Ex Libris: The Way Things Work

If there is a bad David Macaulay book, I haven't seen it (and I'm pretty sure I own all of them).
A gifted storyteller, artist, and author, his early works, like Castle and Cathedral, won Caldecott Awards. Written for children, they're nonetheless brilliant, witty, and aimed for a pretty bright adult audience as well, covering history, architecture, science, technology, and simple curiosity about them all.

PBS made four videos (for you youngsters, videos were those things that came between films and Blueray discs) of four of his works, Castle, Cathedral, Pyramid, and Roman City. I still pull them off the shelf to watch whenever I feel like it, but with those links, you can do it for free, on anything that gets YouTube.

And if you have a slightly off sense of humor, get your hands on one they won't be making into a flick in any format: Motel Of The Mysteries, detailing a future (4022 A.D.) archaeological dig of a late 20th century adult motel. It's a scream, though definitely PG-13 territory.

But his magnum opus is, and probably always will be, The Way Things Work.
In which every basic principle of every revolutionary machine is illustrated, mainly by the actions of captive mammoths. Think of them as the E in Einstein's Theory, or the F in every physics equation you've ever seen.

Someone who wanted to survey all of human technological progress, or re-educate the lazy-brained Eloi after dispatching the Morlochs, wouldn't go far astray if they grabbed this book as one of The Three Books to re-instill all knowledge to a future generation.

Macaulay's illustrations, and wit, lose nothing with his age nor the passage of time since it first came out. And he's updated it a couple of times, most recently last October: 

All versions are excellent additions to your library, and letting your kids or grandkids escape their formative years without benefit of a copy is a cardinal sin.

Pity they haven't updated the old CDs with the computer version of the book for later Windows OS, but as usual, someone on YouTube has solved that problem for you too.

Enjoy.: