Are you fan of the Bourne series of movies?  Ever wondered what it would be like to be able to do just 1/10th of the cool stuff that Jason Bourne gets away with in the movies?  What if you could disappear across different borders without being noticed, turn a credit card into a weapon to protect yourself with, have multiple passports, escape and evade and learn how to use a knife in a way that us action movie-types always sit there in awe when we see it?  Sound cool enough?

Well, while on vacation recently I had the opportunity to catch up on a little reading.  I had brought 3 or 4 books with me, mostly business strategy, marketing, and productivity-type books.  However, one of them stood out from the rest because throughout the entire book I was replaying scenes of Bourne Ultimatum in my head.  It was the new book Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by New York Times bestseller, Neil Strauss.

What can you do when it hits the fan?  You can learn to be self-sufficient and survive without the system…It’s one man’s story of a dangerous world-and how to alive in it.

While the book is essentially an encyclopedia on exactly how to accomplish everything I mentioned above and more, this is not just a book that is a step-by-step guide in any means.  Neil takes the time to explain why he felt that he needed to learn the various skills that he describes.  Most, if not all, of the reasons that Neil provides are not crazy.  Some of the reasoning has even been provided by the US Government with Ready.gov.

I had a lot of fun reading the book but don’t worry, I’m not off running around getting 2nd passports and climbing fences into other countries. 

If you want to read a few excerpts from the book, check out the review that Tim Ferriss wrote where he was given permission to post a couple of the chapters.

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