One of the core ideas behind this series is simple:
Complex things are built from smaller things stacked together.
That's it.
Electricity isn't magic. It's charge and motion. Soap isn't magic. It's fat and lye reacting. Steel isn't magic. It's iron and carbon under heat.
We treat modern life like it's mysterious because we only see the finished layer. Flip a switch. Turn a key. Tap a screen.
But underneath that convenience layer are principles that haven't changed in centuries.
A lot of my understanding of that came from two places: middle school teachers and YouTube.
Good teachers don't just show you the answer. They show you what's underneath the answer. The physics. The chemistry. The mechanics. The math. The systems thinking.
And online, there are people who take that same approach. Channels like How To Make Everything. Elemental Maker. Jeremy Fielding breaking down engineering problems. Matthias Wandel working through woodworking and mechanical builds. Project Farm actually testing tools instead of repeating marketing claims.
They all show the same thing.
When something works, it works because of underlying principles.
When something fails, it fails because one of those principles isn't being satisfied.
If you understand the fundamentals, you can troubleshoot. If you don't, you're guessing.
That idea runs through every book.
The goal isn't to glorify collapse. It's to retrigger curiosity. To remind people that the complex systems around us are understandable. And if they're understandable, they're buildable.