Jennifer McKnight-Trontz - How To: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know Fully Illustrated

MASTER THE MINUTIAE
OF MODERN LIFE! THE ONLY BOOK YOULL EVER NEED! Very nearly a substitute
for good common sense!How To contains hundreds of useful diagrams
and step-by-step instructions illustrating how to do anything
youll ever doand many things you wont! Jennifer McKnight-Trontz is a Florida-based writer and designer whose previous
books include How to Be Popular, Yes You Can,
Hang in There!, and The Good Citizens Handbook
(all from Chronicle Books). For Esme, Ian, and my parents . A big thank you to my editor Steve Mockus, designer Ben Shaykin, and the rest of the staff at Chronicle Books. As usual, its been a pleasure. Thank you to all the illustrators who created the wonderful graphics in this book. Without their visual guidance, we wouldnt know how to do anything.

Copyright 2004 by Jennifer McKnight-Trontz.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. constitute a continuation of the copyright page. ISBN: 978-1-4521-2664-7
The Library of Congress has cataloged the previous edition as follows:
ISBN 0-8118-4085-9 Book design by Jennifer McKnight-Trontz
Cover design by Benjamin Shaykin Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94105 www.chroniclebooks.com

In 1972, NASA launched the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. Designed to relay data back to Earth as it sped into the outer reaches of our solar system, its signals would eventually dim, but the craft itself would continue on, forever drifting across the galaxy. Recognizing this as an opportunity, optimistic scientists attached a small plaque to the side of the craft, a sort of message-in-a-bottle to any alien intelligence that Pioneer might come across.

The pictographic message on the plaque (designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, and drawn by Sagans wife Linda) aims to communicate in literally the most universal and purely graphic language possible, depicting a statistically average man and woman, the mans hand raised in friendship, and a diagram of the planets in our solar system, with an action arrow indicating that the spacecraft came from the planet third closest to the Sun. If this book were similarly catapulted into space, the same alien intelligence could learn, from the same purely graphic language of the illustrations inside, the right way to make a paper airplane, use dental floss, fold fitted bedsheets, parallel park, and dance the basic steps of the tango. He, she, or it would be well on the way to mastering the minutiae that make up our modern life. It might not understand why youd want to do a cartwheel, but it would know how to do one. Closer to home, these hard-working graphics, culled from how-to books, instruction manuals, and product packaging, make How To the basic book of common sense that we all need for navigating the everyday concerns of manners and grooming, home and family, health and safety, sports and exercise, and science and the world at large. With a bare minimum of text and just a few action arrows, theyre here to help.

Some of the instructions will seem absurd, or absurdly simple, and its true: if we slow down and examine what we actually do, the small steps we take in our daily activities, life can seem a little silly. But if youve ever wondered how to throw a left jab, knit a stitch, or politely dispose of a piece of gristle, this is the book for you. MANNERS AND GROOMING

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