Book Review: What If? 10th Anniversary Edition - Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

Funny from the preface up until the very last footnote. This is the updated version of the classic "What If" book - where Munroe goes into absurd details about ridiculous questions.

Full of nerdy giggles and some utterly bizarre units. For example:

The storage industry produces in the neighborhood of 650 million hard drives per year. If most of them are 3.5-inch drives, that’s 8 liters (2 gallons) of hard drive per second.

I mean… I GUESS!

Charmingly, there are some UK specific notes and updates in this edition. As this is the 10th anniversary, there are some "what if this were 10x more" updates - which keep things feeling fresh.

As well as being delightfully barmy, it is surprisingly moving in places. When talking about whether Facebook will ever have more dead users than living, he points out that:

We’re developing, through sometimes messy trial and error, a new set of social norms for dating, arguing, learning, and growing on the Internet. Sooner or later, we’ll figure out how to mourn.

Of minor annoyance - the footnotes aren't formatted properly, which makes it hard to appreciate some of the jokes.