Books, movies and TV series on the topic of a global catastrophe that changes our familiar world make you think: what would I do in the place of the heroes? Where to go, what to stock up on and how not to turn into a savage from Mad Max, but to rebuild everything from scratch? Science journalist Lewis Dartnell has the answers to these questions. His book is a storehouse of scientific and technical knowledge that will help restore civilization: from advice on how to get drinking water from improvised means, to an explanation of how to assemble an internal combustion engine “on the knee”. If you think that this is a guide for survivalists, then you are only partially right. The purpose of the book “Civilization from Scratch” is to acquaint the reader with the history of the development of science, to show that most great discoveries are accompanied not by “Eureka!”, but by “Hmm... interesting” and that from all the accumulated experience it is vitally important to know the structure of basic things and the fundamentals of technology, and not 100 and 1 ways to increase your efficiency.