How to Invent Everything

A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler

By: Ryan North

Narrated by: Ryan North

An NPR Best Book of 2018

"How to Invent Everything is such a cool book. It's essential reading for anyone who needs to duplicate an industrial civilization quickly." (Randall Munroe, xkcd creator and New York Times best-selling author of What If?)

The only book you need if you're going back in time

What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past...and then broke? How would you survive? Could you improve on humanity's original timeline? And how hard would it be to domesticate a giant wombat?

With this book as your guide, you'll survive - and thrive - in any period in Earth's history. Best-selling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North tells you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted - from first principles. This manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up. Deeply researched, irreverent, and significantly more fun than being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, How to Invent Everything will make you smarter, more competent, and completely prepared to become the most important and influential person ever. You're about to make history....better.

©2018 Ryan North (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Technically, we are all time travelers and we are all trapped. So, even if you happen to be scanning this blurb in what you perceive to be a 'normal' timeline, I heartily recommend you read this book cover to cover.” (Zach Weinersmith, creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and author of Soonish)

“Brilliant conceit...a slyly funny piece of popular science writing.” (Glen Weldon, NPR’s Great Reads of 2018)

“Hilarious and endlessly fascinating.... For the vast general population that might decide to trust their lives to the FC3000, this book is potentially invaluable (and mighty entertaining) one-stop-shop for everything you need to know about life, the universe, and the fly wheel.” (Christian Science Monitor)

Audiobook is fantastic

INFORMATIVE, PROFOUND AND LAUGH OUT LOUD FUNNY!!!

How is this even possible in one book??? Mr. North, if by any chance you read this review, Please Please write a follow up. Annotation? And your narration was perfect ( I usually cringe when authors read their own books) - But yours was great.

Read it

It’s about as entertaining and informative as one book can be at the same time.

Great idea, oddly executed

Read “The Knowledge” instead. Doesn’t understand basic points of biology. The “name this discovery after yourself” got old after the 2nd time, let alone the 30th.

great reading

one of my favorite books. I have the digital and paperback copy. I can't recommend this enough!

Everything I want in a book, unfortunately a lot of tables and diagrams

Ryan North kindly provides some extra material for the audiobook, but unfortunately does not make up for the fact that hearing him list the contents of a table I would scan in a few seconds any less boring.

That being said, I love everything about the content of the book itself. It just doesn’t lend itself to a listening format.

Great book!

It is a great read, let you know how a lot of things work in our world that most of them we know nothing about. And all written in a sarcastic funny way thinking you´re a time traveller inventing civilization for your own confort in the past!

Best book in the world

Wow ❕ I can listen to this again so useful I understand the world better now that has real vale so happy.

An enjoyable and witty chrononaut survival manual.

Disclaimer: In the event you are stranded in an alternate worldline this isn't the only book to bring. Although quite comprehensive in rebuilding society's technology, it misses the necessary weapons, self defense, hunting techniques, political strategy. Maybe revision 2 will fix that? Or maybe society would be better without weapons.
Joking aside, this is a great look at how we all stand on the shoulders of giants. Our technology and harnessing nature's power is explained in sometimes excruciating but humorous details for the layperson. Although the visual depictions are missing, the narrator does a great job describing them. Clearly, this is geared for rebuilding western society. Complete with the snarky "It took this long for humans to develop xxxxx!?!" Written by disgruntled employees of Chrononaut Solutions. I recommend this book to anyone looking for perspective on our modern society.

Entertaining but maybe not what you expect

Full of dad jokes and interesting history. Dont go in expecting it to just be Primitive Technology. It covers humanities greatest inventions and discoveries and their histories, from things like nutrition to the most efficient farming practices. If you were to be plopped down 50,000 years ago, you would theoretically be able to jumpstart civilization by tens of thousands of years with the info here. The narration is also really well done.

this title is accurate

Ryan North is a comedy genius. His other books are great, Dinosaur Comics, Adventure Time and Squirrel Girl are all fantastic. Here, he tackles, well, everything - explaining how the most mundane and complex things that form civilization work - just in case you are stranded after using a time machine in the distant past and may need to create that thing from scratch.
The narration is pretty good, by the author himself - and good care was taken to render the many tables and infographics on the book understandable in audio form (to some great comedy effect here and there)
overall, amazing and enlightening: I might not be able to create eveything after listening to it, but I sure understand the whole world a bit better.