The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living: Advice and Information on Just About Everything You Need to Know to Live on Planet Earth
Praise for the first edition:"How we have survived this long without Public Works I don't know. The concept is brilliant and simple. Szykitka has assembled 1,000 pages of sheer Information, almost all of it in the public domain, almost all of it available in booklet form from various government agencies or other public services. You and I are lazy and feckless, and if we are troubled by mildew we don't get around to writing the Department of Agriculture for guidance. (Or if we do, the mildew has either vanished or triumphed by the time the booklet arrives.) Szykitka, however, is a persistent fellow with an unbridled lust for collecting basic knowledge. If we had lived in a rural community a century ago, much of the knowledge gathered here would have been in our bones."--Harper'sMagazine, October 28, 1974