Books: The Way Things Work

My sister's friend originally wanted to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, or "Ris-dee" as the hip people pronounce it. And looking at RISD alumnus and faculty member David Macaulay's artwork, it's not hard to see why.

Macaulay is an award-winning illustrator and author, and his masterwork is "The Way Things Work," a broad and brilliant explanation of how various machines and physical principles govern our universe. I remember seeing this attractive volume in grade school and begging my Dad to get it for me; I devoured the whole thing that very weekend. From screws to nuclear reactors, zippers to hydrofoils, all sorts of machines are covered here.

The best parts of the book, though, are the fictional accounts of the interactions between mammoths and humans, complete with often hilarious pictures. Through Macaulay's adept, architect's-style illustrations and Neil Ardley's clear and fairly accurate descriptions, you get a sense of the complexity of how things work without all the mathematics getting in the way. If you can get a kid interested in this book, he or she just might become an engineer or a scientist.