How To
Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems from Randall Munroe of xkcd
Published on 3. September 2019
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-4736-8032-6 (ISBN)
Description
The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the million-selling What If? and Thing Explainer
Randall Munroe is . . .
'Nerd royalty' Ben Goldacre
'Totally brilliant' Tim Harford
'Laugh-out-loud funny' Bill Gates
'Wonderful' Neil Gaiman
AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.
Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a millennial by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and getting to your appointments on time by destroying the moon. And if you want to get rid of this book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapour, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the sun.
By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, he invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.
Randall Munroe is . . .
'Nerd royalty' Ben Goldacre
'Totally brilliant' Tim Harford
'Laugh-out-loud funny' Bill Gates
'Wonderful' Neil Gaiman
AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.
Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a millennial by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and getting to your appointments on time by destroying the moon. And if you want to get rid of this book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapour, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the sun.
By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, he invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.
Reviews / Votes
Ridiculous, delightful and, damn it, educational * Sunday Times (Culture) * A pure delight, a salty-sweet mixture of hard science and bonkers whimsy * Boing Boing * Extremely accurate and often amusing answers to everyday issues * Daily Mail * Consistently fascinating and entertaining * Wall Street Journal * The creator of the popular, extremely excellent webcomic xkcd cleverly illustrates a guide of complicated solutions to simple tasks as common as digging a hole * USA Today * [How To] tackles problems from the mundane-such as how to move to a new house-to those that may trouble a mad scientist building her first lava moat. The solutions are often hilariously, and purposefully, absurd. Embedded in these solutions, however, is solid scientific, engineering, and experimental understanding . . . [for] anyone who appreciates science-based solutions to life's problems * Science Magazine * A witty, educational examination of 'unusual approaches to common tasks' . . . generously laced with dry humor . . . Munroe's comic stick-figure art is an added bonus. . . . Apart from generating laughter, the book also manages to achieve his serious objective: to get his audience thinking * Publishers Weekly, starred review * A gleefully nerdy hypothetical instruction book for armchair scientists of all ages * Booklist * An enjoyable treat for fans of logic puzzles, brain hacking, kaizen, mad science, and other forms of mental stimulation * Kirkus Reviews * Required reading across the world * New York Times * A great deal of fun * The Economist * Fascinating * Guardian * A pure delight, a salty-sweet mixture of hard science and bonkers whimsy. * BOING BOING * Extremely accurate and amusing answers to everyday issues * DAILY MAIL * Consistently fascinating and entertaining * WALL STREET JOURNAL * The creator of the popular, extremely excellent webcomic xkcd cleverly illustrates a guide of complicated solutions to simple tasks as common as digging a hole. * USA TODAY * How To tackles problems from the mundane-such as how to move to a new house-to those that may trouble a mad scientist building her first lava moat. The solutions are often hilariously, and purposefully, absurd. Embedded in these solutions, however, is solid scientific, engineering, and experimental understanding . . . [for] anyone who appreciates science-based solutions to life's problems. * SCIENCE * A witty, educational examination of 'unusual approaches to common tasks' . . . generously laced with dry humor. . . Munroe's comic stick-figure art is an added bonus. . . . Apart from generating laughter, the book also manages to achieve his serious objective: to get his audience thinking. * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review * A gleefully nerdy hypothetical instruction book for armchair scientists of all ages * BOOKLIST * An enjoyable treat for fans of logic puzzles, brain hacking, kaizen, mad science, and other forms of mental stimulation * KIRKUS REVIEWS *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
John Murray Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 202 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
450 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4736-8032-6 (9781473680326)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Randall Munroe
How To
Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems from Randall Munroe of xkcd
E-Book
09/2019
1st Edition
John Murray
€6.49
Available for download
Person
Randall Munroe is the creator of the webcomic xkcd and bestselling author of What If?, Thing Explainer and xkcd: Volume 0. Randall was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, and grew up outside Richmond, Virginia. After studying physics at Christopher Newport University, he got a job building robots at NASA Langley Research Center. In 2006 he left NASA to draw comics on the internet full time, and has since been nominated for a Hugo Award three times. The International Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after him: asteroid 4942 Munroe is big enough to cause mass extinction if it ever hits a planet like Earth.