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Imagine that in the future you can rent time machines just as easily as you can rent a car. Paradoxes are nicely sidestepped, and you even get the handy pamphlet "1001 Fun Ways to kill Hitler". Sounds great, right? Suppose that time machine breaks down. Turns out it's easier to re-invent civilization than it is to fix said machine, and that's what this book purports to do.
This book is chock full of tidbits, like this on buttons. People wore buttons for thousands of years as ornaments. It was only fairly recently someone realized they could hold clothes closed. This is disgraceful and embarrassing. You can do better.
Scalzi's page describes this book much better than I can. Need to know which animals to domesticate? Covered. Foods to cultivate? Covered. Crop rotation? Compass? Non-sucky numbers? Forge? Birth Control? Logic? Chemistry? Steel? check, check, check, check, ...., check.
This is not a textbook, there is no math, and minimal theory on why things work. It's focused on why and how, not "how does it work?".
I got my copy from the library and, after an hour or two, ordered my own copy from Amazon. I'm sure my fellow Soylenters will also love this book.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday October 21 2018, @11:48PM
Isn't it frustrating to have taken the trouble to understand what you are doing, only to be out-sold by a guy selling bullshit?
How do you think ol Steven Krivet [duckduckgo.com] must have felt up against all the "Doctorates" pushing Rossi's ECAT? I know good and well Steven was demonstrating perfectly good paradigms as to how to verify the ECAT, and no one seemed much interested in allowing him to test the thing, as the paychecks from the investors depended on them not understanding what they were doing.
While highly paid men dressed in suits, shook hands, and signed investor's money away, neatly substituting presentation skills in lieu of knowledge of what they were doing.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]