The Way Things Work

This has always been, and always will be, one of my all-time favourite books. It’s definitely the children’s book I hold most dear.

I was the kind of child that takes everything apart to figure out how it works. Family mythology has it that my grandfather taught me how an internal combustion engine worked during a series of breakfasts while I was three or four, and there’s a drawing I made when I was no older than five that depicts a four-stroke internal combustion engine complete with pistons, crankshaft, valves, spark-plugs, exhaust manifold and cams.

This book’s visual style was right up my street. I remember my mother refusing to buy it for me but successively convincing my dad while on a day-trip to the London Science show more Museum. My copy still has his dedication inside the front cover and the receipt tucked in at the back.

I referred back to it authoritatively for years. Back in the days when internet access was not a given and some information was hard to come by, I actually used the illustration of a half adder to build a full binary adder out of discrete logic gates.

I cannot recommend it enough. show less

"The Way Things Work" is an amazingly well illustrated pice of work. It is a thorough and unbashfully detailed look at modern appliances and machines. I love it because it has amazing picture that make the text seem almost unnecessary. I would love to use this book in my classroom because of how much sheer information it contains. I would say that it is appropriate for grades 4 and up.

The title says it-- this is a cool book about how things (mostly everyday items like seat belts but also more advanced things like nuclear energy) work. Macauley is an excellent illustrator and the woolly mammoth drawings are cute. I thought that some of the more difficult concepts were glossed over a little, which may be appropriate in a book aimed at kids. In general, I liked it.

Well-drawn descriptions of how the things we use without thinking are made. From elevators to nuclear fusion to thermostats to pulleys to paper making to printing to telescopes to televisions: the basics are here. An essential reference book. It's time for a sequel.

Over 380 pages of illustrator Macaulay’s superb technical drawings fill this large reference work suitable for children age eight years and upward into adulthood. The Way Things Work pairs rich fine line illustrations and a limited water colour palate of blue, grey, and brown, with sometimes complex descriptions more suitable to an older child’s reading comprehension. The Way Things Work covers topics such as pulleys, rotaries wheels, flying, floating, photography, electricity, magnetism, sensors and detectors, etc. Macaulay uses a signature illustrated character—a woolly mammoth—in each of his entries to add comic relief and a visual narrative thread through each of the entries in this massive book. Although some technologies show more covered by Macaulay have advanced since the publication of The Way Things Work (1988), Macaulay’s entries under for example the “Electricity and Automation” section of the book discuss fundamental technological principles that so far remain constant and relevant. show less

I'm keeping it on hand just in case I'm ever trapped in a post apocalyptic sci fi movie and need to reconstruct modern technology from scratch. Until then, I'll just enjoy Macaulay's ability to work his drawings of wooly mammoths into every conceivable illustration.

Fantastic diagrams and other art detailing how things work, and are put together, and explanations you didn't know you needed to know. I love learning how things work, and this book has some great insights.