3 ms·

Thanks! I'm a big fan of David Macaulay's other books, but I've never liked _The Way Things Work_. _Castle_ and _Umderground_, though I love.

• schoen 2mo ago
  There are some impressive British children's picture dictionaries, especially the DK Children's Encyclopedia, but also some others that I can't quite put my finger on. A little closer to Comenius compared to that particular Macaulay: more direct and broader in scope and less jokey. What I most appreciated in The Way Things Work is that he gives a complete working description of the boolean half-adder built out of logic gates, and I think how to connect them to make larger adders. Remember, in our very recent past, it was actually hard for little kids to find explanations of how to do arithmetic with logic circuits? Macaulay did his bit (so to speak) to fix that amidst tons of weird mammoth jokes. By the way, I've been to one of Comenius's old schools (Herborn, Germany) and grave (Naarden, Netherlands).