Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition (Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills) | 
| Creator: Abigail R. Gehring
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.72
You Save: $10.23 (41%)
New (22) Used (7) from $14.72
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 4373
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.6 x 1
ISBN: 1602392331
Dewey Decimal Number: 640.973
EAN: 9781602392335
ASIN: 1602392331
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080725212931T
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Over 100,000 sold! Now newly revised and up to date, with over 2,000 color photographs and illustrations.
Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills—the kind employed by our forefathers—and adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful, full-color guide. Countless readers have turned to Back to Basics for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants and rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle.
Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in Back to Basics will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead. More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamers—even if you live in a city apartment you will find your imagination sparked, and there's no reason why you can't, for example, make a loom and weave a rag rug. Complete with tips for old-fashioned fun (square dancing calls, homemade toys, and kayaking tips), this may be the most thorough book on voluntary simplicity available. 2,000 color photos, 200 b/w illustrations.
|
| Customer Reviews:
The End is Nigh! July 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Well maybe not exactly nigh, and maybe not exactly the end...but certainly some changes are lurching our way as the current economic meltdown rains on our way-complicated, stressed-out, nature-deficient parade. Skyhorse called it right by calling this book back into print--and under editor Abigail Gehring's guiding hand the book has been enriched with new graphics and some new content (including internet referrals to information sources.)
Reading this book opens a window into a lifestyle that you've been missing at the core of your being...and opens the door to get you into it.
Can't Improve Upon It June 14, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book was published twice by Reader's Digest when there wasn't much demand for it. Skyhorse Publishing took it over and made enough "significant changes" to establish their own copyright over it. But the changes are just different pictures and rearranged pages!
This book is just about to come into its own due to the demise of oil and the Dollar. These are skills the general population must relearn. But the pre-oil generations are all gone.
The Best of Basics... May 21, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is simply the best reference book for self sufficient country living ever, bar none. From building to growing to conserving to preserving to raising animals to cooking... recreation, knitting, herbs, knots, quilting, cider, canoeing, candle making, soaps, blacksmithing, not to mention beer and wine making; and everything in between and extending from both ends - this book has it all. The table of contents only touches on what's contained. If you can think of it, this book probably has it. It is *the* encyclopedia of living the "basics."
At the end of the movie adaptation of H.G.Wells classic "The Time Machine", the main character escapes to the future where humanity has forgotten all basic knowledge and skills. The friends that he leaves behind discover that he has taken only three books with him, and we're left to wonderingly consider which three - and which three we might bring. This book would be one of my three. After all, what culture could survive long without beer, smoked meats, cheese and wine?
Great rendition of the old one April 27, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The book is a lot like the old, only with updated information, and more things have been added to it.
|
|
|
