具体描述
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words
畅销书What if作者新作
比尔盖茨分享2015年读过的*好看的6本书之一
并称之为“满足好奇心的完美指南”
盖茨称：“如果你不能简单地解释某件事，那你就没有真正理解。
作者：Randall Munroe
出版社: John Murray Publishers Ltd; Illustrated edition (2015年11月24日)
精装: 64页
语种： 英语
ISBN: 1473620910
条形码: 9781473620919
商品尺寸: 23.7 x 1.6 x 33.8 cm
商品重量: 508 g
《Thing Explainer》以有趣的方式解释了基本的“为什么”，并告诉你这个世界方方面面的运转方式，假如Munroe的漫画让你尝试去了解这个世界你尚未触及的领域，这本书同样也是一本的基本指南，尤其是给充满好奇心的你。
作者蒙罗是流行网络漫画XKCD的作者，同时也是畅销书What if的作者。盖茨将这本书称之为“满足好奇心的完美指南”。这本书的理念很简单，但实施起来并不容易。就是仅使用1000个常用的英文单词来解释几乎一切事物，包括智能手机、核电站等。
| 英文原版 Mindset 比尔盖茨推荐好书 | 英文原版 The Innovators 创新者 | Thing Explainer 英文原版 |
| 思维模式:全新的成功心理学 | 计算机科学 黑客 乔布斯 比尔盖茨 | 事情讲解员 比尔盖茨推荐 what if 作者 |
From the N*. 1 bestselling author of What If? - the man who created xkcd and explained the laws of science with cartoons - comes a series of brilliantly simple diagrams ('blueprints' if you want to be complicated about it) that show how important things work: from the nuclear bomb to the biro.
It's good to know what the parts of a thing are called, but it's much more interesting to know what they do. Richard Feynman once said that if you can't explain something to a first-year student, you don't really get it. In Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe takes a quantum leap past this: he explains things using only drawings and a vocabulary of just our 1,000 (or the ten hundred) most common words.
Many of the things we use every day - like our food-heating radio boxes ('microwaves'), our very tall roads ('bridges'), and our computer rooms ('datacentres') - are strange to us. So are the other worlds around our sun (the solar system), the big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), and even the stuff inside us (cells). Where do these things come from? How do they work? What do they look like if you open them up? And what would happen if we heated them up, cooled them down, pointed them in a different direction, or pressed this button?
In Thing Explainer, Munroe gives us the answers to these questions and many, many more. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone -- age 5 to 105 -- who has ever wondered how things work, and why.
作者简介
Randall Munroe is the creator of the webcomic xkcd and author of xkcd: Volume 0. Randall was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, and grew up outside Richmond, Virginia. After studying physics at Christopher Newport University, he got a job building robots at NASA Langley Research Center. In 2006 he left NASA to draw comics on the internet full time, and has since been nominated for a Hugo Award three times. The International Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after him: asteroid 4942 Munroe is big enough to cause mass extinction if it ever hits a planet like Earth.
媒体推荐
A brilliant concept. If you can't explain something simply, you don't really understand it. And Randall Munroe is the perfect guy to take on a project like this . . . If you know Munroe's previous work, it will come as no surprise that parts of Thing Explainer are laugh-out-loud funny . . . filled with cool basic knowledge about how the world works. If one of Munroe's drawings inspires you to go learn more about a subject - including a few extra terms - then he will have done his job. He has written a wonderful guide for curious minds (BILL GATES)
Wonderful (Neil Gaiman)
In the crowded field of trivia, nothing beats Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe, the physicist-turned-comic-artist, a sequel to What If ? . . . It is very funny and has something quite serious to say about our misplaced faith in long words (Daily Telegraph)
Thing Explainer gets to the real essence of things (New Scientist)
Like any good work of science writing, [Thing Explainer] is equal parts lucid, funny, and startling (NewYorker.com)
In just over a decade Randall Munroe has become firmly established and it's safe to say adored as the author of xkcd. Now, Munroe has produced a book - and Thing Explainer isn't just any book. It's beautiful, packed with facts, figures and richly and simply presented diagrams (Register)
Reliably amusing and often enlightening (The Times, Books of the Year)
比尔盖茨为本书所写的书评
我发现在慈善行业里，术语是一个问题，比如在健康领域工作时，你自然会听到讨论*新医学研究时会蹦出来的那些词汇，诸如“serum”以及“in vitro”（或者更复杂的词语）。数年之后我已对其习以为常，但在一开始，我仍然需要不停提醒自己：serum是指没有红细胞以及白细胞的血液，In vitro 的意思是“在玻璃中”，也就是在试管里。直到，我仍需要在不同的领域面对这个由陌生到熟悉的过程。
而阅读Randall Munroe的新书是一个非常有趣的过程。他在书中将诸般事物一一诠释，从智能手机到美国宪法，并且在其中你不会碰上费解的术语。书中蓝图加上趣味横生的图示，仅用1000个英文常用单词就将这些事物的原理阐述清楚。比如dishwasher这样的词汇被更简单的“box that cleans food holders”解释。
这样的做法更契合了爱因斯坦的想法：如果你不能以简单的方式诠释一样事物，那你并没有真正地理解它。而Randall Munroe恰好精于此道。他曾是NASA机器人领域的专家，而现在做起了的XKCD网站（译者注：或许提到更广为人知的What if系列，国内的读者会有更深的印象）。Munroe让我想起了可汗学院的创始人Sal Khan，或是Crash Couse的Hank Green，他们三人都在致力于让知识传播给更多的人。
《Thing Explainer》使用了尽可能少的词汇，但配上了生动的配图以及到位的注释。比如说你想知道食物在microware oven（“一种利用微波加热食物的装置”）中如何解冻，Munroe就会这样回答你：“当你将食物放进食物加热装置中，一会儿，一部分并就会融化成水，而微波可以快速加热水分，能量足以将水分蒸发，不过在这之前食物早就加热好啦！”
但如果你了解过Munroe之前的作品，就会知道《Thing Explainer》还是一部让你笑出声的作品。比如他对于美国的土星五号运载火箭引擎部分的解释：”此处会喷出大量的火，如果你想进入太空，请将此端朝下；“如果此端朝上则会带来一些严重的后果，就不能进入太空了哦。”
还比如他对于美国宪法第18号修正案的解释：“和啤酒葡萄酒说再见。”及对美国宪法第21号修正案的解释：“别管上面那条。”
当然，这样的做法让事物更为明了，但在极个别的情况中，我更希望Munroe直接使用“Mars（火星）”而不是“red world（红色星球）”，或者直接用“Helium（氦气）”而不是“带来滑稽嗓音的气体（funny voice air）”
不过，瑕不掩瑜，Munroe自己也意识到了这之间的关系，在序言（“即：本书开始之前的部分”）中，他承认道有时使用一些术语是不可避免的。“在开始了解一样东西之前，你需要从他人那里获得帮助，但如果你想弄懂他们说的东西，就得弄懂他们所使用的词汇。同样的，你也需要懂得如何描述问题才能向他人提出问题。很多书会告诉你这个东西叫什么，这本书则用于解释为什么。”
这本书确实漂亮地解决了这个问题，《Thing Exlainer》以有趣的方式解释了基本的“为什么”，并告诉你这个世界方方面面的运转方式，假如Munroe的漫画让你尝试去了解这个世界你尚未触及的领域，这本书同样也是一本的基本指南，尤其是给充满好奇心的你。
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