Any of the books by:
John and Gerry McPherson, especially Naked into the Wilderness. Before that I had read and practiced most of Bradford Angier's and Tom Brown Jr's books as well as books by several others. IMHO, they are mostly junk. Naked into the Wilderness was the first book (series of pamphlets back then) I could study, then go out and practice and... *gasp* it worked!! Eureka! Maybe this primitive skills and living with the land stuff actually CAN be done!
Mors Kochanski. Would have been nice had Northern Bushcraft been written when I was young. I learned most of what his Bushcraft book shows by studying books written in the '50s and doing on my own. So many wilderness survival and primitive skills books are cut and pasted retreads where the authors (who claim to be experts) have never done what they were writing about. You can trace lies back to the 1880s and watch them being cut and pasted mostly verbatim every 15-25 years from then until now. Extremely disappointing that not one of those authors bothered to actually do what they were selling books about. Anyhow, Mors covers many tasks much better than most. He is one of the few who shows solid information on long fires.
Cody Lundin. Having spent many decades studying, practicing, living and almost dying in the woods, I read 98.6. *facepalm* Could have spared myself a whole lot of misery had I read 98.6 first. Of course, it hadn't been written back then!!
Laurence Gonzales, especially Deep Survival and Surviving Survival. Again, reading these books and looking back on what I've survived, wish they had been written and read by me before I went through it. By the way, highly recommend Surviving Survival to vets suffering from PTSD.
Lawrence Fenimore Cooper. The entire Leatherstocking Tales, also known as the Natty Bumpo series. Not a lot of factual skills to be gleaned from here. Still, worth the read because there is plenty of fun and many situations that spur the imagination towards a hunger to be in the woods.
Also the history of Roger's Rangers and the Tennessee Volunteers (hint: they marched on foot from Tennessee to New Orleans then stomped the Brits in the War of 1812). Now those were men!!!
Of the hundreds of wilderness survival, wilderness living, primitive skills, homesteading, etc books as well as the dozens each of Aboriginal (mainly North American First Peoples), American Colonial, American Revolutionary War, American Civil War, American Pioneer, etc history books that I have read, those leap to mind as the most worth passing on.
