A Bit of Sense and Lots of Sang-Froid About Safety

COME BACK ALIVE: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Disasters, Kidnappings, Animal Attacks and Other Nasty Perils of Modern Travel; by Robert Young Pelton (Doubleday, $14.95, paper).

Here are three of the 13 test questions that launch this book:

* The most likely cause of accidental death for hikers in the United States is . . .

* The most dangerous wild animal in America is . . .

* When attacked, your most powerful self-defense move is . . .

The questions (and their answers, below) are indicative of the author’s attitude. Most people are needlessly anxious, he asserts.

But adventure traveler Pelton doesn’t have much patience with socialites who traipse off to “do” Everest or executives who sue when their heli-ski guides can’t keep their legs from snapping.

As he writes: “In Alaska there are about 1,500 rescues each year at a cost of more than $9 million. It’s one thing to pull a fisherman off a sinking boat, it’s another to pluck dead people off mountains who went up for a week of fun.”

If Pelton’s book sometimes reads like another “Idiot’s Guide,” remember that he thinks travel idiocy is as abundant as fanny packs at a youth hostel.

Which explains why much of his advice is common-sensical: “The first step to automobile survival is to drive a truck.” Pelton covers a lot of ground, from what to do if you’re kidnapped (sample tip: “Don’t lie. The media will do a crackerjack job of providing your net worth, job title and home address”) to how to build a snow cave or select a hotel (rule of thumb: The more methods of payment it offers, the more you pay).

Take the author’s sang-froid swagger with a grain of salt and measure his advice against other sources: For instance, he says water must be boiled for 10 minutes to be purified, while others now suggest that shorter boiling time is effective. This book is most valuable for its advice on attitude, as suggested in his answers to the quiz questions above:

* Dying in a car accident.

* The common deer.

* Running away.

TROUT UNLIMITED’S GUIDE TO AMERICA’S 100 BEST TROUT STREAMS; by John Ross (Falcon, $18.95, paper).

There are only two types of travelers in the world: those who carry a fly rod everywhere and those who don’t. The latter group will benefit from this book. The former is discouraged from reading it, as the nation’s creeks, rivers and streams are already too crowded.

More than 1,200 members of the habitat conservation group Trout Unlimited voted on this list. The book’s map shows a sideways “T” of snubbed states running from North Dakota down to Texas, and Nebraska across to Ohio. Several Southern states and Nevada also were spurned.

Otherwise, the sampling is sufficiently spread out to offer tempting detours on virtually any trip.

California, with eight “best” streams (including Mammoth’s Hot Creek and Hat Creek, farther north), is second only to Montana. Colorado and Wyoming weigh in with six rivers each, Idaho and Michigan with five and four.

Beyond descriptions of glorious scenery and tactical tips, these listings offer something else: hope. The story of Connecticut’s Housatonic River, for example, is the tale of a fishery wiped out by General Electric PCBs in the 1960s and now being rehabilitated. While ill-timed dam releases still threaten trout survival (and the fish still shouldn’t be eaten), conservationists have seen the attitudes of folks at the utilities and regulatory agencies change to the extent that this river made the list.

Quick trip

MY SAHARA ADVENTURE: 52 Days by Camel; by Lawrie Raskin with Debora Pearson (Annick Press, $14.95, paper).

Is this a kids’ book? It looks like one, with all those big color photos of the author’s trek in North Africa, playful graphics, info-boxes and engaging yet simple prose. Yet this adult couldn’t put it down.

For the record: In the Jan. 10 Books to Go, I flip-flopped the titles and my reviews of two books on fear of flying--John Cronin’s “Your Flight Questions Answered by a Jetliner Pilot” and “The Fearless Flier’s Handbook--Learning to Beat the Fear of Flying With the Experts From the Qantas Clinic” by Debbie Seaman.

Books to Go appears the second and fourth Sundays of the month.