What If?

Author: Randall Munroe
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544272994
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have an enormous, dedicated following, as do his deeply researched answers to his fans' strangest questions. The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical: - What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool? - Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? - What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City? - Are fire tornadoes possible? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and wit, gleefully and accurately explaining everything from the relativistic effects of a baseball pitched at near the speed of light to the many horrible ways you could die while building a periodic table out of all the actual elements. The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with the most popular answers from the xkcd website. What If? is an informative feast for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical.

How To

Author: Randall Munroe
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525537090
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “How To will make you laugh as you learn…With How To, you can't help but appreciate the glorious complexity of our universe and the amazing breadth of humanity's effort to comprehend it. If you want some lightweight edification, you won't go wrong with How To.” —CNET “[How To] has science and jokes in it, so 10/10 can recommend.” —Simone Giertz The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, the bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer, and What If? 2, coming September 13, 2022 For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable 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 90's kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of the 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 vapor, 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?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and fun illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

Xkcd

Author: Randall Munroe
Publisher: Xkcd
ISBN:
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 124

Book Description
Collection of strips from Xkcd, a free webcomic.

Thing Explainer

Author: Randall Munroe
Publisher: Dey Street Books
ISBN: 9780544668256
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The creator of the popular webcomic "xkcd" uses line drawings and just ten hundred common words to provide simple explanations for how things work, including microwaves, bridges, tectonic plates, the solar system, the periodic table, helicopters, and other essential concepts.

If You're Reading This, It's Too Late

Author: Pseudonymous Bosch
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316041033
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
Beware! Dangerous secrets lie between the pages of this book. OK, I warned you. But if you think I'll give anything away, or tell you that this is the sequel to my first literary endeavor, The Name of This Book is Secret, you're wrong. I'm not going to remind you of how we last left our heroes, Cass and Max-Ernest, as they awaited intiation into the mysterious Terces Society, or the ongoing fight against the evil Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais. I certainly won't be telling you about how the kids stumble upon the Museum of Magic, where they finally meet the amazing Pietro! Oh, blast! I've done it again. Well, at least I didn't tell you about the missing Sound Prism, the nefarious Lord Pharaoh, or the mysterious creature born in a bottle over 500 years ago, the key to the biggest secret of all. I really can't help myself, now can I? Let's face it - if you're reading this, it's too late.

If I Had Two Wings: Stories

Author: Randall Kenan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324005475
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
Finalist for 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction Finalist for the 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Mingling the earthy with the otherworldly, these ten stories chronicle ineffable events in ordinary lives. In Kenan’s fictional territory of Tims Creek, North Carolina, an old man rages in his nursing home, a parson beats up an adulterer, a rich man is haunted by a hog, and an elderly woman turns unwitting miracle worker. A retired plumber travels to Manhattan, where Billy Idol sweeps him into his entourage. An architect who lost his famous lover to AIDS reconnects with a high-school fling. Howard Hughes seeks out the woman who once cooked him butter beans. Shot through with humor and seasoned by inventiveness and maturity, Kenan riffs on appetites of all kinds, on the eerie persistence of history, and on unstoppable lovers and unexpected salvations. If I Had Two Wings is a rich chorus of voices and visions, dreams and prophecies, marked by physicality and spirit. Kenan’s prose is nothing short of wondrous.

2: How Will You Create Something Beautiful Together?

Author: Dan Zadra
Publisher: Compendium Publishing & Communications
ISBN: 9781932319958
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
One the most meaningful and inspiring gifts any couple could wish for. If you believe life was meant to be shared, here are priceless stories, ideas, insights, questions and adventures that will touch your heart and lift your relationship to new heights. The perfect gift to celebrate a new romance, weddings, anniversaries or Valentines Day

What If? II

Author: Robert Cowley
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780425186138
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Book Description
What if Lincoln didn't abolish slavery? What if an assassin succeeded in killing FDR in 1933? This volume presents 25 intriguing "what if..." scenarios by some of today's greatest historical minds-including James Bradley, Caleb Carr, James Chace, Theodore F. Cook, Jr., Carlos M.N. Eire, George Feifer, Thomas Fleming, Richard B. Frank, Victor Davis Hanson, Cecelia Holland, Alistair Horne, David Kahn, Robert Katz, John Lukacs, William H. McNeill, Lance Morrow, Williamson Murray, Josiah Ober, Robert L. O'Connell, Geoffrey Parker, Theodore K. Rabb, Andrew Roberts, Roger Spiller, Geoffrey C. Ward, and Tom Wicker.

What If You & Me

Author: Roni Loren
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 149269326X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
New York Times and USA Today bestseller Roni Loren blends heat and heart in this emotionally charged story of: A frightened woman longing to break free A wounded man searching for his purpose An unexpected friendship turned sizzling hot connection And an emotional climax that'll have them both learning to let go The world can be a scary place. At least, that's what Andi Lockley's anxiety wants her to believe. It doesn't help that she narrowly escaped a dangerous man years ago, or that every relationship since has been colored with that lingering fear. But things are better now—she's channeling everything into her career as a horror novelist and true crime podcaster, and her next book may be the breakthrough she needs. If only her grumpy new neighbor would stop stomping around at all hours of the night. Former firefighter Hill Dawson can't sleep. After losing part of his leg in a rescue gone wrong, he's now stuck in limbo. He needs to figure out what he's supposed to do with his life, and he can't let himself get distracted by the pretty redhead next door. But when someone breaks into Andi's place, Hill can't stop himself from rushing in to play the hero. Soon, a tentative bond forms between the unlikely pair. But what starts out as a neighborly exchange quickly turns into the chance for so much more...if Andi can learn to put aside her fear and trust in herself—and love—again. Readers Rave About Books By Roni Loren: "Phenomenal."—LORELEI JAMES, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author "Unforgettable."—KRISTEN CALLIHAN, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author "Unique, swoony, and lively."—SARINA BOWEN, USA Today bestselling author "Don't let this book get away!"—M. O'KEEFE, USA Today bestselling author "A must-read."—Publishers Weekly STARRED Review for The One You Fight For

The Book of Two Ways

Author: Jodi Picoult
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 1984818368
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 468

Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light comes a “powerful” (The Washington Post) novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong. Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, in which she helps ease the transition between life and death for her clients. But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a career Dawn once studied for but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made. After the crash landing, the airline ensures that the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation to wherever they want to go. The obvious destination is to fly home, but she could take another path: return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways—the first known map of the afterlife. As the story unfolds, Dawn’s two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried with them. Dawn must confront the questions she’s never truly asked: What does a life well lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices . . . or do our choices make us? And who would you be if you hadn’t turned out to be the person you are right now?