Ryan North's "How to Invent Everything" has the framing device of being a "repair manual" for a rental time machine, found buried in prehistoric rock; as rental time machines are not actually repairable by the end user, its actual content is mostly a blend of science, history, and speculation (with copious footnotes) describing how a stranded time traveler could, in theory, build themselves back up to at least a 19th-century level of technology whilst skipping the millennia of tedious trial-and-error between the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and steam engines
it starts off with some explanations about how time travel is supposed to work, and yes, it does acknowledge that the mere act of traveling back in time creates a new timeline; you can go back in time, stomp all the butterflies you want, and (assuming your time machine hasn't broken) return to your original timeline secure in the knowledge that no Sound of Thunder-style changes have been wreaked by your actions
it also acknowledges that this fact has been exploited for much more than just time travel tourism
