 Hey everybody, it's time for another edition of Tactical Book Review. This is a series where we examine books in the tactical world because I'm a reader and I want to know what kind of books we should be reading, what kind of books we should not be reading, which ones of those marketed in this area are worth our time, which ones are not, stuff like that. So that's why I do this series and I hope that you find it helpful. This book is The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. I read this book because John Lovell over at the Warrior Poet Society mentioned it on his channel and when John Lovell mentions a book and tells you to read it, you read that book. So that's what led me to this thing. Now I want to offer a couple of caveats that he did not that I think are very important in helping this book fit in your framework because I do think there's some helpful stuff on it. I'm going to rag on it here for a second, but after that I do think there's some helpful stuff. First thing that you need to know about this book is that Mr. Gavin De Becker is not a gun guy. Not only is he not a gun guy, this book was written in 1997, he is a late 90s Democrat anti-gun person. I don't know if he's actually a Democrat but he's certainly a late 90s anti-gun person which is kind of funny for a guy who owns a company that provides armed security among other things for its clients. So that's funny and kind of annoying and really it only comes out in two places in the book and so you can kind of just swallow it and move on and really not deal with it. By and large it's not really a part of the book. There are some conspicuous places where I think being armed or recommending that people be armed is absent and it's conspicuously so and so I think that's a problem so you got to fill in the gaps in there of kind of what is the proper role of an armed American or being armed. Where does that, where does that fit in this book? You have to fill that in yourself but rather because like I said he's an anti-gun guy but beside that I think it's a very valuable book. The other thing, the other caveat that I need to put in here to help you understand this is where this book fits. This book fits in the category of preventative measures. That's where this book fits. This book is not you know what to do once the shit hits the fan, this book is not how to shoot better, this book is not tactics. This book is what can we do before the threat occurs to recognize and prevent the threat. That's really where this book shines. That's what this book is about. When you put it, you give those caveats to it, it's a great book for what it sets out to be. It really is and I would recommend it to you in that regard. The gist of the book is this. It's about following your intuition or following your gut. That's really what it is. His whole premise is you as a human being can predict other human beings behavior because you do it all the time and predicting violence is possible and if you have a weird creeped out feeling about some person, there's a reason for that and your intuition and your gut is telling you this is what's happening because your brain I don't know if he consciously says this in here but this is how it summarized it. What he's saying is your brain can process information faster than you can consciously arrive at logical decisions. So if you have a really bad feeling about a person and you don't like the look of that guy, there's a reason for that and you should follow your gut, you should follow your intuition. That's really the gist of the book and he walks through how to do that. He walks through how to deal with special weird cases like having a stalker or extreme cases of people being out to kill you, something like that. Some of it, right, you don't deal with neurarity. He also talks through more mundane everyday violence like domestic violence and how to deal with an abusive spouse and stuff like that. So I would recommend this book in that preventative category. I think it's very, very helpful there. I also think it's a very good intro book for the women in your life for two reasons. One, because it's not a tactical book, like I said, it's just a book. And it plays to, let's be honest, a strong suit that women in general are better at than men, which is following their intuition. So it reinforces what they already know and it takes it a step further to help them understand the world around them to hopefully help prevent those things. So I think it's a very good book and you can kind of get yourself in the back door to open them up to this whole world of violence that's out there and say, hey baby, maybe we should start carrying a gun if she's more remiss to do that. So for all of those things, I recommend this book. I think it's good. One of the other things I appreciate about this book is that it gives a very wide view on violence. This is not just getting munger in a dark alley. This is not the stuff that we typically talk about in the gun world. It's a much broader view of violence in general and how to anticipate and deal with that violence, which I appreciate. And the other distinction I really like that he calls out at the end of the book is he talks about the difference between worry and fear. And the book is called The Gift of Fear, right? Again, when you get that gut feeling that something's wrong here, there's a reason for that. And he differentiates that between worrying, which again, I'm not going to give you the whole explanation of the book, but very helpful and good explanation that I found helpful. So again, with the caveats I gave in the beginning, knowing, understanding when this book fits, that's where I'd recommend this book to you. It's not a terribly short read. It's about 300 pages. I recommend it to you with the caveats that I gave earlier. Again, The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecca. Do brave deeds and endure.