Global famines have dropped the population to 1 billion people and global civilization has collapsed. In an effort to save future civilization some time, you want to provide some information to kick start civilization's regrowth.

You have to choose exactly three books or articles on chemistry

By virtue of a print-on-demand press and a generous internet connection (and minimal scruples about copyright law), you can get your hands on the text and diagrams of most any book/article in existence.

The best book choices will:

• Give future generations stronger pointers for where to go looking for further knowledge. For example, Mendeleev's periodic table helped kick off the discovery of many elements because other chemists knew that there was something to find.
• Save them some the trial and error of fumbling around on their own.
• Accommodate the mathematical and engineering knowledge of the world in 1800. If we knew it in 1800, they have access to it.

Printing off all the chemistry articles on Wikipedia or chemrxiv.org won't satisfy because...reasons. Only actual books will satisfy.

Preserving the books is a solved problem. You're responsible only for picking the three books. These won't be electronic copies either.

Note to responders: While, it's true that three books is arbitrary, the number was chosen as it forces hard choices about which books are really worthy. There are two extremes at play: the utterly mundane, "give them normal undergraduate textbooks" and "compress an entire field down to three books". The first isn't noteworthy, while the second is impossible. Try to push your selection of books further towards the highly comprehensible master-works of the field.

This is part of the Three Books series on essential books for restarting civilization. You can find other topics below:

• Physics

posted over 6 years ago

Green‭

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