How to Invent Everything

Rebuild All of Civilization (with 96% fewer catastrophes this time)

Ryan North

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A geeks’ manual for improving human history, for fans of What If? and The Worst Case Scenario Handbook.

***One of BBC Focus magazine's top books of 2018***

Get ready to make history better... on the second try.

Imagine you are stranded in the past (your time machine has broken) and the only way home is to rebuild civilization yourself. But you need to do it better and faster this time round. In this one amazing book, you will learn How to Invent Everything.Ryan North -- bestselling author, programmer and comic book legend -- provides all the science, engineering, mathematics, art, music, philosophy, facts and figures required for this challenge. Thanks to his detailed blueprint, humanity will mature quickly and efficiently – instead of spending 200,000 years stumbling around in the dark without language, not realising that tying a rock to a string would mean we could navigate the entire world. Or thinking disease was caused by weird smells.

Fascinating and hilarious, How To Invent Everything is an epic, deeply researched history of the key technologies that made each stage of human history possible (from writing and farming to buttons and birth control) – and it's as entertaining as a great time-travel novel.

So if you’ve ever secretly wondered if you could do history better yourself, now is your chance to find out how.

Published: 1 October 2018
ISBN: 9780753552568
Imprint: Virgin Books
Format: Hardback
Pages: 464
RRP: $45.00

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About the author

Ryan North

Ryan North is the (New York Times bestselling, Eisner-award winning) creator of Dinosaur Comics, the co-editor of the Machine of Death series, and the author of To Be or Not To Be, the choose-your-own-path version of Hamlet! He has written the "Adventure Time" comic and writes "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" for Marvel Comics, who you might know from their movies about an iron man.

He lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife Jenn and his dog Noam Chompsky.

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Praise for How to Invent Everything

A hilarious and practical guide
Atlas Obscura

A brilliant conceit ... a slyly funny piece of popular science writing
Glen Weldon, NPR’s Great Reads of 2018

North is incredibly funny, so you’ll be entertained while inventing fundamental technology for your fellow, albeit less-developed, man ... Avoid the pitfalls of our ancestors with this handy guide
BookPage

whip-smart and hilarious . . . Combine that humour, intelligence and style with the history of human technology and you’ve got How to Invent Everything
Winnipeg Free Press