***** The Personal Travel Safety Manual: Security for Business People Traveling Overseas. By Christopher P.P. Barnes; published by Tally Ho Consulting, 415/662-2287 (fax), www.tallyhoconsulting.com [1] (Web); 121 pages; $18.95.

Perhaps your manager has just recommended that you visit one of your firm’s out-of-town or out-of-country offices. Or maybe you’re embarking on a vacation. Either way, traveling is bound to provoke anxiety.

Some of that anxiety concerns personal security and safety, the topic taken on by Christopher Barnes in this manual. Barnes offers ideas and strategies about how to avoid becoming a target while traveling. He also urges businesses to supply employees with advisories and recommendations prior to traveling overseas.

The book is well organized and clear. It starts with the decision whether to travel at all, helping readers to conduct a preliminary security assessment on whether a trip is worth the risk.

Corporate security personnel and security consultants will find useful and interesting material throughout. An entire section discusses corporate responsibility and liability for traveling staff. Barnes advises that organizations form a crisis management team and plan for how they would deal with a crisis.

Most of the information is solid, but there are exceptions. For example, Barnes could have offered more detail on obtaining international driving permits. Strict rules govern the issuance and use of these documents, and these rules vary by country. Barnes suggests that travelers get such a permit from the American Automobile Association for a small fee. But there are two types of international driving permits, and each has limits of use in different countries. Barnes never distinguishes between them.

In a competitive market filled with manuals on travel safety, such flaws are worth noting. Still, this book has merit, especially given the presence of appendices with information on baggage, emergency cards, first aid, duplicate documents, pretravel checklists, and useful Internet addresses.

Reviewer: Kevin Cassidy is the vice president of security for Reuters America, in New York City, and a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is a member of ASIS.

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