There are a few that I'd recommend.
1.
98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your A__ Alive, by Cody Lundin. I list this book first because, of the ones I know, it's the likeliest to help you actually save someone's life, likely yours. This book is geared toward what is actually the most-common "survival" situation: someone gets lost/stranded out in the wilderness (very often, it's an experienced hiker, fisherman, or other outdoorsman, who has left gear behind or taken fewer precautions than normal, because, hey, it's just a SHORT hike . . . .) It's not the 2-week mountain expedition that gets you (because you plan for that); it's the "half-hour day hike" where you fall wrong and break your ankle, or get completely lost, etc. Lundin's focus is on keeping body and soul together--which often winds up meaning avoiding hypothermia or heatstroke or fatal dehydration--during a period of about 3 days while you try to get found. This means lots of focus on signaling, firemaking, etc., and very minimalist kit (since the key is what you have on you--his kit fits into a fanny pack). This book does not focus on things like how to chip stone arrowheads or build jungle huts--though Lundin seems to have done a good bit of aboriginal-living kinds of stuff himself. I'm not sure there's even much about finding food at all in this book--because, since the goal is just hanging on until you can attract the attention of a searcher, you're not going to starve even if you don't have any food at all. Oh, another thing: survival books tend to specialize in surviving where the author has done his wilderness survival. Lundin lives and does his stuff in Arizona, which has everything from sand-dune desert to pine forest to alpine permafrost within a few hours of each other--so his information is pretty broadly-applicable to most environments that aren't arctic, ocean, or jungle.
2.
The SAS Survival Guide, Collins Gem edition, by John A. "Lofty" Wiseman. Get it from Wal-Mart's online store--the brick-and-mortar Wal-Marts seem not to carry it, but the price online is $8.60 shipped. Pretty good general-purpose book. The tiny "gem" version accidentally leaves out a few things (e.g., illustrations referenced in the text), but this is more than made up for by the fact that it's just a little bigger than a pack of playing cards or cigarettes. This one you may actually keep IN your car, or survival kit.
3.
The 10 Bushcraft Books, by Richard Harry Graves. Essentially the same as Bushcraft: A Serious Guide to Survival and Camping. Both are out of print; either keep prowling the usual online used-book suppliers for copies of the latter book, or download the original former version for FREE here:
http://tions.net/CA256EA900408BD5/vwWWW/outdoor~03~000
This one has great information about how to make cordage, build jungle huts, trap animals for food--kind of low-tech wilderness living. Graves (who seems to have been involved in the Australian SAS, and to have led multiple rescue missions behind enemy lines during World War II) focuses on Australian / Indonesian / Southeast Asian - type locales, but it's a great book. Lots on knots, navigation, etc. Fun for the kids.
4.
Outdoor Survival Skills, by Larry Dean Olsen. Olsen is a Utah-based survival instructor. This book is great on primitive-living-type skills, including great material on making bows and atlatls, chipping flint arrowheads, tanning hides, preserving meat, finding water, etc. Orientation is toward the U.S. mountain West. Not as good as, say, Lundin's book for actually getting your inexperienced kid found again after he wanders off into the woods by mistake, but great for harder-core aboriginal-type stuff.
5.
Bushcraft, by Mors Kochanski. This guy is from Canada, and his book will teach a lot about serious primitive-camping-type stuff in that environment. Want to know how to dress burns with conifer-tree sap or use your Mora knife as a not-so-primitive wood plane for shaping handy implements from sticks? This is a great book for you. If you plan on your plane going down in the Everglades or the Mojave Desert, you might look elsewhere.
That's a few of them. There are many more. Oh: Alloway's book on desert survival skills seems pretty decent--its focus is on the Chihuahuan Desert, which will work well for you in, say, the Big Bend area of Texas.
Happy reading (and, better, practicing what you read, to work out the kinks.)
