Book Review – What If
By Randell Munroe
Pages – 320 pages
Publisher – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
My Rating – 5 out of 5 stars
Title of the Book
The book cover and the subheading that follows attracted my attention while deciding what to pick next for reviewing for you all. The cover of the book said – ‘Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions ‘. So like any sane and crazy person, I picked this book.
What is this book ‘What If’ about?
‘What If’ by Randell Munroe is a non-fiction book that explores multiple questions from different fields of science when put in context with weird hypothetical questions like what will happen if the sun disappeared. These questions are worrying and strange and weird yet satisfying to know their answers about. Along with the weird hypothetical answers to these questions, the author has also presented us with stick-figure drawings of these situations. This is an extremely engaging book with every page filled with weird and curious questions.
Writing Style and Book Review
The writing style is super easy to read, supported by the stick figure data-driven cartoons. There are pure mathematics and calculations as well as an easy simple statement explaining what will actually happen even if we didn’t do the calculations. Being a book of hypothetical questions, one might classify this as useless but wait before you pass that judgment. The author has done the research properly with multiple sources and different resources. You cannot classify this as an absurd collection because it really answers those questions scientifically.
Why should we listen to this person?
RANDALL MUNROE is a former NASA roboticist. He is the creator of the webcomic xkcd and the author of xkcd: volume 0. The International Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after him; asteroid 4942 Munroe is big enough to cause a mass extinction if it ever hits a planet like Earth. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
So, he is not just a nut head trying to drown the earth in absurdity, but a former NASA roboticist. You gotta give him that.
My Opinion and Conclusion to the Book Review:
I absolutely loved this book. There are so many questions that I had thought about asking but Google never gave me any satisfying answer. Also, several other questions in the book helped me expand my curiosity and better understand the science of our Earth. The topics ranged from atmospheric science to light and sound to chemical elements to soul mates.
I will give this book 5 out of 5 stars. If you are interested in scientific theories and love to read absurd questions, then this is the perfect book for you. You will find a collection of scientific explanations to those absurd questions to satisfy your curiosity. Want more? There is part 2 coming soon!
What’s More?
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Thank you for reading this book review till the end. If you enjoyed reading this, you might also enjoy:
The Book Review of Die With Zero
Book Review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun