The Way Things Work

What Hacker News says

1. semiquaverOct 2026
   It Might be an Apple (Shinsuke Yoshitake)

   The Skull (Jon Klassen)

   The Way Things Work (David Macaulay)

   Animalia (Graeme Base)

   Nanette’s Baguette (Mo Willlems)

   The princess and the Pony (Kate Beaton)

   Frederick (Leo Leoni)

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2. schoenAug 2026
   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).

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3. ChuckMcMJul 2026
   I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually work. But I've always augmented that with "okay and this is how we'd make something like that." As a result my kids, now adults, always start with the mindset of "Somebody made this, so I could too if I had to." and that really unlimits the kinds of self constraints people put on themselves. When I was a kid I was amazed that people like Edison and Tesla had labs not filled with gear from some lab manufacturer, but stuff they built themselves from first principles. And when I see someone building tools out of the abundance of capabilities that are out there I say, "Yup, they get it." 3D printing, inexpensive miniature milling machines and lathes, libraries full of books about making stuff. Its all doable, you don't have to buy it from a store and the one you make yourself will work exactly the way you want it to.
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4. objclxtJul 2026
   > All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually work

   I grew up with this book - I have vivid memories still of the pages about a nuclear reactor - and I was pleasantly surprised to visit a bookshop recently and find it still in print, updated with new things like LIDAR, 3D Printers, MoCap, etc.

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5. acc_297Jul 2026
   I'll start my first job in an engineering role in a few days and I could reach behind to my bookshelf and flip through "The Way Things Work" right now if I wanted to. Fantastic book that really inspired me when I was younger.
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6. kejJun 2026
   The combination of straightforward explanations and clear diagrams reminds me of David Macaulay's The Way Things Work which is one of my favorite books.
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