Spotting Danger Before It Spots You: Build Situational Awareness to Stay Safe

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Product Details
Price
$18.95  $17.62
Publisher
YMAA Publication Center
Publish Date
Pages
172
Dimensions
5.9 X 8.9 X 0.5 inches | 0.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781594397370

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About the Author

Gary Quesenberry is a US Army veteran and a career Federal Air Marshal. As a defensive tactics trainer for Federal and civilian services, he has devoted his life to studying the areas of violence and predatory behavior. Gary serves as the CEO of Quesenberry Personal Defense Training and has developed numerous basic and advanced level training courses focused on mental toughness, marksmanship, and defensive tactics. As a competitive pistol shooter, Gary has been featured on the History Channel's hit television series Top Shot - Season 3 and Top Shot All-Stars. He has an extensive background in domestic and foreign counter-terror training and has worked in both the private and corporate sectors to help educate others on the importance of situational awareness, and personal safety. Gary resides in Hillsville, Virginia.

Since 2003, Dave Grossman has collected literally millions and millions of frequent flyer miles and hotel points. He's flown around the world in first class seats that would cost $29,000 using frequent flyer miles and a few bucks in tax. And he's stayed in some of the finest hotels - often for free, thanks to miles and points! Dave's hosted two seminars on miles and points at South By Southwest in Austin, and he's been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and Travel + Leisure, published on Bravo TV's JetSet website, and has spoken on the Condé Nast Traveler podcast series. He also writes the blog MilesTalk.com which helps readers learn how to earn and spend miles and points to travel better.
Reviews

"A work that is greater than the sum of its parts, and unlike anything else available on this critical topic. This book stands out because of Gary's incredibly thorough and comprehensive presentation of situational awareness, a life-saving ability to spot danger in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

I have read many books on the subject, and I can honestly say that no one has even come close to matching Spotting Danger Before It Spots You when it comes to teaching situational awareness. This fundamental skill is key to surviving and overcoming the array of threats that confront the average citizen in the world today.

Armed with the skills taught in this book, you will not need to live in fear; you will live instead in a state of awareness and readiness.

--Dave Grossman, Lt. Colonel, US Army (ret.), author of On Killing, On Combat, and Assassination Generation, Director, Killology Research Group

A federal air marshal offers a guide to observing and evaluating your surroundings.

Quesenberry's nonfiction debut draws on his 19 years of experience as an air marshal, a job that gives him "a first-class ticket into the world of covert surveillance, surveillance detection, and self-defense." In hundreds of settings, he has been the person paid and expected to know what's going on and to anticipate and counter any potential dangers. By contrast, as he quite rightly points out, most people relax themselves into a false sense of security by thinking "nothing will ever happen here" or "that would never happen to me." But even the author's cursory listing of some of the 21st century's worst outbreaks of terrorist violence all over the world should make it clear to readers that they can no longer afford such attitudes--they must take a large part of their safety into their own hands. Quesenberry's aim in his book is not only to change those attitudes, but also to arm readers with the basic perception shifts that will help them guard their own well-being. The foremost of these is "situational awareness," which the author describes as "the ability to identify and process environmental cues to accurately predict the actions of others." The adverb is crucial: Readers are gently admonished to discard their reflexive prejudices and assumptions and "identify and process" what they're actually seeing in any environment (as the author points out, preset perceptions can sometimes blind a person to reality). In quick, sharply paced chapters full of well-chosen anecdotes and bulleted points, Quesenberry instructs readers on how to expand their awareness of the people and things in their immediate area, how to assume an aggressive mindset in order to anticipate how actual predators think, and even the basics of one-on-one self-defense. Much of what the author relates is elementary in nature--travel advisories all over the world urge some variation of situational awareness--but the clarity of this manual makes it stand out.

A vigorous and memorable primer on heightening awareness to prevent or counter danger.

--KIRKUS Reviews


"A work that is greater than the sum of its parts, and unlike anything else available on this critical topic. This book stands out because of Gary's incredibly thorough and comprehensive presentation of situational awareness, a life-saving ability to spot danger in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

I have read many books on the subject, and I can honestly say that no one has even come close to matching Spotting Danger Before It Spots You when it comes to teaching situational awareness. This fundamental skill is key to surviving and overcoming the array of threats that confront the average citizen in the world today.

Armed with the skills taught in this book, you will not need to live in fear; you will live instead in a state of awareness and readiness.

-Dave Grossman, Lt. Colonel, US Army (ret.), author of On Killing, On Combat, and Assassination Generation, Director, Killology Research Group

A federal air marshal offers a guide to observing and evaluating your surroundings.

Quesenberry's nonfiction debut draws on his 19 years of experience as an air marshal, a job that gives him "a first-class ticket into the world of covert surveillance, surveillance detection, and self-defense." In hundreds of settings, he has been the person paid and expected to know what's going on and to anticipate and counter any potential dangers. By contrast, as he quite rightly points out, most people relax themselves into a false sense of security by thinking "nothing will ever happen here" or "that would never happen to me." But even the author's cursory listing of some of the 21st century's worst outbreaks of terrorist violence all over the world should make it clear to readers that they can no longer afford such attitudes-they must take a large part of their safety into their own hands. Quesenberry's aim in his book is not only to change those attitudes, but also to arm readers with the basic perception shifts that will help them guard their own well-being. The foremost of these is "situational awareness," which the author describes as "the ability to identify and process environmental cues to accurately predict the actions of others." The adverb is crucial: Readers are gently admonished to discard their reflexive prejudices and assumptions and "identify and process" what they're actually seeing in any environment (as the author points out, preset perceptions can sometimes blind a person to reality). In quick, sharply paced chapters full of well-chosen anecdotes and bulleted points, Quesenberry instructs readers on how to expand their awareness of the people and things in their immediate area, how to assume an aggressive mindset in order to anticipate how actual predators think, and even the basics of one-on-one self-defense. Much of what the author relates is elementary in nature-travel advisories all over the world urge some variation of situational awareness-but the clarity of this manual makes it stand out.

A vigorous and memorable primer on heightening awareness to prevent or counter danger.

-KIRKUS Reviews