Star Trek” alum and narrator Wil Wheaton perfectly matches his big and generous vocal style to the absurdly educational feel of this second installment by Randall Munroe. Once again, the cartoonist/author/roboticist/xkcd webmaster offers witty and amazingly well-researched ruminations on dozens of off-the-wall, out-of-this-universe topics. Infinitely huge numbers, complicated mathematical theories, and sizable chemical equations all sound accessible and downright entertaining when Wheaton delivers answers to questions posed by children and adults alike, such as: How tall would a billion-story building be? How many New Yorkers could a Tyrannosaurus rex eat? And what would happen if the solar system were filled with soup? Gleefully engaging and informative, this production has no hints of sarcasm, just delight for inquiring minds of all ages. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Praise for What If? 2

“Delightful. . . Randall Munroe has made a career out of sharing his joy in science and engineering. . . . This book and its predecessor inspire us to believe that, even in a vast and mysterious universe, there’s a lot we can figure out with nothing but a sharp pencil, come basic scientific knowledge and a vivid imagination.” —The Wall Street Journal

"The questions throughout What If? 2 are equal parts brilliant, gross, and wonderfully absurd and the answers are thorough, deeply researched, and great fun. . . . Science isn’t easy, but in Munroe’s capable hands, it surely can be fun." —TIME

"Picking this book up now and then enlivens life by letting you briefly consider the effects of, say, putting an indestructible 20-meter-wide glass tube all the way down to the deepest part of the ocean. Plus, Munroe’s illustrations turn stick figures and flowcharts into the stuff of existential hilarity." —NPR 

"Entertaining. . . . combines Munroe’s true research and truly funny prose with his signature stick-figure illustrations." —The Washington Post

"Perfect if you enjoy it when stuffy figures of authority crack a smile. Or if you like it when black holes form. That happens a lot." —Newsweek

"One of my favorite books of the year." —Tim Harford, Financial Times

"It's an absolute delight! It's the coolest way to learn how the world actually works." —Hank Green (on the Dear Hank & John podcast) 

“A delight for science geeks with a penchant for oddball thought experiments.” —Kirkus

Praise for Randall Munroe and What If?

“Randall Munroe is a national treasure.” —Phil Plait
 
“Extreme astrophysics and indecipherable chemistry have rarely been this clearly explained or this consistently hilarious.” —Entertainment Weekly “10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year”

“Consistently fascinating and entertaining...Munroe leavens the hard science with whimsical touches... An illuminating handbook of methods of reasoning.” —Wall Street Journal

“It’s fun to watch as Munroe tackles each question and examines every possible complication with nerdy and methodical aplomb.... The delightfully demented What If? is the most fun you can have with math and science, short of becoming your own evil genius.” —Boston Globe

Star Trek” alum and narrator Wil Wheaton perfectly matches his big and generous vocal style to the absurdly educational feel of this second installment by Randall Munroe. Once again, the cartoonist/author/roboticist/xkcd webmaster offers witty and amazingly well-researched ruminations on dozens of off-the-wall, out-of-this-universe topics. Infinitely huge numbers, complicated mathematical theories, and sizable chemical equations all sound accessible and downright entertaining when Wheaton delivers answers to questions posed by children and adults alike, such as: How tall would a billion-story building be? How many New Yorkers could a Tyrannosaurus rex eat? And what would happen if the solar system were filled with soup? Gleefully engaging and informative, this production has no hints of sarcasm, just delight for inquiring minds of all ages. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

2022-06-17
Former NASA roboticist Munroe continues his quest to answer the world’s unlikeliest questions.

Assuming you had enough fuel, how long would it take you to drive to the edge of the observable universe? If you traveled at 65 mph, writes the author, “it will take you 480,000,000,000,000,000 years…to get there, or 35 million times the current age of the universe.” How Munroe arrives at such calculations isn’t always clear, and his math doesn’t always show the work, but roll with it. He estimates that a hungry T. rex set loose on the streets of New York might be placated with 80 hamburgers—and if the dinosaur decides to devour a friend of yours instead of the proffered treat, “anyway, hey, you have 80 burgers.” Speaking of eating, can a person eat a cloud? No, writes the author, not unless you can squeeze the air out of it, and never mind whether the water within the cloud is potable. Munroe takes clear delight in his odd investigations—e.g., whether a person—or a vampire, maybe—can get drunk drinking a drunk person’s blood. The answer has to do with the dilution of ethanol, but Munroe pauses to counsel that it’s a very bad idea to drink someone else’s blood in the first instance: “I’m not a doctor, and I try not to give medical advice in my books. However, I will confidently say that you shouldn’t drink the blood of someone with a viral hemorrhagic fever.” You’ve got to like a book that blends deep dives into such matters as the nature of black holes and the mathematics of genealogy with handy pop-culture references—as when Munroe brightly likens the unfortunate Greek king Sisyphus to Hollywood stalwart Dwayne Johnson, because, of course, rocks are involved in both cases.

A delight for science geeks with a penchant for oddball thought experiments.