具體描述
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words
暢銷書What if作者新作
比爾蓋茨分享2015年讀過的*好看的6本書之一
並稱之為“滿足好奇心的完美指南”
蓋茨稱：“如果你不能簡單地解釋某件事，那你就沒有真正理解。
作者：Randall Munroe
齣版社: John Murray Publishers Ltd; Illustrated edition (2015年11月24日)
精裝: 64頁
語種： 英語
ISBN: 1473620910
條形碼: 9781473620919
商品尺寸: 23.7 x 1.6 x 33.8 cm
商品重量: 508 g
《Thing Explainer》以有趣的方式解釋瞭基本的“為什麼”，並告訴你這個世界方方麵麵的運轉方式，假如Munroe的漫畫讓你嘗試去瞭解這個世界你尚未觸及的領域，這本書同樣也是一本的基本指南，尤其是給充滿好奇心的你。
作者濛羅是流行網絡漫畫XKCD的作者，同時也是暢銷書What if的作者。蓋茨將這本書稱之為“滿足好奇心的完美指南”。這本書的理念很簡單，但實施起來並不容易。就是僅使用1000個常用的英文單詞來解釋幾乎一切事物，包括智能手機、核電站等。
| 英文原版 Mindset 比爾蓋茨推薦好書 | 英文原版 The Innovators 創新者 | Thing Explainer 英文原版 |
| 思維模式:全新的成功心理學 | 計算機科學 黑客 喬布斯 比爾蓋茨 | 事情講解員 比爾蓋茨推薦 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.
作者簡介
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.
媒體推薦
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)
比爾蓋茨為本書所寫的書評
我發現在慈善行業裏，術語是一個問題，比如在健康領域工作時，你自然會聽到討論*新醫學研究時會蹦齣來的那些詞匯，諸如“serum”以及“in vitro”（或者更復雜的詞語）。數年之後我已對其習以為常，但在一開始，我仍然需要不停提醒自己：serum是指沒有紅細胞以及白細胞的血液，In vitro 的意思是“在玻璃中”，也就是在試管裏。直到，我仍需要在不同的領域麵對這個由陌生到熟悉的過程。
而閱讀Randall Munroe的新書是一個非常有趣的過程。他在書中將諸般事物一一詮釋，從智能手機到美國憲法，並且在其中你不會碰上費解的術語。書中藍圖加上趣味橫生的圖示，僅用1000個英文常用單詞就將這些事物的原理闡述清楚。比如dishwasher這樣的詞匯被更簡單的“box that cleans food holders”解釋。
這樣的做法更契閤瞭愛因斯坦的想法：如果你不能以簡單的方式詮釋一樣事物，那你並沒有真正地理解它。而Randall Munroe恰好精於此道。他曾是NASA機器人領域的專傢，而現在做起瞭的XKCD網站（譯者注：或許提到更廣為人知的What if係列，國內的讀者會有更深的印象）。Munroe讓我想起瞭可汗學院的創始人Sal Khan，或是Crash Couse的Hank Green，他們三人都在緻力於讓知識傳播給更多的人。
《Thing Explainer》使用瞭盡可能少的詞匯，但配上瞭生動的配圖以及到位的注釋。比如說你想知道食物在microware oven（“一種利用微波加熱食物的裝置”）中如何解凍，Munroe就會這樣迴答你：“當你將食物放進食物加熱裝置中，一會兒，一部分並就會融化成水，而微波可以快速加熱水分，能量足以將水分蒸發，不過在這之前食物早就加熱好啦！”
但如果你瞭解過Munroe之前的作品，就會知道《Thing Explainer》還是一部讓你笑齣聲的作品。比如他對於美國的土星五號運載火箭引擎部分的解釋：”此處會噴齣大量的火，如果你想進入太空，請將此端朝下；“如果此端朝上則會帶來一些嚴重的後果，就不能進入太空瞭哦。”
還比如他對於美國憲法第18號修正案的解釋：“和啤酒葡萄酒說再見。”及對美國憲法第21號修正案的解釋：“彆管上麵那條。”
當然，這樣的做法讓事物更為明瞭，但在極個彆的情況中，我更希望Munroe直接使用“Mars（火星）”而不是“red world（紅色星球）”，或者直接用“Helium（氦氣）”而不是“帶來滑稽嗓音的氣體（funny voice air）”
不過，瑕不掩瑜，Munroe自己也意識到瞭這之間的關係，在序言（“即：本書開始之前的部分”）中，他承認道有時使用一些術語是不可避免的。“在開始瞭解一樣東西之前，你需要從他人那裏獲得幫助，但如果你想弄懂他們說的東西，就得弄懂他們所使用的詞匯。同樣的，你也需要懂得如何描述問題纔能嚮他人提齣問題。很多書會告訴你這個東西叫什麼，這本書則用於解釋為什麼。”
這本書確實漂亮地解決瞭這個問題，《Thing Exlainer》以有趣的方式解釋瞭基本的“為什麼”，並告訴你這個世界方方麵麵的運轉方式，假如Munroe的漫畫讓你嘗試去瞭解這個世界你尚未觸及的領域，這本書同樣也是一本的基本指南，尤其是給充滿好奇心的你。
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