A review by obscuredbyclouds
How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler by Ryan North

3.0

This is a "guidebook on reinventing elements of modern civilization for a stranded time-traveller" . I thought the premise was fun and I loved it when I started, but I found it quite a difficult book to read from start to finish. The gimmick grew a little stale and then you are left with short bite-sized explanations of all kinds of stuff. And I love stuff! I'm genuinely fascinated by everything when you really dive into it. But since the chapters were all quite short and the explanations were superificial, they fell into two categories for me: a) too difficult to understand and follow - all the "how to build your own XYZ machine" fell into this category for me and b) I already know quite a lot about the topic and was irritiated by the way it was described. There's one page on philosophy that has a single line of jokey explanations for different philosophies all based around "high fiving", and while I thought some of them were funny, the one for consequentialism wasn't just mean-spirited, it was wrong.

So, yes, a somewhat fun book about all kinds of stuff, but it mostly served me as a reminder of what I don't know much about. More books on mechanics it is then.