I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
Randall Munroe is well known for his XKCD comic as well as his What If? and How To books. In this book he deviates from the larger volumes of his other books towards something closer to his comics. Thing Explainer is all about explaining interesting and complex things, but only through the use of the top thousand words in English. This book is great for a laugh, as well as a great way to learn something.
Randall shows an ability to inform the reader on a wide variety of topics through this book. From discussing things as simple as your home washer and dryer up to the complexity of the Saturn V rocket and everything in between. He covers space, biology, geology, history, and engineering all in a way that anyone can understand.
One of my favorite things in this book is trying to figure out what he is talking about from the title of the page. While the explanations and pictures explain and let you know quickly, just the page names aren’t always that clear. Food-heating radio box is a good example, another is tiny bags of water you’re made of. Those are microwave and cells respectively. These can get even more curious like shape checker for a padlock and hole-making city boat for an oil rig.
Like all of Randall’s other works I highly recommend this to those with a curious mind. Given the limited vocabulary this book uses it would be great for kids to help them learn about more complex subjects. For adults this book shows that you can still convey complex subjects without complex language.