A Peek at a Survivalist's Library from 1964

By Timothy Gamble (January 15, 2019)

What books should be on a Survivalist's bookshelf? That is a question prompted by a book I recently read (Robert Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold). Its a science fiction survivalist novel about a family that survives a nuclear war. In it, the man (Hugh Farnham) who built and stocked a bomb shelter lists his "must-have" survivalist library. 

Heinlein's book was published in 1964, so all the books mentioned are from that era and before, naturally.  I'm currently working on my list of a Prepper's Library for modern times, but for now I thought it would be interesting to share the list of the books in Farnham's bomb shelter's library.

The list is a mixture of practical books (various volumes on homesteading, medicine, engineering, etc), books for entertainment value (note the inclusion of Hoyle's Book of Games for one), general knowledge (a dictionary and an encyclopedia set), and several selections obviously influenced by the Cold War (the books on guerrilla warfare, and the Russian/English dictionaries). Hugh even attempted to save some classic works (Homer, Shakespeare, etc.)

The List: 

• The Encyclopedia Britannica (Hugh calls it "the most compact assemblage of knowledge on the market")
• Che Guevera's War of the Guerillas
• Yank Levy's Guerrilla Warfare
• An English translation of Mao Tse-tung's On Guerrilla Warfare
• Tom Wintringham's New Ways of War
• The Boy Scout Handbook
• Eshbach's Mechanical Engineering
• The Radio Repairman's Guide
• Outdoor Life's Hunting and Fishing
• Edible Fungi and How to Know Them
• Home Life in Colonial Days
• Your Log Cabin
• Chimney and Fireplaces
• The Hobo's Cookbook
• Medicine Without a Doctor
• Five Acres and Independence 
• Russian Self-Taught 
• Several English-Russian, Russian-English dictionaries
• The Complete Herbalist
• Several survival manuals by the US Navy
• The Air Force's Survival Techniques
• The Practical Carpenter
• The Oxford Book of English Verse
• A Treasury of American Poetry
• Hoyle's Book of Games
• Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy
• Richard Francis Burton's translation of  A Thousand Nights and a Night
• Homer's The Odyssey
• Kipling's Collected Verse
• Kipling's Just So Stories
• A one-volume edition of Shakespeare
• The Bible
• The Book of Common Prayer
• Mathematical Recreations and Essays
• Thus Spake Zarathustra
• T.S. Elliot's The Old Possums Book of Practical Cats
• Robert Frost's Verse 
• Men Against the Sea (about the mutiny on the H.M.S. Bounty)

At one point in the book, Hugh Farnham mentions regretting not including the works of Mark Twain in his library.

So, what books would you recommend for a modern day Survivalist's Library?  Leave suggestions in the comments section below. 

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