Pro: Well thought out, detailed and systematic approach to home defense in situations ranging from a status quo environment up to major societal upheaval. While any reader might quibble with the individual elements or scores assigned, the value of this book is in its forcing you to quantify where your home security plan’s strengths and weaknesses are. As Eisenhower said, “Our plans will almost always be worthless in combat, but the process of *having* planned is invaluable.”

Con: Terrible copyediting – spelling and grammar mistakes abound. Lots of white space, book could have been 20 pages shorter with more efficient page layout, though it does allow ample space for marginal notes.

The book provides an interesting way to examine preparedness, correct or mitigate deficiencies and plan strategies for diaster events that could lead to a dangerous breakdown in society.

The only faults that I found with the book was that a few of the diagrams were a little confusing.

The accessible Excel spreadsheet was a neat feature to use when reading the book. It allows you to score your own situation.

For anyone thats familiar with “72 Hours to Animal” principle, this is a great book.

“Holding Your Ground” is a well written, generally clear, straight-forward, and useful survey of a primarily defensive/passive strategies and techniques that could well save your life, if things should all fall apart; a formerly unthinkable scenario that is, in my opinion, becoming less “unthinkable” by the day. Moreover, many of the steps “Joe Nobody” recommends could be relatively easily accomplished and are not very expensive.

Written from an obvious military prospective, this book covers many fundamental considerations, starting with not only a systematic survey of the strengths and weaknesses of the place to be defended, but also with an honest appraisal of the attitudes potential defenders would bring to this dire situation i.e. at its most basic level, could you pick up a gun and shoot someone who was intent on robbing or killing you and yours. It then proceeds to very systematically outline various defensive strategies, techniques, and in the smaller offensive section, to list a few of the types of weapons and the basic equipment that would help you to “hold your ground.”

I particularly liked his ideas for “hiding in plain sight,” camouflaging your location and/or making it appear to be burnt out, abandoned, and/or already looted, and several creative ideas for using camouflage netting inside a structure, including hanging it across windows and tightly covering doors with it to make any attempted entry by attackers much more difficult, thus giving defenders much more time to react.

There are many very clear drawings/illustrations that help to show what he is trying to teach but, unfortunately, on the other hand, the pictures used in this work are almost uniformly out of focus and muddy–making it very hard to even see what he is attempting to illustrate.

A minor criticism is that several times in this book the author refers to the “red arrows” that are supposed to be in illustrations, when the whole book is printed in black and white only i.e. no red or any other color arrows.

I highly recommend this book to get you thinking very defensively and thinking in ways and about things that you probably do not currently think about. Our days of living off the surpluses created by past generations, of peace and plenty, and a hazy disconnect from reality, look like they are coming to an end folks, and perhaps a very abrupt one. So, time to “listen up” and prepare, to be the ant and not the grasshopper.

Finally, the author often writes that there are many military manuals or other publications that give more detailed information on this or that subject which he is just outlining. One thing that I believe would have greatly increased the usefulness of this book would have been a select bibliography of several of the key military manuals and other publications that he was referring to.

Livre simple, mais très orienté “univers imaginaire”.

On se sens pas toujours le côté pratique des éléments décris, mais on ressens une sorte “d’exubérance américaine” dans les moyens décris ici.
Le livre est n’vraiment adapté que pour la défense d’une ferme dans le grand west américain, loin de nos contrées européennes où le principal risque reste un conflit ethnique et racial.

Je vous conseille d’avantage la lecture des différents livres blancs de l’armée américaine.