"If you want to make a potato souffle, pick up a book by Julia Child. If you want to decorate your holiday cards with hand-cut potato stamps, look to a Martha Stewart manual. If, however, you'd like to launch a potato in a blazing fireball of combusting hairspray from a PVC pipe, your best source is "Backyard Ballistics", by William Gurstelle." --"Time Out New York" ‘A handbook for bored, thirty-something children (like myself) on how to make potato cannons, tennis ball mortars, catapults and the like from the comfort of their garden shed. Twelve projects from the ridiculously easy to the fairly time consuming, packed into 169 pages of juvenile play hem. Good instructions, clear pictures and photos, and all done with the emphasis on safety. There is also a fair amount of explanation concerning the actual physics behind the projects and a look at historical figures such as Newton and Archimedes.’ - Amazon Customer Review

Named to Wired Magazine’s Smart List, William Gurstelle is a bestselling author, DIY expert, and professional speaker. The author of Backyard Ballistics, Absinthe and Flamethrowers, and seven other books, he is recognised for his particular talent for making science and technology accessible, intriguing, and – most of all – fun to all readers and audiences. Having sold more nearly half a million books, he is one of the world’s most widely read authors on science and technology. The co-producer of the Emmy nominated PBS television show Make: Television, William also has a recurring on-air role in the series. In addition, he is a letterhead-listed contributing editor for Popular Mechanics and Make Magazine and is a frequent contributor to Wired.