Everybody is familiar with military field manuals, and I confess that I thoroughly enjoy reading them myself. There's a lot of good information in them, even if they can be rather dry sometimes.

But there are a host of other field manuals out there as well that you may have never read and should. Plenty of them come from non-military sources, and that's what I'd like to take a harder look at today.

What are we designating as a 'field manual?'

To be classified as a field manual, a number of conditions have to be met. For starters, the book can't be a brick. It has to be readily packable into a bag to be taken out into the woods and used for in-the-field learning. Next, if it has the word 'manual' in the title, it's a bonus.

And lastly, the book has to be filled with the knowledge of how to do particular things in an easy-to-find format. You can learn a lot from Doom and Bloom's books (and I highly recommend checking them out), but they're too big to easily stuff into a backpack and head into the woods with.

For that reason, you're not going to see 400+ page handbooks listed here. We're looking for backpackable books that are filled with hands-on prepping advice that can be used easily out in the field. What are some of the best? Here are my thoughts…

(Before you delve in, be sure to check out our free QUICKSTART Guide to what to eat when the power goes out. Consider it something of an ebook field manual.)

TW-01 – Baseline Training Manual

Joe Dolio has absolutely exploded onto the scene within the survival/prepper genre, and for good reason: he offers a no-nonsense, practical approach to prepping that people have come to crave. If you're brand new to prepping and wondering where to start, I would point you towards this book first.

It's here that you'll learn what you actually need and what you actually don't. Joe also helps to lay the scene for what a societal collapse situation is actually going to look like for you and your family, helping to blast through a lot of misconceptions out there that seem to have taken root. Pick up this book and work your way through it. You'll finish much better prepared than you would have been otherwise.