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This book is a great reference on a lot of topics important for anyone wanting to live a more old fashioned lifestyle. The cover lists some of the topics covered just to give the reader an idea of the breadth of information. This book can help from picking land to buy through building a house, growing a garden, and delivering a baby. If you were only going to pick one book to take to start homesteading this would be a good choice.
Not only does this book help to explain the topics it also points the reader to external resources. Those resources come in the form of websites, mail order companies, and other books to reference. This list of external information is updated with newer versions of the encyclopedia to keep everything as relevant as possible. In addition to more information a lot of the external resources are also a source of supplies for the particular skill, livestock, or plant.
Unlike other books I have reviewed so far this book is definitely more of a reference instead of a sit down and read book. Sections are grouped by topic and are written to convey a large amount of information. I would recommend this as a reference for anyone interested, but not as some light reading by any stretch of the imagination.