The Deal
You can get two
free ebooks related to wilderness survival and such things from a company called Ancient Pathways, LLC. Ancient Pathways is an outfit offering "outdoor programs in desert survival and bushcraft."
The titles are
Map and Compass Skills and
Wilderness Tips and Tools. Both of them are by a fellow by the name of "Tony Nester." I downloaded both books, and skimmed one of them. The one book is
loaded with photos (I like photos.
); they are of inconsistent quality, but many of them are very good. I know nothing else about these books, nor the author, but that may be because I'm not "into" the survival book genre (although I really did like Les Stroud's TV show,
Survivor Man I think that it was called, and Bear Grylls' TV show (maybe it is/was the one called
Survivor Man, I don't remember now). I didn't care much for
Dual Survivor, though).
You may be suspecting what I'm going to say next. Okay, I'll go ahead and say it--the books are only available in pdf.
The "hoop" that you have to jump through is not very bad. Just subscribe to their newsletter, and whammo bammo, your web browser sends you to a page with links to both of the books.
Oh, I need to give you the link to the page on
Ancient Pathways' website, don't I? ha.
My Sermon
Please allow me to give you, here, something of a homily. The main point is this: yes, I could give you the direct links to these books, but I won't. Allow me to tell you why I won't.
The folks that give away free books don't just do it from the goodness of their hearts (although certainly that is often part of it). They are hoping to generate interest in their businesses and be able to make a profit so that they can continue to stay in business, and maybe even grow it some to serve more people. If people go to direct links, the businessmen and businesswomen don't get the full results that they intended when they expended all of the time and effort (and maybe expense) of making the books free to you. See?
If you don't care about ethical reasons, then do it for purely selfish reasons. Yep, that's what I said. Here's what I mean. The more that people bypass the intents of the people who make these ebooks available for free, the less that they are going to be willing to give away ebooks, and
the less ebooks that we will be able to get for free.
So, I will respect their desires, and not give you the direct links page. If someone else chooses to do it, I'll consider that his or her own business.
End of sermon. Now feel free to go get lost somewhere deep in the wilderness. I know that you will be able to make it okay. Make sure that you read these books first. Who knows, maybe you'll get your own TV show out of it.
