Self Reliance: A Recipe for the New Millennium

Self Reliance is a book of recipes in the broadest sense, from recipes for getting and staying out of debt and improving your financial independence, to tried and tested recipes for household items and life sustaining meals created from the simplest ingredients (often free) to the highly unusual. It is full of essential information for anyone who wants to live a more independent, self reliant lifestyle or plan for surviving a disaster scenario. This is not a black book of survival. It is intended as an introduction to self reliance, showing tested, practical and often entertaining ways to escape the mindset of helplessness and the chains of habit forged for all of us by the consumer society. It guarantees not only an improvement in the odds but also, if you follow its suggestions and experiments, a vast improvement in your own self-confidence. Because in the worst scenario, you will endure and endure well.

About the Author :
John Yeoman is the pseudonym of a well-known UK business consultant and author who has lead a shameless double life since 1975. Finding that an Oxford MA (Hons) degree and a 'good' job working for others guaranteed him a lifetime only of penury and serfdom, he set out to create his own security. By day, he was a consultant to blue chip corporations. By night, he secretly cooked comfrey, brewed moonshine and made his own toothpowder. Using the principles of self-reliance, he became financially independent and retired with his family to an organic smallholding where he daily practises the ideas outlined here.

Review :
This book lives up to its subtitle. It really is 'a practical 'cookbook' of tested ideas', full of useful, fascinating, enjoyable and sometimes wacky tips (though we're not sure we agree with John Yeoman's favourable opinion of dandelion root coffee!). In four sections, Self Reliance draws you gently into the world of the scrounger (in the positive sense of the word!), the cook and preserve maker, the home brewer (and distiller!) and, finally, the doomsday survivor (plus family). The book draws together all manner of ways to save money, live healthily and enrich you and your family's lives. Most of the ideas have been tested, if not used regularly, by the author, and this is where much of the book's value lies. It's perhaps worth mentioning one omission and one practical drawback. Firstly, it's a shame there isn't a little more emphasis on the importance of community in the book. And secondly, because of the plethora of tips and ideas included in the book, the index can only guide you to general subject areas rather than specific iems, so be sure to mark the pages you want to find again! Andy & Angie Polkey Permaculture Magazine 23