The Lost Ways Book – Does it Live Up to the Hype?
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We saw “The Lost Ways” by Claude Davis being advertised widely and purchased a copy. It has a a few interesting items, and a lot of recipes. Overall we do not recommend it. We’ll explain why, and share the books that we prefer.
Table of contents
The Lost Ways Book Review
The Lost Ways books touts itself as a survival book, teaching you how to live like a pioneer or Native American. In reality, it reads more like a collection of blog posts, with modern technology sprinkled throughout.
Overall the Lost Ways book is not a good book. We recommend Carla Emery’s The Encyclopedia of Country Living instead. The Encyclopedia of Country Living is cheaper than the Lost Ways.
You can read our Review of The Encyclopedia of Country Living.
PROS: We liked the information about the sheriffs, smokehouse and root cellar chart, but it needed about 40 more items like these to compete with Carla’s book.
CONS: Unfortunately the bad far outweighs the good. The book is incomplete, inconsistent, and definitely not “off grid”. Immersion blenders do not belong in a book claiming to be teaching “the old ways”. It also recommends some things that could downright dangerous.
The Lost Ways is about twice the price of the Encyclopedia of Country Living, with less than half as many pages. The Encyclopedia of Country living is also a very information dense book in comparison. Meaning, there is far more information on each page of the Encyclopedia than the lost ways.
So although the Lost Ways book is okay, it is not on our recommended list. It needs more information on construction/building, skinning, and other traditional skills.
For about the same price, you could get Emery’s book AND another one and have far more value. (See The Best Homesteading Books list for more of our favorites.)
Who is Claude Davis?
After this review was originally published, we took a closer look at “Claude Davis” and the team behind the Lost Ways series of books. It appears that Claude doesn’t actually exist, and is simply a registered trademark. “The name(s), portrait(s), and/or signature(s) shown in the mark identifies Claudiu Giurgi, whose consent(s) to register is made of record.”
On the about page of askaprepper dot com, it describes the supposed background of Mr. Davis, yet I can’t seem to find him anywhere else on the internet. The about page is about a mindset, not an individual, aimed toward their target customer. There are no details, like education or places of employment. He doesn’t teach or present, he only seems to sell books and prepper content.
If we look on the privacy policy page of Askaprepper dot com, we find that the site is owned by Global Brother SRL. Further digging reveals that Global Brother SRL is registered in Romania. We have no beef against international business, but we feel it is inappropriate to present yourself as being from the United States while working from Europe.
WARNING
If you choose to purchase the “Lost Ways” book, be careful with the checkout process. It is easy to accidentally order more than one copy or order bundles or order the electronic version and not get the paper printed copy.
Also, since we published this review originally, we’ve had readers leave comments indicating that they paid for the book, but never received it. Purchase at your own risk.
See also “The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies Review – Is it Worth the Money?“
Recommended Alternative Books
Our short list of preparedness books includes the following:
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- Carla Emery’s Encyclopedia of Country Living (COMPREHENSIVE BOOK)
- The Homesteader’s Herbal Companion
- The Boy Scouts Handbook (1911 version)
- SAS Survival Handbook
- Where there is no doctor
- Where there is no dentist
- Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America
- Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat, and Pork: The Comprehensive Photographic Guide to Humane Slaughtering and Butchering
- and if you are really focused on medical prepping, Lange Medical books (for reference) our cardiac surgeon friend recommends these – Surgery, Ortho, Pediatrics and so on
You can also access electronic copies of out of print or older books at books.google.com. Some of them are quite good, including:
- Original Boy Scout Handbook (free eBook)
- Henley’s Recipe Book (free ebook of how to make darn near everything)
More Homesteading Information
You can access our homesteading articles, all sorted by category, on the Common Sense Homesteading page.
Opinion of Recent Lost Ways Advertisements
One the reasons we wrote this review is the “over the top ads” the Lost Ways book team is putting out. One of their ads features wild lettuce as a pain reliever. The instructions in the Lost Ways book for making wild lettuce extract are likely to produce a truly putrid brew and could actually be dangerous.
If you want to learn more about how to identify and safely use wild lettuce, see, “Wild Lettuce – Sleep Aid and Pain Reliever – Weekly Weeder #24“.
Another ad is for hardtack, where they tout it as a “superfood”. Hardtack is flour, water, and salt, baked until it’s bone dry. The reason there was hardtack left from the Civil War is because, to quote Crocodile Dundee, “Well, you can live on it, but it tastes like sh*t.”
If you want information about storing food, please see:
We also have over 100 articles on gardening, listed by category on the Gardening Index Page, and dozens of articles on Home Food Preservation.
Related Articles
This post was written by August Neverman IV. August has a strong background in emergency preparedness. He served on several emergency preparedness teams during his tenure at Brown County WI Government, the Medical College of Wisconsin, HSHS, a 13-hospital system and emergency response training during his time with the Air Force and Air National Guard. Learn more about August.
Great review. I had considered buying The Lost Book but never did. I have an old copy of Carla’s book. The Encyclopedia of Country Living (1994). Which I have enjoyed. But not for some time. Perhaps it’s now time to enjoy it again.
The only animals we have are chickens. Which is enough for us. I am 75 years old. And I live in Newfoundland, Canada
The Lost Ways book has an amazing marketing machine that makes it sound much more useful than it is.
Carla’s book is always an interesting read.
Thank you so much for this information. I was in the process of ordering this book and I saw your post on google and from there I did more research and realized this was not what it seemed.
You’re welcome. Not all parts of the book are bad, but it reads like it was assembled in a hurry, and some information is not quite right.
Thank you for your help I remember my grandma mentioning things she was born in 1906 In the Oklahoma territory She moved to Texas in a wagon pulled by mule team
But all of her knowledge is gone I even lost some recipes that I loved
It would be interesting to see how her and her parents did things
You might try looking up historical societies or accounts from that area. Sometimes you get lucky enough to discover some written records that are helpful. The Lost Ways people just cobble together generic information to make a quick buck.
There may be some things around the site that are relevant, too, as we include both old and new methods. There are articles on topics like rendering fats, saving seeds, food preservation without electricity, and so on.
Whoever the actor is that plays Claude Davis certainally comes across as a “grandfatherly type” and catches your interest with talk of our forefathers and the old days.
I have the first “Lost Ways” book and the information in it is ok, but there does need to be more.
One article that comes to mind is the one about ammunition and how our forefathers never ran out but nowhere in this book does it tell about an endless supply or where to aquire it, just reloading it.
Since I’ve already purchased this book I’ll keep it and use what info I can from it but I’m thinking about ordering the “Encylopedia of Country Living” and see how good it is.
They have an excellent marketing team. The original actor hired to play Claude Davis was a middle aged man with dark hair, no beard, and sunglasses, but apparently the grandfatherly gentlemen converted sales better.
Most homesteading books have little to no information on firearms and ammunition. If that’s a topic of interest, the book Prepper’s Home Defense has a reasonable discussion on it from a preparedness standpoint. It’s available in paperback, or free on kindle unlimited.
The Encyclopedia of Country Living has a lot more information than the Lost Ways book.
Ordered December 4th. It was some kind of special sale. Never received the books.
Sorry they haven’t sent the books. Is there any way to cancel your order and get your money back?
Well thank you for the information. That is probably why my lost ways never showed up.
Sorry about that, but unfortunately many people have had bad experiences with the company.
I read a FB ad a couple of years ago about the Lost Ways, and it sounded genuine and appealing, but I had just never goten around to ordering. I have a day off today and ordering that book was on my list. Strangely, or serendipidously, I stumbled across your site and the cautions about how incomplete the book is and several instances of it not arriving to the purchaser’s home. I appreciate all the input and the references to other books that you consider to have greater and more valuable content. Thank you.
The company is very good at marketing and has hired many paid reviewers who are also affiliates for the book, so I suspect that influences the reviews.
I am an amazon affiliate, so I do earn from purchases through my links, but I’ve purchased the other books I recommend and we have them in our home library. We are avid readers.
Claude Davis’s photo is on Amazon.com with the books. He doesn’t look like the guy in the promotional video who resembles Dumbledore.
That would be because both of those individuals are paid actors, but it’s a great story for selling books.
Thank you for this very informative read concerning The Lost Ways, as I was about to purchase it until I read this and seen the books size in comparison to country living. I am appalled. Now I’d like to know was Dr. Nicole Apelin using the same publisher being that Claud Davis’s name is on the book as well.. (The Lost book of Herbal Remedies) it’s a bit confusing..
Yes, the books with Dr. Nicole’s name on them have been created by the same company as the “Claude Davis” books. That company is based in Romania. They have a series of books with a similar theme and marketing strategy.
I watched two video ads on Youtube from “Claude Davis”. In one video (advertising The lost ways book) it was an old man that said “I’m Claude Davis”. In another video (advertising the 70 off grid projects book) it was a young man who said his name is Claude Davis. I wonder if he doesn’t exist??
He doesn’t exist. He’s a made up character the company from Romania thought would appeal to ignorant American customers.
Just stumbled on to your website. I too, was thinking of purchasing Lost. Your review and comments convinced me to skip it. So far I really like what I see on your site. Keep up the good work.
There are better books, especially for the price. Lots of folks having delivery issues, too.
Thanks for the words of encouragement.
The photograph of the books side by side is telling. This is a typical web scam where the advertiser/ scammer makes something look much more substantial than it actually is. If one tries to use the very thin Lost Ways book as a resource they will be “lost”. One would not just need to read most of the books in the stack pictured in the article but also physically practice the concepts regularly to obtain the necessary skills and independent resourcefulness that the pioneers adapted at an early age.
People just want to believe that there’s a simple solution.
Thank you
I wish I had found THIS site before I ordered and never received “The Lost Ways” books. I certainly hope others find this site and read through the many comments as a warning to not throw their good money away.
I will definitely tell my family and friends to check out this site.
Thank y’all for trying to warn folks about those charlatans.