Book review: How To (Randall Munroe)

Yesterday, I gave a brief review of Randall Munroe's book What If?. To recap, Munroe is the person responsible for bringing us the online comic XKCD, and the book was at least as funny as anything you can find at XKCD, and a useful diversion from the books I typically read and review. That would be a good way to also describe Munroe's more recent (2019) book How To. The subtitle captures the flavour of the book: "Absurd scientific advice for common real-world problems".

What sort of real-world problems? Some of the highlights include: how to dig a hole; how to mail a package, and how to charge your phone. Don't be fooled by the mundane nature of the questions. When a discussion of digging a hole to find buried treasure quickly diverges into open pit mining, you know that you're reading a book along similar lines to What If?.

My personal favourite section was, how to build a lava moat. Whether you're trying to keep out burglars, ants, or pesky neighbours, or simply want a epically glowing red-hot property line, a lava moat may be for you. Of course, there are plenty of real-world challenges to having a moat filled with lava surrounding your house, so this book will become your go-to reference guide.

Munroe also tells us about the US government's war on beer. It's not what you think - the government carefully placed bottles of beer at various angles and distances from a nuclear test, to see whether the beer would be drinkable afterwards (I guess it's useful to know if you can still get drunk after a nuclear apocalypse?).

Like his other book, Munroe does make quite a bit of use of science (it is his background, after all). One quote really sums up his approach: "I really love that we can ask physics ridiculous questions like, "What kind of gas mileage would my house get on the highway?" and physics has to answer us. That pretty much summed up my approach to physics too, as I discussed yesterday.

So, this is another book that I highly recommend. Read it back-to-back with What If? for a double-dose of enjoyment. Or add in Munroe's forthcoming book What If? 2, due for release later this month, for a triple-dose!