I read the first of this series in the bookstore; it was too good to go to the trouble of purchasing. There are more pleasingly implausible lessons in the Travel edition: how to crash land a plane into water, how to stop a runaway train, how to survive a riot. Some of the items are disappointingly practical, like passing a bribe or purifying water (boil for ten minutes, and "be sure to let the water cool before drinking it").

The long list of expert consultants notwithstanding, some of the advice seems pretty poor. You'll spend days trying to catch a fish with a shirt stretched over a branch loop, and even that survivor guy on the Discovery Channel has a hard time making animal traps work.

To escape a smoky room in a burning hotel, they suggest breaking through a random wall, neglecting to mention the map usually posted on the back of the door, which may reveal a stairwell a short dash away.

And they're right that jumping before a falling elevator hits the bottom is unlikely to help, but not because it's too hard to time it right or because the crashing ceiling will crush you in mid-jump. The biggest reason is that you can only reduce your speed of impact by the speed of your jump. A well-timed three-foot-high jump at the end of a 50-foot fall will be the same as a 47-foot fall without the jump. More importantly, you want be on the floor to take advantage of whatever brief deceleration there is as the car crashes and elevator gear below crumples. Physics geeks please chime in if I'm wrong here.