I've enjoyed many books in this series, with their mix of useful and over-the-top advice. I found this fair-condition softcover at Savers; its categories include travel-related issues, such as runaway camels, leeches, UFO abductions... OK, maybe the authors travel some places that I've never been!

Many of the entries are all too real-world, though, such as "How to Survive a Riot" (focused more on civil unrest, but could apply to spontaneous riots related to sports or overcrowded concerts). The "be prepared" advice is, for the most part, fairly obvious, but there are some interesting points that hadn't occurred to me - not that I spend a lot of time in places subject to riot. But, as pointed out in the introduction, the unexpected tends to happen...

Under the "Foil UFO Abduction" heading there's advice about resisting - verbally, physically (go for its eyes, if it has any; with aliens, who knows where their other sensitive bits are), and mentally (in case the aliens are telepathic). [There's also advice on how to report a UFO sighting, which I found rather touching.]

Some of the items take the situations to unnerving extremes, such as the bit about removing leeches; at first it's normal "how to remove it without increasing the risk of blood loss or disease", but then they get to "if a leech invades an air passage" and I had to stop reading for a bit to hyperventilate {wry grin}. (Hint: gargle with diluted 80-proof alcohol.)

The "General Travel Strategies" in the appendix actually make a very good checklist for any trips, even if you aren't heading into dangerous territory. There's also a section on emergency foreign phrases, which provides a mix of helpful lines ("Help!" in several languages) and dubious ones ("Why is the water brown/green/black?"), as well as some scary ones ("Do you know a place where I can hide?"). There's a handy section on "gestures to avoid," too, that explains the VERY different meanings that some common gestures have in different countries.

So - potentially handy, often entertaining, and sometimes downright scary.

I left this book in the book-swap shelf inside the terminal at around 3:30 or so; hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released for 2014 Travel challenge. ***