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A Library of Self-Reliance
22
items Imagine there’s no internet or access to information becomes more restricted than you’re used to. Do you have hard copies of all the information you’ll need to keep you and your loved ones safe, healthy, and fed? If you assume you’ll always be able t...
Sections
4
Food
Medicine
Homesteading
Survival
Food
Sam Thayer is the GOAT of foraging. Each entry in this book comes with a little story, along with details on how to find, identify, and prepare each of the wild foods he mentions. You’ll be amazed at how many edible plants you’ve seen out and about!
The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants -- Samuel Thayer - Paperback - TikTok Shop
This topic is so near and dear to my heart. If there’s some kind of emergency in the future and we need to rely more on ourselves and less on the grocery store, you’re going to ALREADY want to have your own food growing, not wait until it’s too late
Survival Gardening by Sam Coffman [Paperback Book] - TikTok Shop
If you start growing, foraging, hunting, or fishing your own food, make sure you have a plan for storing it. This book is full of helpful diagrams and detailed instructions (plus lots of recipes!) for how to preserve what you have
A Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing & Smoking Meat, Fish & Game By Wilbur F. Eastman, Jr. - TikTok Shop
I have a LOT of books about foraging, but this is in my top 3, because the author provides not only the food uses, but also the medical uses for every plant in the book! That is super rare for foraging books.
The Forager's Guide to Wild Foods | High-Quality Images & Maps for Plant Identification | Guidelines, Recipes, Full Page Photos, Medicinal Uses - TikTok Shop
Make sure if you’re going to hunt or raise animals for food, you’re prepared for what happens next. This book is the best I’ve seen for beginners, with helpful diagrams and recipes. I especially love how it includes both domestic animals and poultry,...
Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game: Beef, Veal, Pork, Lamb, Poultry, Rabbit, Venison -- John J. Mettler, Paperback - TikTok Shop
This book is great for the beginning fisherman or fisherwoman who needs some help making sense of alllll the different lures, knots, techniques, types of fish, seasons, and bait. It has been so helpful to someone like me, who needs to know why I’m us...
Basic Fishing: A Beginner's Guide
This handy guide organizes mushrooms into top edibles, top toxics to look out for, and then by mushroom type. The one I have linked is for my region, the northeast, but there are guides for other regions as well!
Mushrooms of the Northeast: Simple Guide
Medicine
Rosemary Gladstar is the OG of herbal medicine, and this book is excellent for explaining how you can use things you already have or can grow for various kinds of medical benefits. She’s great at providing beautiful pictures and ideas for uses, too.
Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide: 33 Healing Herbs to Know, Grow, and Use -- Rosemary Gladstar - Paperback - TikTok Shop
I am crazy about this book for natural remedies. The detail and thorough explanation for each listing blew me away. Plus, there are 100 different plants listed!! If you’re going to get one book on herbal medicine, make it this one
The Herbal Apothecary: 100 Medicinal Herbs
Homesteading
As with many hobbies, gardening can become expensive if you’re not mindful. This book is organized by month, and how you can work with what’s around you to save money. Plus, this book is just so darn aesthetic. It’s full of beautiful pictures, tips f...
The Money-Saving Garden Year: A Month-By-Month Guide to a Great Garden That Costs Less -- Anya Lautenbach - Hardcover - TikTok Shop
It’s right there in the title, self-sufficiency right in your backyard! This book is a how-to guide for becoming more self reliant and taking full advantage of whatever property you have.
The Self-Sufficient Backyard | For the Independent Homesteader | Off-grid Living & Homesteading Practical DIY Projects | 266 Pages Soft Cover - TikTok Shop
This book is small, but full of first-hand, individually curated suggestions and resources for acquiring your dream property. And it’s a small, independent family author that you can support with your business 😊
How To Buy Land When You’re Broke & Build A Family Farm step guide - TikTok Shop
This book is beautiful and thoughtful, and is literally how my husband and I learned enough to get the confidence to get our first package of bees. If you want to start beekeeping, start here!!
Beekeeping for Beginners: How To Raise Your First Bee Colonies Paperback – June 25, 2019 - TikTok Shop
This is the most comprehensive book I’ve seen for anyone who wants to explore their opportunities for homesteading. It includes gardening, preserving, raising chickens and other animals, beekeeping, baking, wild plants, and so many other things. It’s...
The Backyard Homestead - By Jeanette Winterson Gardening Farm - TikTok Shop
I don’t have chickens yet, but this book makes me feel like I can do it! And you better believe when the time comes, I’ll be studying this closely
Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens
This book is small, but full of first-hand, individually curated suggestions and resources for acquiring your dream property
How To Buy Land When You’re Broke & Build A Family Farm step guide - TikTok Shop
Survival
The focus of this book is navigation and situational awareness, but in a way that sees nature as something to work with, not fight against. It might not be the most practical book in my list, but it has those wood fairy vibes 🧚
The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals - And Other Forgotten Ski -- Tristan Gooley - Paperback - TikTok Shop
If there’s ever an emergency and you need to get somewhere without knowing the way, will you be able to get there? What if there’s no power and/or internet, and you can’t use Google Maps? Get an atlas!! If you never need it for an emergency, it’s sti...
2026 Rand McNally Easy to Read Midsize Road Atlas - Rand McNally - Paperback – April 14, 2025 - TikTok Shop
Almost no one ever really wants to get caught in a violent altercation. But if violence finds you and your life is on the line, will you be prepared to take action?
When Violence Is the Answer by Tim Larkin [Paperback Book] - TikTok Shop
This book has EXCELLENT coverage for all types of survival scenarios (and bonus, it’s a female author 😊). Helpful diagrams and chock full of potentially life-saving information
Survive: The All-In-One Guide to Staying Alive in Extreme Conditions (Bushcraft, Wilderness, Outdoors, Camping, Hiking, Orienteering) by Ky Furneaux||Emily Sullivan [Paperback Book] - TikTok Shop
Another excellent book for surviving in any situation. The SAS is like the British version of the U.S. Navy Seals. You can’t go wrong with this book
SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere by John 'Lofty' Wiseman [Paperback Book] - TikTok Shop
This isn’t a survival book per se, but the author details his journey to prepare himself to flee the country if necessary. Along the way, he realizes how woefully little he knows about living without all of our modern conveniences. There are so many ...
Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by Neil Strauss [Book] - TikTok Shop