveniences were taken away, no one person would be able to master all the things that would need to be done in a community. After reading through this it started to make since to me why people chose a profession and stayed in that profession. Generation after generation in the same family would take up the family trade and keep learning and expanding the trade. As said before, if you are getting this book in hopes of becoming an expert in traditional basic skill you will be disappointed. I took this book at what it was and now I am interested in even more things than I was before.

Enjoyable Read. If anything it will make you appreciate the sheer hard work involved in going back to basics. Very detailed.. want to build a log cabin? first build a road... what type of road? well what vehicle?What terrain? where are your trees? how many?etc etc etc Lots of practical common sense info.. skewed towards the Americans. But worth a read. lots of recipes and simpler tasks

An excellent book and covers more than I would ever need. Very well written and compiled with clear descriptions, proper easy to follow instructions for the many projects. If you ever find youself in a situation where you no longer have access to our modern conveniences this book is probably all you'll need to help you build a house, grow food, make furniture and entertain your neighbours! Very interesting to read and I look forward to practising and learning these near forgotten skills. I also bought a copy for my Dad and he loves the book too.

I had the French version of this book, bought in Redu in Belgium years ago second-hand. A friend admired it so I searched and found this updated version in English. She is delighted. Wonderful book.

Great what I needed

I generally do not go in for all-in-one books, seeing as how they tend to be neglectful in some way on all the topics they try to cover. This work is neglectful in some areas, yet I would definitely have it on my homesteading bookshelf.'Back to Basics' is essentially a book for beginner homesteaders, preppers, and even survivalists (the section at the back has some roughing it info). It tries to cover all the skills a homesteader needs, such as: choosing land, building a house (a variety of ways), alternate energy, growing a garden, preserving your harvest, raising livestock, dairying, blacksmithing, woodcarpentry, rugmaking, candlemaking, soapmaking, homemade cleaners, and more.As you can see, there is quite a list. Many compare Carla Emery's famous 'Encyclopedia of Country Living' to this book, but as Mrs. Emery's work focuses simply on food raising, this book provides the wider scope in a whole section devoted to alternative energy for the do-it-yourselfer, including plans for a solar food dehydrator, solar water heater, water wheel power, wind power, etc. That chapter and the chapters on numerous crafts/skills such as the above mentioned soapmaking and such, are the jewels of this book.Granted, as others have said, this book could use more depth, but as someone just making do with what I've got, I'm not too interested in making artisan cheese, so the dairying chapter which shows me how to make a few simple cheeses as well as yoghurt, butter, and sour cream completely meets my needs. As a back-yard gardener with a million things to do at once, I don't have time to make glistening jars of 5 different kinds of jelly, and so a few simple recipes/methods for preserving my harvest such as dried tomatoes and apple butter again, meet my needs just fine.All this to say, if you are looking to specialize in soapmaking (selling a variety of soaps) or raising a rare breed of chickens, this is not the book for you, and I'd instead recommend Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens or Simple Soapmaking. But if you are, like me, a homesteader striving to live sustainably, you likely wish you had four extra hands and 48 hours instead of 24 in a day, and likely can't go into the finickety things. You need a book that will teach you the basics of the many things that need to be done, and so this book would be a good place to start.