The Action Hero's Handbook: How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

David Borgenicht (Author), Joe Borgenicht (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002

The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Up with the Indiana Joneses
 
For everyone who’s ever wanted to be as smooth as James Bond, as clever as Captain Kirk, or as tough as Charlie’s Angels, The Action Hero’s Handbook is the ultimate guide to the essential skills every action hero needs to survive and thrive in this dangerous but exciting world.
 
This book features dozens of real-life action hero techniques, directly from experts in the subjects at hand: FBI agents, sexologists, stuntmen, hypnotists, karate masters, criminologists, detectives, and many others. Learn how to:
 
    •  Catch a great white shark
    •  Deliver the Vulcan Nerve Pinch
    •  Spyproof your hotel room
    •  Win a fight when outnumbered
    •  Climb down Mount Rushmore National Monument
 
And dozens of other Good Guy Skills, Paranormal Skills, Fighting Skills, and Escape Skills. With meticulously researched step-by-step instructions and easy-to-follow illustrations, The Action Hero’s Handbook will get you ready for anything. Good luck—we’re all counting on you. 

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Picking up where the brilliantly successful Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series left off, the Borgenichts (David co-wrote Worst-Case) present matter-of-fact advice on how to perform James Bond-like stunts with incredible ease. They interviewed doctors, shark hunters, former prisoners, bus drivers, wedding planners, boxing coaches, skydivers, escape artists and a multitude of other experts to provide the best, most succinct tips for a variety of scenarios. The "Good Guy Skills" section is the strongest, as it explains techniques for maneuvers many readers wouldn't have a clue how to execute. There's information on interrogating a suspect, saving a patient who's flatlined, saving someone who's hanging from a cliff and spy-proofing a hotel room. The random facts are oddly intriguing: e.g., to catch a great white shark, don't chain a chunk of meat to the end of a pier; when a suspect looks to the left during an interrogation, it often means she's lying. The Borgenichts then offer counsel on situations involving love (to stop a wedding, have your speech planned ahead of time), the paranormal (the Jedi mind trick is simple manipulation) and escape (try getting on the wrong train if you need to fake out pursuers at a train station). Throughout, quotes from The Fugitive, The Shawshank Redemption and other films remind readers how one might find oneself in such predicaments. Almost practical and definitely entertaining, this is one how-to guide Clint Eastwood and Charlie's Angels would not want to be without.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

David Borgenicht lives in Philadelphia and is co-author of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook series (Chronicle Books). Joe Borgenicht lives in Salt Lake City and is the author of several nonfiction books. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• ISBN-10: 193168605X
• ASIN: B00066R4SE
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,064,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Borgenicht is the creator and co-author of the best-selling WORST CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK series. He is also the author of dozens of other books, including THE STAR TREK BOOK OF OPPOSITES and HOW TO CON YOUR KID. He is the president and publisher of Quirk Books (www.quirkbooks.com), Philadelphia-based publishers of entertaining, informative, and amusing fiction and non-fiction.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Chicks only like guys with great skills" - Napoleon Dynamite, November 14, 2005

By 

Matt (NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Action Hero's Handbook: How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills (Paperback)

This is a great "coffee table" book. Something anyone would find interesting and amusing.

The book is broken down into 5 sections:
1. Good Guy Skills
2. Love Skills
3. Paranormal Skills
4. Fighting Skills
5. Escape Skills

With each skill, the author introduces when and why an action hero will need to have the skill to follow. This portion of each section is humorous. The author then goes on to actually describe the skill, in step-by-step fashion. The instruction in this book actually comes from individuals who have great experience with the given skills. Upon seeing this book, you may not exactly expect to get official information, as it is filed in the "homor" section at most booksellers, but you are in fact getting solid, real information, which I feel makes the whole book even funnier. It's as if this is the handbook for the training of the modern real-life action hero.

It's a very amusing read - or just something to thumb through while you're waiting for your wife/girlfriend to get ready to go out.

Highly recommended.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hypnotic, March 2, 2003

By 

Jadepearl "geezer geek" (Wandering, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Action Hero's Handbook: How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills (Paperback)

What can one say, but get this book. Yeah, at first people look at you like you're a weirdo, but soon they are reading over your shoulder and can't stop especially, on the how to establish communication with extraterrestrials (man, now I totally understand Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

Be aware that there are some copies of this book that were bound incorrectly so it seems that there are a chunk of pages missing but you find them later on out of sequence. This could be annoying since you may need some of the misplaced techniques pronto such as, the aforementioned establishing contact with extraterrestrials.

It's a cool gift for anyone and it is very informative. How many books really educuate you on how to do cool things in a simple, straight-forward manner? At first you may resist but soon you are drawn to it's hypnotic, educating charm.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining AND practical, December 18, 2002

By 

Jeff Cross "His Illustriousness" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Action Hero's Handbook: How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills (Paperback)

As with the WORST-CASE SCENARIO series that Borgenicht has coauthored, this provides you with the tactics necessary to deal with assorted stereotypical movie situations that could occur in real life from experts who sat down and thought out how to do it. Some are just really farfetched but good for a laugh, like dodging MiGs and how to do Maverick's inverted taunting stunt from TOP GUN (keep about four feet of separation and make sure your vertical stabilizers don't hit), but some are useful, like how to Dirty Dance, how to train for a boxing match, how to survive being hit by a car in the middle of the street, and even how to perform the Jedi Mind Trick (a hypnosis method called "pacing and leading"). It's a good read even if you don't want to be an action hero.