There are an awful lot of prepping manuals on the shelves today. Some of them are decent, many of them are worth passing up. A few though, a precious few, deserve a close look. The Prepper Next Door qualifies as a member of that elite group of books.

Charlie Palmer knows his stuff. Even better, he knows how to effectively communicate his knowledge to the reader. The book is neither overly technical nor just bare basics. He hits the middle ground with ease, engaging the reader from the first page with a writing style that gives you the impression Charlie is your buddy from down the road, giving you advice on a subject he knows well.

In The Prepper Next Door, Charlie covers just about every aspect of prepping, from food and water storage to security. Every single one of the 300 or so pages is jam-packed with solid information. This is not the sort of manual you glance through and then put on a shelf for future reference. Instead, this is one you’ll want to read cover to cover, with a notebook next to you so you can jot down things for your To Do list.

Charlie is big on Youtube references and he mentions quite a few Youtube channels he recommends on a variety of topics. With regards to the ones I’ve checked out myself after reading his recommendations, I’d have to agree with him in that they are not to be missed.

Online retailers as well as brand names for various products are also mentioned frequently. I love it when authors do this because it gives credence that they’ve actually gone out and done these things, rather than just recycle information they’ve read elsewhere.

There are no illustrations in the book though. That’s both good and bad, from my perspective. I mean, it is great to have photos showing the item you’re discussing or to focus attention on a specific facet of something. But, the flip side is all too often authors tend to “cheat” and bulk up the page count by tossing in a ton of poorly drawn sketches or dark, indiscernible photos. Here, no photos means much more information being shared overall.

The only real complaint I’d have about the book is the organization of the information. It would have been nice to have subheadings in the chapters to break up the discussion a bit. Each chapter is rather lengthy and, at times, the discussion bounces back and forth within the chapters. Having subheadings or subsections within the chapters would make things more focused and easier to find later.

There is an awful lot of information shared in this book. But there is a fair amount of discussion that sort of drifts off topic too. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, as the information is always interesting. The chapter on guns runs about 60 pages and really, it could have been half that length had it just zeroed in on specific recommendations. It isn’t quite overkill or information overload, it is just something to be aware of when you start reading the book.

The Prepper Next Door definitely ranks toward the top of my list of recommended survival manuals. I’d recommend it highly for both the new and the experienced prepper. You can pick it up here on Amazon.