Interview with Ryan North, author of How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain
Ryan North, author of How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain recommends a great set of books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Ryan's book:
Review from Book Depository:
A book this informative should be a crime!
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How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain
Taking over the world is a lot of work. Any supervillain is bound to have questions: What’s the perfect location for a floating secret base? What zany heist will fund my wildly ambitious plans? How do I control the weather, destroy the internet, and never, ever die?
Bestselling author and award-winning comics writer Ryan North has the answers. In this introduction to the science of comic-book supervillainy, he details a number of outlandish villainous schemes that harness the potential of today’s most advanced technologies. Picking up where How to Invent Everything left off, his explanations are as fun and elucidating as they are completely absurd.
You don’t have to be a criminal mastermind to share a supervillain’s interest in cutting-edge science and technology. This book doesn’t just reveal how to take over the world—it also shows how you could save it. This sly guide to some of the greatest threats facing humanity accessibly explores emerging techniques to extend human life spans, combat cyberterrorism, communicate across millennia, and finally make Jurassic Park a reality.
Buy On:
Book Depository €16.64
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
I remember reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman when I was on my honeymoon, and it was really gripping. And only now, answering this question, am I realizing what an effect it had on me. The premise of The World Without Us is basically a thought experiment: if everyone disappeared suddenly, what happens next? Weisman follows that premise through to its logical conclusion, and I feel you can draw a line between that and my work in nonfiction, where I like to take a fictional premise and use that as a candy coating around the nonfiction. ("You've rented a time machine and it's broken down in the past and now you're reading its repair guide to try to rebuild civilization from scratch" for How To Invent Everything, and "what if you really wanted to pull off comic book supervillain schemes in the real world, how close could you actually get with actual science and technology" for How to Take Over the World). Review From Book Depository
What if mankind disappeared right now, forever ... what would happen to the Earth in a week, a year, a millennium? Could the planet's climate ever recover from human activity? How would nature destroy our huge cities and our myriad plastics? And what would our final legacy be?
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I just love nonfiction that gives you a reason to care, that motivates why you want to learn about it!
The World Without Us
Speaking to experts in fields as diverse as oil production and ecology, and visiting the places that have escaped recent human activity to discover how they have adapted to life without us, Alan Weisman paints an intriguing picture of the future of Earth. Exploring key concerns of our time, this absorbing thought experiment reveals a powerful - and surprising - picture of our planet's future.
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Easons €25.19
Book Depository €12.27
Waterstones £10.99
Wordery $13.03
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
I've just started The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It's early days yet, but I love the ambition of a title like that, and every once in a while you want to sit down with a giant meaty book filled with big ideas and just blow your mind, you know?
Review From Book Depository:
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself.
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The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we begin to see what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 per cent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful possibilities than we tend to assume.
The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision and faith in the power of direct action.
Buy On:
Easons €18.20
Book Depository €13.83
Waterstones £12.99
Wordery $13.03
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
I do! The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin. It's a simple story about Grover being afraid of the monster at the end of the book, and then realizing it's only him. But Grover breaks the fourth wall and begs you to stop reading, trying to build walls to slow you down, etc, and it just expanded my idea of what a book could be. Here's a text that plays with you as the reader, engages you, and looking it up just now I see that it's considered a modern classic. Good! It's great! Always nice to have your childhood opinions validated. :)
Review From Book Depository
Read along as Grover begs you not to turn the page -- because there is a monster at this end of this book!
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The Monster at the End of this Book
Lovable, furry old Grover is distressed to learn that there's a monster at the end of this book! He begs readers not to turn the pages, but of course kids feel they just have to see this monster for themselves. Grover is astonished--and toddlers will be delighted--to discover who is really the monster at the end of the book!
Buy On:
Book Depository €5.73
Waterstones £3.99
Wordery $8.09
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
It depends on the circumstance. In bed an ereader is lighter (and can be self-lit) which is great. Driving or walking my dog Chompsky is clearly the domain of audiobooks, but when I'm reading comics I prefer physical, and of course there's nothing like browing a bookstore and coming home with something new. So I kinda go with whatever format fits the moment!
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
There's so many bookstores in Toronto with such personality, but I gotta give a special shout out to The Beguiling Books and Art - they stock everything from picture books to comics to prose and beyond, and they're such great supporters of both artists and the arts community. I got The Dawn of Everything from The Beguiling and if you're ever in Toronto, it's absolutely worth a visit!
Many thanks to Ryan for recommending a great set of books! Please don't forget to check out Ryan's book How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Penguin Putnam Inc (How To Take Over The World), Ebury Publishing (The World Without Us), Farrar, Straus and Giroux (The Dawn of Everything), Random House USA Inc (The Monster At the End Of This Book).
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