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A review by mschlat
How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller by Ryan North
4.0
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.
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.