Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words

Bottom line: this is a truly enjoyable book that ultimately succeeds in shedding light on complex things in the world that we may not have paused to consider (submarines, ICBMs and various space travel vehicles) in depth. This lack of consideration may variously result from the inherent complexity of some things (nuclear power plants) or their ubiquity (pens, pencils, roads and bridges). Randall Munroe compiled his own list of the 1000 most common words (presumably in American English) to use as the lexicon to explain a bunch a stuff. The illustrations are wonderful; crisp line drawings that vary in detail from the conceptual (human organs generally as bags) to the highly detailed. In some cases they are complete visual metaphors, presumably because the limitations in available vocabulary led to limitations in the accompanying picture. This book contains content from my own professional background, so I was delighted to see content pulled from the worlds of naval weapons, space systems and modern information technology. Because of this, I can confirm that even with limited vocabulary, he gets those things explained correctly. Anybody who has worked as technical writer trying to glean information from subject matter experts for later use in a user guide or other materials designed for non-experts will appreciate what Munroe has done here. Anybody who has ever prepared materials for consumption by elected or appointed government officials will also totally appreciate the challenge he takes on. Interspersed throughout --in the same simple language-- are short comments that are sometimes insightful, sometimes funny, and they will be instantly familiar to readers of his xkcd web comic. However, don't read this in one sitting. You might find yourself haunted by this thought: "Randall, you tell us in the intro that eventually you picked your own 1000 words based on a review of multiple lists. The addition (or substitution) of 50 to 100 more could have really taken moved some of the explanations from the highly metaphorical to the more concrete (to his credit, the "things" are "correctly" named in the table of contents). Great fun for the alpha geeks and curious kids in your life...and just in time for holiday shopping.

"Thing Explainer" is such an awesome, fun and original book that is educational for people of all ages. I wasn't familiar with the book until I saw it reviewed on Bill Gates blog (he's very favorable) and wound up pre-ordering it. The idea of explaining complex things using only the 1,000 most common words in English was super intriguing. I also have three children, 16, 13 and 11, and was interested in what they thought as well as learning how Munroe's technique might help me better communicate complex subjects, not necessarily science related, but also things like history, current events, etc. My oldest son happened to open the box when it arrived and was surprised since he had separately heard about the book and didn't know I ordered it. He would up commandeering it for a couple of days and went through it completely before returning it to me with the line "it's brilliant'. I wound up going through it randomly and think the combination of the language simplicity as well as illustration style along with the physical size make it a must have for any curious mind. Sure, Munroe's choice of 1,000 words is arbitrary, but the forced use of everyday and mundane words is what enables this book to appeal to such a broad variety of people, ages and intellect, while simultaneously educating and entertaining. And as I mentioned, it also provides a valuable teaching technique to help one communicate complicated things to others in ways that make them more interesting and understandable. I subsequently put the book on a coffee table and quite a few folks with varied backgrounds have picked it up, thumbed through it and smiled as one of the "things" motivated them to stop, engage and learn. I'd highly recommend the physical edition as I intentionally bought it vs. a digital copy because of the use of illustrations and for the ability to leave it out and share, a decision I'm super happy about.

My child loves this book and is always asking me to read to him from here. I think the simplified language is sometimes over the top ("sky boat"), but it's a great book for what it is.

Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe is a amusing, but informative book on how many things works. From simple things like pencils, to complicated things like a Nuclear Reactor, Munroe explains everything in simple terms while using detailed drawings. Humor is peppered throughout the book, so the explanations aren't so textbook like, and the explanations are easy enough for a parent to be able to explain to their kid without having to resort to complicated terms. While I enjoyed this book, I found two things that bothered me just slightly. The first thing is that the font in this book is exceedingly tiny. While I have no problems reading it, showing it to my parents proved painful - the font is just so tiny, my mom needed to use a magnifying glass to read. The other thing that bothered me is the over simplification of literally everything in this book. While I don't need to know the exact name of every component in a computer or the name of the tube that brings air to my lungs, it would've been nice to have the exact term should I decided to look up more about it later. Also, simplifying words such as rabbits (long-ear jumpers) and snakes (long biters without arms or legs) is really annoying. My kids had no idea what some terms meant because they are simply too young (Land of the Rising Sun = Japan). Despite the minor flaws, this book was a lot of fun to go through, particularly with our kids. It's a fun book to get kids interested in looking deeper into how things work, and a great book for parents who are trying to explain how some items work without resorting to saying "I don't know" or "the elves living in the microwave power it".

This book shows you that understanding how something works and knowing its name are different. In doing so, it makes you consider when and why it's actually important to use a special name for some things, and think harder about what your words are really telling people. The point of this book is not to explain things as well and as quickly as possible. It's to help you use your thinking bag in a different way than you do every day. That's why it's so much fun to read. I'm a teacher at a school for people who already know a lot, and who are very good at what they do. (I teach them about power for our lights and machines.) We use big words and special names all the time. But I sometimes ask my students to try explaining complicated stuff using only simple words, because when you do that, you find out whether you really understand it. It forces you to ask, what is the most important idea here? I wish more teachers did this. Putting ideas into simple words can also help you recognize how different words carry meaning other than just telling you what something is. This is especially true for things that people often have strong feelings about, like the laws of the land, or our body parts for making new people, or machines for burning cities. Special words can quietly suggest if something is a good or a bad idea, or cover up bad feelings. Playing the game of using only simple words can help you see things more clearly for what they actually are, and say just what you mean. So, this book shows us a way to pay special attention to how our own thinking bag works. And I think that's really, really cool.

I'm a long time fan of Munroe's comic XKCD, so I went into this book with very high expectations, which it quickly surpassed. I bought three copies, one for our family and two as gifts, but my 9-year-old twin daughters were so enamoured with the book that I was glad for the extra copies, since we could each read through the diagrams at our own paces without fighting over the book. I had to physically remove the books from the children's hands before I could get the girls to come to the table for dinner. The premise of explaining complex concepts using a repertoire of only 1000 words would have been kitschy in less skillful hands, but Munroe manages to hone in on meaning over form. The depth into which he is able to delve with a single page each devoted to huge concepts like the US Constitution, the human body, and the nuclear bomb is nothing short of genius. It will appeal to curious people of ages 5 to 105, and I look forward to discovering new gems in the book as I return to it over the years. I can't imagine that this book lends itself well to a Kindle format. Despite the shortfalls of the dust jacket, which quickly fades and scratches easily, this book is worth purchasing in hardcover.

The thing about this book is that it only uses the ten hundred most used words by people to tell you about things that are hard to understand. It makes it sound kind of strange because you hear some words over and over again, but all in all, it is a very fun book to look at. The man that wrote the book wrote about "Under a car's front cover" and the "US Space Team's Up Goer Five" and lots of things that have to do with a "Sky Boat." There is a page about "Colors of Light" but it is in black and white, so it is not as good as other pages. There is a big table in the middle that is "the pieces everything is made of" that has "the stuff they put in pools so nothing bad can grow in them," "brown metal that we use to carry power and voices" and "stuff you drink so doctors can look inside your body" along with all the other rocks and metals and air that is really fun to look at. I paid money for "Thing Explainer" to put it under the tree for my seven year old, but I will have to read it before he does, I am sure.

While I love most of the content, I feel that the book has serious usability problems. Its dimensions clearly make it a coffee-table volume, and yet the print is far too small, dull, and low-contrast to read without intense lighting and close inspection. On most pages, a byzantine wall of words and diagrams fills the page from top to bottom, including both margins, with neither an apparent place to start or end, nor any place for the eye to rest. The overall impression is intimidating and tiring. The best pages are most parsimonious — the tree page for example leaves breathing room for the reader, and the natural shape of the tree gives structure to the illustration and lets the reader meander with some semblance of a path. Additionally, I can't help feeling that the project of using simple words to explain complex subjects falls flat from time to time; not in the explanation of the subject, but when it cannot be made clear what the subject is. When the book becomes not an explication but a needlessly frustrating mental puzzle, it can be more tiresome than it is worth. This pops up most frequently in the innumerable insets and notes. In fairness, the book is still amusing and engaging for all of these problems (though most who pick it up seem to put it down again when frustration pulls level with entertainment value) and again, all of this would be fine in a volume that one intended to carefully study over a well-lit desk, but given the book's sheer size and style of binding, this is not practical. The book may be less suitable for adults, and better for intelligent young people with sharp eyes and curious minds.

Uno de esos grandes libros que no te cansas de ojear: el autor explica conceptos complejos y el funcionamiento o naturaleza de distintas cosas con gran sencillez, con un dibujo suficientemente limpio y detallado, y con su característico humor. Si te gusta xkcd es imprescindible, si no, probablemente te guste también, ya sea para tí o para mostrarselo y explicarselo a tus hijos.

"Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words" von Randall Munroe ist ein außergewöhnliches Buch, das komplexe technische und wissenschaftliche Konzepte auf eine erfrischend einfache und humorvolle Weise erklärt. Randall Munroe, bekannt als der Schöpfer des beliebten Webcomics "xkcd", nutzt in diesem Buch seine Fähigkeit, komplizierte Themen in leicht verständliche Sprache zu übersetzen. Er verwendet dabei die 1.000 am häufigsten gebrauchten englischen Wörter, was zu teilweise lustigen, aber immer klaren und präzisen Erklärungen führt. Das Buch ist in verschiedenen Kapiteln organisiert, die eine Vielzahl von Themen abdecken, von der Funktionsweise eines Kernreaktors bis hin zu den Komponenten eines Mobiltelefons. Jedes Kapitel wird von detaillierten Diagrammen und Zeichnungen begleitet, die Munroes Erklärungen visuell unterstützen und das Verständnis erleichtern. Ein besonders bemerkenswerter Aspekt von "Thing Explainer" ist Munroes Fähigkeit, die Essenz jedes Themas zu erfassen und sie auf eine Weise zu vermitteln, die sowohl informativ als auch unterhaltsam ist. Seine humorvollen Illustrationen und Beschreibungen machen das Lernen zu einem Vergnügen und entmystifizieren selbst die kompliziertesten Maschinen und Konzepte. Dieses Buch ist ideal für Leser aller Altersgruppen, die ein Interesse an Wissenschaft und Technik haben, aber möglicherweise von der technischen Sprache abgeschreckt werden. Munroes einfache und zugängliche Erklärungen machen es leicht, ein tieferes Verständnis für die Welt um uns herum zu entwickeln. Insgesamt ist "Thing Explainer" ein brillantes Werk, das zeigt, dass es möglich ist, komplizierte Themen für jedermann verständlich zu machen. Randall Munroe beweist, dass Wissen nicht nur für Experten reserviert ist, sondern für jeden zugänglich sein kann, der neugierig ist. Eine klare Empfehlung für alle, die Freude am Lernen haben und die Welt auf eine neue Weise sehen möchten.

Não chega a ser interessante para qualquer leitor mas com certeza abre sorrisos com as explicações. Obrigado Randall Munroe por mais uma obra.

Wonderful book, full of Munroe's humour, and really benefits from the large size (it's bigger than A4, and some pages fold out) to show off the detail in the drawings. I learned a lot!

Interesting topics but the explanations can be a bit chaotic to follow at times.