How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems from Randall Munroe of xkcd - Hardcover

Munroe; Randall

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1473680328 ISBN 13: 9781473680326

Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2019

Synopsis

The world\x27s most entertaining and useless self\-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the million\-selling<\/b> What If?<\/i> and Thing Explainer<\/i><\/b>

Randall Munroe is . . .<\/b>

\x27Nerd royalty\x27 Ben Goldacre<\/b>

\x27Totally brilliant\x27 Tim Harford<\/b>

\x27Laugh\-out\-loud funny\x27 Bill Gates<\/b>

\x27Wonderful\x27 Neil Gaiman<\/b>

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES <\/i>BESTSELLER<\/b>

For any task you might want to do, there\x27s a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To<\/i> is a guide to the third kind of approach. It\x27s 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\x27re 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\x27re 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\x27s mantle, or launching it into the sun.

By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn\x27t just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?<\/i>, he invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To<\/i> is a delightfully mind\-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.<\/p>

About this title

About the Author

Randall Munroe<b> </b>is the creator of the webcomic xkcd and bestselling author of <i>What If?, Thing Explainer </i>and <i>xkcd: Volume 0</i>. 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.

From the Back Cover

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

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1473680328
• ISBN 13: 9781473680326
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320