Surviving Wildfire: Get Prepared, Stay Alive, Rebuild Your Life (A Handbook for Homeowners)

As a survivor of the High Park fire one of the largest fires in the history of Colorado and a 30 year veteran on the local VFD, I was anxious to see this book because I have so many friends & neighbors struggling with these issues in the wake of the fire. I was not disappointed. My first copy arrived in the mail last week. Before the evening was out, I had read enough to decide to buy several more copies. One of those copies was for my dad who lives in the WUI west of Denver & is trying to educate his neighbors about being Firewise. The others were for friends who lost their homes in the High Park fire all of them are in the midst of some version of the insurance nightmare. Since Linda lost her home in the Crystal fire a year in advance of the High Park fire she is much further down the learning curve and her book is very helpful to those of us who haven't figured it all out yet. This book covers the spectrum from how to improve your odds of your home surviving a wildfire to how to pick up the pieces if your home is destroyed. Linda does a great job of putting lots of information in a small book that is easy to read. I would recommend that anyone living in or thinking about living in the WUI should read this book (and give a copy to all your neighbors).

Upon the first few pages of reading Linda Masterson's book, Surviving Wildfire, I was struck by strong emotions left over from Colorado's 2012 High Park Fire. The opening pages filled me with a great sense of empathy, and a connection to Linda's story, as well as to others who have lost homes during wildfires. Linda's words also instilled me with recognition of the personal choice to live in the WUI, which comes with both great beauty and peace, as well as a great responsibility of living in a non-urban area.

Linda's writing balances her personal story and resilience with accessible information and tasks for anyone who lives in wildfire-potential places, the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). Linda's thoughtful, well-researched, and thorough book offers readers the information they need to be prepared before, during, and after a wildfire. This book is very helpful for those who have been affected by wildfire in any way, whether full or partial property loss, a close-call, or living in an area with high fire potential.

This book helps readers to be prepared and ready, which means a great deal during a fire emergency. Linda's book gives readers the knowledge to know what to do, bring, and save during an evacuation. She also walks readers through the difficult process of picking up the pieces after a total or partial loss, how to deal with insurance companies, and understanding the decision-making process of rebuilding or moving on. Linda's book offers preparedness, hope, and resiliency and one reader says a huge thank you!

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Surviving Wildfire is a must-read for people who are considering moving to the WUI and also those who are already living in their dream homes in the woods. This comprehensive book not only covers what you can do to reduce risk of losing your home to wildfire, but also how to recover if disaster strikes.

The book is small but power packed. It gives vital information on how to determine fire risk on a property before you buy; how to reduce risk through building materials, landscaping, and site selection; how and why certain fires become catastrophic; and what to do if you lose your home to wildfire. Ms. Masterson walks you step by step through the insurance maze to ensure you have the best chance of getting what you paid for.

I highly recommend this book to Homeowner Associations, Communities, Developers, and anyone else who lives or works in the WUI.

Helen McGranahan

Career U.S.Forest Service/BLM/National Park Service Employee

Firewise Board Chair-Silver Star Subdivision

Custer SD

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Ms. Masterson has written a well researched, fact-filled book about facing wildfire. Her information on everything from fire behavior and fire mitigation to fire insurance issues is carefully detailed, easily understood and useful to anyone living in a fire-prone area. She offers specific recommendations to help minimize future damage not only to property but also to financial and emotional well being. For those who have recently lost their homes to fire, she freely shares her own past experience losing a home, picking up the pieces, and moving on. This is a valuable resource for anyone dealing with a recent loss due to major fire as well as for those likely to face the dragon in the future.

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As a hiker and outdoor enthusiast I spend a lot of time in areas that could be impacted by wildfires this book gave excellent advice on how to exit a dangerous area as well as protecting your family and pets. Additionally, as a non-mountain resident there were tips on how to navigate the legal and insurance systems after any major tragedy and in order of priority. I think it is a great resource for any home owner!

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The Heart Attack Germ: Prevent Strokes, Heart Attacks and the Symptoms of Alzheimer's by Protecting

I read this book just after "The Potbelly Syndrome". They cover similar ground but this author has a medical background (to me that is not necessarily a good thing given the drugs-are-wonderful blinkers of the medical profession). Both books provide an alternative view, claiming that many health problems and degenerative diseases are actually due to long-term infections, often in chronic form that the standard tests fail to identify and that (therefore) most doctors ignore or even deny.

Physicians are reluctant to accept that standard tests might not be foolproof and even more reluctant to accept that the same type of bacteria and viruses present in healthy people could cause a variety of diseases in sick people, even though almost all healthy people eventually die of the same diseases, such as cancer, heart or kidney disease, and stroke (see PS below).

Chlamydia Pneumoniae (not the same as the sexually-transmitted form of Chlamydia, it has thus recently been renamed to Chlamydophila pneumoniae) is the most mentioned in both books, although there are many others that could be relevant. It is for this radical departure from the usual viewpoint that I have given it the two stars although this book disappoints in the long run. It takes over 300 pages to explain the problem; then there are less than 5 pages to explain the "advanced treatment" which consists mainly of wait for it repeated rounds of antibiotic treatment!

The proven counterproductive aspects of antibiotics are completely ignored and no success stories (either anecdotal or research-based) are provided for this "solution". In 2005 researchers reported that, in acne patients, antibiotic users are twice as likely to get an upper respiratory tract infection within a year; the Feb. 18, 2004 issue of "The Journal of the American Medical Association" provides evidence that long-term antibiotic use is linked to increased breast cancer risks (and they haven't yet researched other cancers in the same way); in children antibiotic treatment has been associated with increased risk of recurrences; these are just three bits of the ever-mounting evidence that antibiotics are dangerous yet this book offers antibiotics as the answer?! Words fail me.

The book indicates antiviral treatment may also be necessary and then touches briefly on fungal infections but does not recommend antifungal treatment. (No mention is made of parasites in either book; to me this is a worrying oversight.) To my further surprise and disappointment, this book also recommends daily aspirin, a "treatment" that has been proved dangerous, and then repeats the usual (useless) diet and exercise BS we've been getting for decades.

Basically, this book claims to cover improved treatments for the most prevalent chronic infections but does not. Where the "The Potbelly Syndrome" is so much better although it too provides no real solution is that it goes way beyond this, providing some of the evidence that the "lose weight & exercise" mantra is useless advice and looking at more up-to-date alternatives.

Also worth reading is Alan Cantwell's "Four Women Against Cancer" which explains how CWD bacteria they can live without having a cell wall and therefore act more like a virus cause cancer and how, since this bacteria is inside the cancer cells, tests don't find them and anti-microbial treatments (both natural and synthetic antibiotics, antifungals, antiprotozoals, and antivirals) do not cure cancer. This and the similar theory in The Heart Attack Germ book may be the underlying basis for many incurable health problems.

P.S. There are a few other books on this point: "The Inflammation Cure" by Meggs and Svec, "The Inflammation Syndrome" by Challem (dietary remedies only, in this one), "Stopping Inflammation" by Appleton (food again, particularly sugar, dairy and wheat as the bad guys), "Inflammation Nation" by Chilton (good and bad fats), and "The Anti-Inflammation Zone" by Sears (nutrition again) all appeared in 2003/4/5 and all discuss the role of inflammation in the major diseases of our time, and some of the things that one can do to limit inflammation.

All those books are also fairly easy to read but, as I know too well after more than a decade of careful nutrition, none really has a complete solution for the problem nor can I find anything more recent that might have offered newer/better advice even though there's more and more evidence to back up the book's claims in 2009 one report suggests that high blood pressure could be caused by a common virus, known as CMV, affecting between 60 and 99 per cent of adults worldwide, and that it is also linked to kidney disease, stroke and even cancer. In 2012 it was revealed that some arthritis is caused by bacteria.

LATEST NOTE: I had similar problems as outlined in this book and turned out to have serious adrenal fatigue and serious low thyroid issues. The thyroid issue had been getting worse for 2 decades, whilst "standard" medicine denied I had either, repeatedly assuring me all their tests "proved" this. `Hypothyroidism Type 2' by Mark Starr explains how all chronic pain is linked to low thyroid, including those involved with diabetes, heart problems, both bleeding (like gums, periods) & blood clots (including strokes) and some cancers. If you have any kind of chronic pain, you need to know 1. some are calling low thyroid the silent epidemic (silent because officially denied) and 2. that ALL the standard lab tests are WRONG. The FREE basal (at rest) temperature self-test is THE gold standard for low thyroid problems and with your symptoms means more than any lab test (although most conventional doctors won't agree). It will pick up conditions that current lab tests don't, such as thyroid resistance. The stopthethyroidmadness website has excellent instructions for this self-test, as well as several for adrenal fatigue, which often goes hand-in-hand with low thyroid.

Also, the new generation of colloidal silver, especially Sovereign Silver, is almost a panacea. The modern colloidal silvers are different from and safer than the old colloidal silvers and do not have the side effects. Most people need only 1 teaspoon a day. 2 teaspoons twice daily will cure almost anything safely.

This is an informative and well written book about the notorious Heart Attack Germ also known as Chlamydia pneumonia and how it relates to heart attacks, Alzheimer disease and other symptoms in the body. The author is a retired physician and surgeon who explains in detail and at times with a sense of humor what we all should know about our body. He covers everything from doctor office visits to lab work, preventative medicine and the detailed illustrations throughout the book make it easy for the non-medical reader to understand.

I highly recommend this book.

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I really liked the way the author gives an overview and then discusses in detail all the different aspects of incidents. This book is not really for physicians, but I appreciated the practical aspects of the content and think families that have been affected by an incident would benefit from reading it.

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300 Low-Carb Slow Cooker Recipes: Healthy Dinners that are Ready When You Are

Dana Carpender's previous slow cooker book had been my favorite cookbook. Now, it's this one. I did not notice any missing recipes in the first 6 chapters, but there are loads of new ones that look absolutely yummy. The font and page layout are easy on the eyes. Definitely worth the upgrade from 200 to 300 recipes. You need this book.

Since starting a low carb lifestyle and loving to cook I have found Dana's recipes to be inventive but not

overcomplicated. I just tried the "Stuffed Pepper" recipe last night and it was great. I have also purchased 1001 Low Carb recipes and 300 15-minute recipes. They give me lots of great ideas to try while maintaining my low carb eating plan. If you love to cook and want to keep it low carb give her books a try.

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Just made my first recipe -Chicken Paprikash -from the new book, and it is plate-licking wonderful. A conservative estimate would be that over 45 years of cooking, I've made Chicken Paprikash at least 180 times from many, many different recipes. This was absolutely the best. If the rest of the book is this good, we'll be in hog heaven for a good long time.

P.S. the only tinkering I did with the recipe was to degrease and reduce the sauce which forms in the crock pot before adding the sour cream, a maneuver suggested elsewhere in the book.

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When other reviewers say that a book has the same basic recipes but a simple spice or protein change counts as a 'new recipe', believe them! I bought this book anyway despite reading this same kind of review about this book (and most of the others). It's true! it's really true.

Like others say, it's also hard to find a recipe. You have to know what it's called, and if it has some odd name instead of just 'meatballs', good luck Chuck! I have three different slow cookers and I'll be damned if any of them make a good version of anything in this book. Three cookers can't be wrong, it has to be the recipes. I found them overdone, or too watery, or just not having the flavorful bang that I expected.

The recipes LOOK GOOD on paper, I can't deny it, I marked several to try and just could not get desirable results in the (basic) 6-8 hour time frame that most recipes seem to call for. Unlike the recipes I love from George Stella and other authors, the flavors in these just do not seem to fall within a range that myself or my family like. Some not enough, others just don't feel like there is a good balance between the spices used. Not anything in here I would try twice, that's for sure.

I could 'trade it in' on Amazon for a whole $1.75! Whoopee, after I paid what, $15 for this new? Ugh.

There are tons of slow cooker recipes for free on the internet, that you can easily adapt to low carb cooking. And they don't rely on Splenda out the wazzoo! I hate the aftertaste of Splenda and a lot of these sweet recipes take such an everloving MOUNTAIN of them, that it makes the final product inedible for our tastes.

Not one I would recommend. And I'll be giving my copy away because my local used bookstores will not buy it from me or even let me trade it in!!

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Almost all of the "sweet" recipes in this book, from appetizers to desserts, require splenda. If you're not interested in using artificial sweeteners you might not find this book that useful.

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Caregiver's Reprieve: A Guide to Emotional Survival When You're Caring for Someone You Love (The Wor

This book is an excellent resource for anyone facing the challenges of caring for a loved one who needs long term support. The book contains cases which describe the experiences of several prototype situations and the emotions that those involved deal with on a day to day basis. This book highlights the fact that caregiving is a difficult task and that the emotions caregivers feel are common and normal. The book exonerates caregives who feel guilty for the difficulties that they face and provides the support that we need to carry on. A must read

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