Book Review: Thing Explainer

Although I toyed with the idea of using Thing Explainer constraints in writing this blog, I decided it would be too hard. If you know me or have been following this blog long enough, you'll know that I am a fan of Randall Munroe. He used to work on NASA robots, but then discovered a talent for drawing fun and witty comics. He's published two books and a long-standing web comic. Thing Explainer is his second book. I checked it out recently and found it greatly amusing and educational. The premise is a "How Do Things Work?" type of book except that in order to be more accessible, he only limits himself to the thousand most common words in English (he calls these the "ten hundred" most common words since "thousand" apparently isn't in the top thousand words used).

With beautifully illustrated diagrams, funny comments, and detailed explanations, he looks at rocketships, laptops, a hospital room, tectonic plates, the phylogenetic tree, and much more. Even when you know what he's talking about, it's pretty fun to see how he describes things with the word constraints he has. And if you don't know how a washer/dryer or airplane cockpit or oil rig work, then it's pretty fascinating learning about it. It's not meant to be a book read from cover to cover, but it was a highly enjoyable way to while away the time. I encourage you to check it out at: http://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/.

Image shown under Fair Use, from xkcd.com