Push Button Paradise

Here's a gem of a book, available for free online, though I'll probably pick up a dead-tree version from Amazon.

So, it's a great chemistry book, but from a different perspective: imagine being dropped on some new planet with no industry or technology. How would you build things back up? It has 28 chapters each describing one particular development, starting with charcoal and going all the way to plastics. Each chapter has a do-it-yourself experiment.

Also it's a nice example of technical fiction, in the introduction to each chapter. Speaking of fiction, this isn't a bad reference for authors who need details about, well, being dropped on some new planet with no industry. -m

posted at: 08:23 | under: 2005-06 | 0 comment(s)