In How to Take Over the World, Ryan North, an award winning comics and science writer and computer scientist, provides a primer for those considering supervillainy as a career. He provides step by step instructions, beginning with where to build a secret lair (no matter what you see in movies, television, or comics, do NOT build a lair in an active volcano – North explains why!), potentially villainous schemes to pursue, along with explorations of the existing, or soon to exist, science, including physics, mathematics, biology, history, genetics, along with political science and international law, to make your schemes come true. North also provides cost and time analysis of each pursuit allowing for informed choices to be made before the reader chooses to pursue a life, and career, of evil.

Toward the end of the book, North claims to take readers from being someone who is a “curious reader of funny nonfiction books” to “someone who now knows how to mess with the weather, take over a country, become immortal, and ensure that they’re one of the last things existing in this universe, all while piloting a floating geodesic sphere from the comfort of your dinosaur steed.” Who wouldn’t want to read a book that can accomplish that? 

Read an interview with Ryan North here.