The New Way Things Work

It arrived in perfect condition & was shrink wrapped

As described, great.

We bought this as a gift for a nephew. We had it in our classroom, and all the kids loved it.

Put these four things together--ingenuity, imagination, depictions, diagrams-- and you have a double ID toward understanding how things work. David Macaulay and Neil Ardley put together a magnificent volume for children and children at heart containing a way of understanding the laws of physics and mechanics.The first illustration even shows God busy creating the rotation of the earth. Then they go to the earth where wooly mammoths lived and pick up one to take us through the history of mechanics, machines, and the like. Dozens of movements in five sections: waves, electricity, automation, digital domain, and machines show us just how easy these things are to understand done in drawerings.Just as in child's play, there is no seeming order to the arrangement of items in the book. For example here are a few pages next to each other: vacuum cleaners, aqualungs or oxygen tanks, the toilet tank, the water meter, dishwasher, spray nozzle, fire extinguisher. Are you seeing an order? Yes, so am I.Flipping over a hundred pages, I find the jet engine, rocket engines, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, fallout, nuclear reactor. OK, a definite pattern. Another hundred pages show these topics: movie camera, movie projector, printing, paper making, printing plate, printing press, bookbinding. More discernible order and logical arrangement.One last check: scanner, bits and bytes, flash memory, magnetic storage, microchip, processor, software. We know where we are and recognize the order--a computer and its parts.This reviewer has a suggestion for the reader. Once you have this book in hand, take it home, take it out every night and read a comfortable number of pages. If you have a child, read one page, discuss it, put this one away and take out a night-night book to read. If this is just your book, read several pages. By the time you have finished the book, you will have added dozens of operating systems to the computer banks in your own brain, making your child and/or yourself an expert in the way things work.

Very detailed and has nearly every invention in it. That is what makes this book have five stars, but I gave it four because the way the pages are laid out is a bit confusing for me. Facts and details are clear, but the actual lay out is tough to take in--there is a lot going on on each page. I think this was done to try to keep all of the info on one page or set of pages, but it is just a bit overwhelming. Also, only a handful of colors were used to illustrate the pictures in the book and that makes it a bit industrial looking, versus artistic. Given the topic of the book, this was probably deliberate!

I bought this book after my little boy discovered and fell in love with a copy at preschool. He poured over the illustrations and I was amazed at how involved he got in it. He's not normally very bookish, he'd rather be out climbing trees and jumping on the trampoline but this book captures his imagination like nothing else. He will finish dinner and then go to the living room, grab this book and sit looking at the illustrations for the longest time, even though we've had the book about six months he's still totally into it. He's five now and can't read but I think he'll love it even more when he's able to read the information. My daughter for some reason isn't very interested in it but it's here if she wants it. My son will bring the book over to his dad and they will discuss the pictures and daddy with fill in the information. Such a neat book for little kids who are fascinated with how things work, and a great reference for every home!

Not sure how many of these I have purchased, but "many" between this and the first version. There is no other book I know which can connect kids and fathers better than this book. It helps fathers (or mothers) answer those endless list of "why and how" questions about hundreds of things we use and see daily. I think the age range should be listed as 5 to 85 for this book. Most readers will learn something they didn't know or understand. It helps instill an interest in science, tools, helpful products and processes with make our modern society work or work better. It can and should be the basis for hundreds of projects parents can to with their kids. It becomes a reference book in home. Fathers tell me it needs to be re-read or paged through every couple of years as children grow and learn more and gain depth of understanding. It is sort science without the math and "may" just spark the interest to learn and use the math.

I ordered the edition of this book as a textbook for my son who is teaching "early college Introduction to Engineering" to advanced high school students. As a Master Teacher retired, years ago I ordered the original THE WAY THINGS WORK and learned so very much about the history of engineering and the science of all motion, its principles and its advanced achievements-----covering all kinds of engineering achievements in Civil, Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical, etc. I suggest that any parent who has a child who is interested in science or engineering of all kinds purchase this book and keep it on the coffee/cocktail/family room table. It is a real "motivator" for any child-----and inspires curiosity in all things made by man and all things of the universe. It is a book that all our guests of all ages, male and female, have noticed, picked up and become completely absorbed in it during their visits. It is a must for all families with children!!!!! It inspires one to learn.