Reviews

The conceit here is that this the book you need if the time machine you are using breaks down in the past and you want to recreate human civilization to a liveable (for you) level --- that is, around the early stages of the industrial revolution. So North covers everything from how to make charcoal to how to taste strange food safely to how to create and tune musical instruments so you can play the Ode to Joy. Or rather I should say that the manual writer covers all that, and North, who "transcribed" the book, adds in footnotes and bibliographic entries from our (slightly-in-the-past) time.

It's a funny read, especially when the author bemoans with great vigor just how long it took humanity to come up with inventions. E.g., we had all the ingredients for the printing press for decades if not centuries and never thought to put them together correctly. (There's another hilarious screed about the absence of large hot air balloons until the Montgolfier brothers.) So, if you have any trepidation about reading what appears to be a technical manual, don't; it's a breezy book with tons of little digressions (like the number of times basic physical laws appear in footnotes).

As a Eurogamer, I was astonished how many times jobs and duties I had seen in let's-build-up-our-civilization games (e.g., Ora et Labora or Oh My Goods!) appeared and were fleshed out. I feel like I have a much better appreciation of what went into human development, and I'm tempted to own the book just to have reference to the basic ideas. One small kvetch: I found North's prose style, as funny as it was, a little hard to take for a sustained read. But other than that, this was pure enjoyment.

shayluan's review against another edition

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1.0

As-many-stars-as-there-are-in-the-galaxy out of 5

Nope. Go back to the front page and put yourself in the mindset described in the preface.

This is singularly the most mesmerizingly entertaining and informative book I’ve read this year. The amount of work and research alone could suffocate a reader, but it’s laid out in such delicate, digestible little pieces. Alphabetically ordered, humour-filled … the pages satisfy a craving I never knew I had.

Definitely keeping this one close in case the Time Machine breaks. Thanks Ryan!

biiaanccca's review against another edition

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funny informative medium-paced

4.0

This book was hilarious and also at times informative. I feel like I was back in my middle school to high school years, but this time I was actually paying attention.

My favorite flow chart had to be: How to Tell What time Period You’re Stranded In. I spent 5-10 minutes going through every combination.

Interesting Information I Learned:

From the Five Fundamental Technologies table:

1. Spoken language

2. Written language

3. Non-sucky numbers

4. The scientific method

5. Calorie surplus

and when it was first invented, when it COULD have been invented, and this same time period, now expressed as how many colossal 500-year Roman Empires could've both risen and fallen in the huge expanse of time humanity spent sitting around not inventing this technology

From the Selective Breeding table:

1. Corn

2. Peach

3. Watermelon

and when it was first domesticated, the modern variety you used to enjoy like it wasn't even a big deal, and the incredibly disappointing ancient ancestor

The Field-Crop Rotation System
table which taught me some basic farming info, and then later on in the chapter I learned how important Legumes as a crop are
The Food Edibility test
(definitely storing these steps in the back of my mind)
The Technology Tree
showed technologies that can be invented on their own, and technologies that need other technologies to be invented first
The Useful Chemicals chapter explained each chemicals:

1. Also Known As

2. Formula

3. Appearance

4. First Sythesized When

5. Description

6. How to Produce

7. How It Can Definitely Kill You By Accident

Here’s Where Some Useful Human Parts Are and What They Do
Roman numerals
Sidebar: Why Can't You Divide by Zero?
The History Behind the Modern Grapefruit

(hint, radiation!)

The “Suicide Plant”
Useful Plants chapter

Included: origin, uses, and notes for each entry. The entries I thought were most interesting were corn, grapes, oak trees, opium poppy, potato, soybean

Domesticated Animals

The entries I thought were most interesting were cats, dogs, goats, beavers, lice, mosquitoes, horses

How Yeast is Made to Make Bread

and the microscopic animals killed in the process

CPR Songs
Sidebar: Rehydration Drink

Sections That Made Me Laugh:

The Salt Section

It explained that in areas without efficient salt production salt has become one of the world's most expensive spices, but in the modern era it's super cheap everywhere, so we just dump it on our roads whenever we want them to be slightly less icy

The definition of an Ideogram

When a collection of ideas are represented by a single picture: an image of a water drop could represent rain, but also tears or sadness. An image of sunglasses could represent extremely cool sunglasses, but also sunlight, fashion, or popularity. An image of a peach shaped so it looks like buttocks could represent either peaches, buttocks, or any number of activities humans have discovered they can perform with either

The Index

(9) Basic Nutrition: What to Eat So You Won't Die for At Least a While Longer • 107

(10) Common Human Complaints That Can Be Solved by Technology • 113

- 10.1 I'm Thirsty • 116

- 10.2 I'm Hungry • 125

- 10.3 I'm Sick • 151

The Basics of Visual Art,

Including Some Styles You Can Steal

Basic First (And in Your Case, Only) Aid

Direct Quotes I Thought Were Funny:

Exhibit A:

In regards to interacting with things in the past: “Put simply, even the most egregious time traveler cannot affect the present, but merely an alternate one created by their time traveling. Feel free to step on as many butterflies as you see fit.”

Exhibit B:

“Q: Can I give my past self lottery numbers, and then kill my past self and take their place, so that the lottery winnings go to me instead?

A: Yes. However, you may have to answer to the authorities in that time period.”

Exhibit C:

“Q: If not my past self, then whom should I visit?

A: Popular pamphlets include How to Get Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh to Paint Your Portrait for Free; Choose Your Side in the Battle of Marathon!; Join the Roanoke Colony and See What Happens; and 1001 Wacky Places to Shoot Adolf Hitler. Follow our guide, or feel free to go off-script whenever you want.”

Exhibit D: The Repair Guide

There is no repair guide. If your FC3000™ breaks down you are SOL.

Exhibit E: the sarcasm in this paragraph

“In light of these downsides, we would like to take this opportunity to remind you that it is inarguable that farming leads to calorie surpluses, which leads to specialization, which leads to innovations like apple pies, time machines, ant the latest mass-market portable music players. If you work hard, you will produce these. If you hunt and gather, you will not. Instead, you will eat bugs you find under a rock. Best of luck with your decision.”

Exhibit F: The renaming of inventions to your name, example

“This cool property of pendulums that they always take just about the same amount of time to complete a swing no matter how far back you pull the weight before letting it drop makes this a particularly easy experiment to per-form. This property was discovered by a guy named Galileo Galilei in 1602, but you're going to take the credit. It's your property now.”

Not So Great Animal Facts I Learned:

Because they breathe quickly and have high metabolic rates, many birds
die from carbon monoxide and other hazardous chemicals before people. Canaries specifically experience carbon monoxide fainting about 20 minutes before people do. If you bring a canary into the mine and monitor its level of consciousness, you'll be able to discover the presence of otherwise undetected hazardous gases while you still have time to flee.
You make silk by
boiling cocoons to kill silkworms

More Informational Sections I Liked:

In the hospital where Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis worked,
there were two maternity clinics: one had students working as midwives, while the other had medical students performing autopsies before helping with births, all without ever washing their hands. Dr. Semmelweis instituted a hand-washing routine after observing that mothers at the medical student clinic would experience dreadful vaginal infections that caused them to pass away up to 30% of the time (compared to just 5% at the midwife clinic). In both clinics, the infection-related mortality rate fell to 1%. The idea that sickness might be averted by just washing hands was deemed radical at the time because the causes of illness were believed to be unique to each patient.
The Chamberlen family was reported to own a contraption that may aid with
birthing. Therefore, the Chamberlens would require the mother to be blindfolded and would force everyone else out of the delivery room.
The first manned heavier-than-air self-powered flight was created by the
Wright brothers. After developing and patenting airplanes, Wright stopped developing new products and instead spent the majority of their time litigating rival companies as well as specific pilots who dared to operate non-Wright aircraft. The Wrights also possessed a patent in France, but its enforcement had been repeatedly stopped there, thus by January 1912, there were more than 800 pilots in France performing flights every day compared to only 90 in the United States. When the US government officially required aviation manufacturers to share their patents, the lawsuits finally came to a stop in 1917 CE, but the harm had already been done. That same year, the United States entered World War I using French-built aircraft because American aircraft were thought to be of unacceptable inferiority.
Water can be used
to treat skin conditions. A hot compress should be applied to the affected area if it is hot, painful, or oozing pus. Apply a cold compress if it hurts, itches, or exudes clear fluid.
To perform CPR,
your patient should be placed on their back while you conduct CPR. You should apply firm pressure at a rate of around 100 compressions per minute in the patient's center of the chest, between the nipples.
When a bone is shattered,
you should execute traction in position, which entails moving any broken or dislocated limb out and away before allowing it to return to its original position. In addition to reducing pain in the long run, this stops bones from healing in the wrong areas. Grab the fractured limb with both hands; the upper hand will hold it in place while the lower hand will apply downward pressure as it is slowly and gently returned to its natural position. A splint, which is any stiff material, like wood, that will hold the broken bone in place while it heals, can then be used to stabilize the lesion. They ought to fit snugly, but not so tightly as to restrict blood flow.
Blood loss that results in death is the immediate threat
posed by a wound. The blood flow will be reduced if you can lift the wound. In order for blood to start clotting and bleeding to stop, there needs to be firm pressure applied for about 20 minutes. In the event that that doesn't work, try to locate the bleeding artery and apply direct pressure with a finger to that area. A tourniquet, which is a very tight bandage, is a last resort if everything else fails. A tight tourniquet restricts the flow of blood beyond it, which stops the bleeding but, after a few hours, causes the tissues in the tourniqueted limb to die as well. Nevertheless, the person to whom the tourniqueted limb is attached has a possibility of surviving today's blood loss. Even though cauterization is a desperate, unpleasant option for bigger wounds, it is an option. You can burn the flesh closed by heating up something (wood, metal, etc.) and applying it straight to the hound's bleeding pats. As little flesh as possible should be cauterized because doing so not only hurts but also causes the wound to develop dead tissue that can serve as an infection vector. You could require stitches to repair a huge wound. Simply boil the thread and the object you're using as a needle for twenty minutes to clean them, wash your hands with soap and water, and sew the wound together by threading tiny loops of thread through both sides of it and tying them off in a knot.
After carefully rinsing a wound with clean water,
you should apply either alcohol or an iodine solution in water with a 2 percent concentration to destroy bacteria. Since honey doesn't support bacterial growth, it can be used in a pinch if you don't have either of those. After that, close the incision with stitches, unless it has been more than 12 hours; in that case, leave it unclosed and pack it with gauze to allow the wound to drain.

elenavarg's review against another edition

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Sadly, didn’t finish reading this. A fun concept, but it couldn’t keep my attention.

joshgoldberg's review against another edition

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funny informative medium-paced

4.0

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