Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht: The worst-case scenario survival handbook: Travel

By GILBERT WONG

These authors made a mint with their first effort, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, which offered survival tips from experts on everything from how to take a punch to how to do a handbrake 180-deg turn in a powerful car.

This new volume has more of the same, though it's stuff you can do away from home.

I thought how to survive in a plummeting elevator particularly appropriate to a personal phobia. The word is that you should lie on the floor on your stomach in the centre of the elevator to spread the force of impact as much as possible. It doesn't say what to do if there's more than one person in the elevator.

Clearly the authors have wasted a lot of time watching Hollywood action movies.

Chronicle Books

$34.95