How to Invent Everything
Rebuild All of Civilization (with 96% fewer catastrophes this time)
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
***One of BBC Focus magazine's top books of 2018***
Get ready to make history better... on the second try.
Imagine you are stranded in the past (your time machine has broken) and the only way home is to rebuild civilization yourself. But you need to do it better and faster this time round. In this one amazing book, you will learn How to Invent Everything.
Ryan North -- bestselling author, programmer and comic book legend -- provides all the science, engineering, mathematics, art, music, philosophy, facts and figures required for this challenge. Thanks to his detailed blueprint, humanity will mature quickly and efficiently – instead of spending 200,000 years stumbling around in the dark without language, not realising that tying a rock to a string would mean we could navigate the entire world. Or thinking disease was caused by weird smells.
Fascinating and hilarious, How To Invent Everything is an epic, deeply researched history of the key technologies that made each stage of human history possible (from writing and farming to buttons and birth control) – and it's as entertaining as a great time-travel novel.
So if you’ve ever secretly wondered if you could do history better yourself, now is your chance to find out how.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
North (Romeo and/or Juliet) presents a witty pop science guide intended for those demanding times when one needs to create a civilization from scratch. Framed as a manual for a time traveler, the illustrated narrative begins with a series of questions in flowchart-form to help users figure out where in time they've landed: Are there plants? Are there dinosaurs? Has the Big Bang happened yet? If the traveler in question is lucky enough to have landed some 200,000 years ago, North cheerfully announces, "you could actually be the most influential person in history." Start by introducing the basics, five technologies fundamental to civilization: spoken and written language, "non-sucky" numbers (more than tally marks, and preferably including fractions and zero), the scientific method, and a calorie surplus, via agriculture and domesticating animals. The last is important, North explains, for those who don't want to spend all their time hunting and gathering food. "Civilization Pro Tips" sidebars sprinkled throughout dispense additional suggestions ("Don't forget to plant your legumes"), and wry humor keeps the discussion lighthearted. North's "survival guide" is a fun, thoughtful, and thoroughly accessible reference for curious readers, students, and world-builders, as well as wayward time travelers.
