The Field Guide to Knots: How to Identify, Tie, and Untie Over 80 Essential Knots for Outdoor Pursuits Spiral-bound – September 22, 2015

There are a LOT of Knot books available, and many I own. I'm thinking if you were to own ONE knot book (kinda hard to do), this one is a good one to consider. The spiral binding is a real bonus. Every time this book is used, the appreciation for a spiral binding cannot be suppressed. Oft times, there's more than one way to tie a knot. The Alpine Butterfly is one, and this book has a straight-forward and simple way to tie one. Besides knots, there's a primer on rope, knots, safety as an introduction, and at the end, a tutorial on how to keep the ends of a rope from fraying.That's invaluable. As mentioned earlier, if you just want one book on knots, this is one to seriously consider. Heck, just buy it. Can't go wrong.

For an outdoors person this is a handy guide to knots, something we use almost every day of our lives, but usually give little thought to. I gave it as a wedding gift. Why a wedding gift?It has a page about the wedding knot, or lover's knot as it is sometimes called. The advice I gave to the young couple was that tying the knot is a personal experience and just as their are many kinds of knots that serve the needs of ther person who is using the knot; their marriage may or may not be orthodox and finding the right kind of relationship to suit their needs is the key to staying married.No matter what kind of knot you may need, it's in this book with good instructions.

This could be a great book, though it's still worth buying and reading. There is a lot of info about knots and it starts out with a lot of terminology or nomenclature which is quite helpful. However, it seems like the editor must have quit or been dismissed after doing half the work. There are all kinds of weird little mistakes that crop up, after such a good start, and also sentences that are really hard to follow. Also, the illustrations could really use a lot of work. I guess photos save time (is that why they use them?) but they are quite small and sometimes it's hard to see important details. A series of line drawings would be a lot clearer. The book really suffers from the reader having to puzzle, while looking at the photos, about sequences and steps, as sometimes what's shown in the picture isn't what's being talked about.A second edition, fully edited, would be a great idea. In the process, frankly, in my opinion, there are a lot of knots in there that could be eliminated, as their "con"s are listed as "insecure" or "unstable" or prone to failure, when there are other knots no more difficult to tie that don't have those problems. Or, there are ones that are difficult to tie but don't have any evident advantages over ones that are more straightforward. After all, it's supposed to be a "field guide" not an encyclopedia, so who wants, while "in the field", to have to leaf through a bunch of bad knots?

i bought this for my firefighting course and while we only use half a dozen knots, there are many others which are clearly laid out for other purposes. easy to read and great photos to help you along to tie them

I would have liked the hard cover to be a bit closer to the dimensions of the book, or even for there to be a softer cover as just a plastic front and back that are the same dimensions as the rest, but as far as content goes, this book is amazing. The pictures are in color and the instructions are very easy to follow in my opinion. The added uses, pros, and cons are also a pretty big plus in my opinion.

I bought this for my daughter who is a Girl Scout leader. She was thrilled. I covers a lot of knots and even lays out flat so you can open it up and still see the clearly presented instructions and illustrations.

Holy crap, this is my dad's new bible. Since I gifted this to him, at least 20 three foot long pieces of rope are now hanging from his computer desk with knots, that change daily, in all of them. It has been almost 7 months since he got it and he still works on memorizing the knots. Excellent book.

Nice book. Well laid out. Comprehensive assortment of knots. The text is clear and easy to read. The author is thorough in his explanations and background behind the knots. As other reviewers have already stated, the illustrations are way too small. Some of them I can not even see the knots wrapping. Overall a good book. I did get some valuable information. I would buy it again (but only if the illustrations were enlarged). Hope the author is aware of this for next release.