This book should have been entitled "My Daddy issues and how I AM SO just as much a man as he was." Any actual insights into survival come from the facts of the anecdotes and case-studies, certainly not from the author's self-congratulatory pseudo-philosophy.In the end the question of the title - "Who lives, who dies, and why", never gets answered, and the appendix entitled "The Rules of Adventure" contains no insights that anyone with garden-variety common sense doesn't already know.I would not recommend this book for anyone interested in any real study of survival and survivors.