Fun book; the idea is to explain complicated ideas with simple words (i.e. the most common ten-thousand works in English). The illustrations are the usual XKCD style, with a good blend of information and wit.

My one frustration is that sometimes I’d read about a cool idea I wanted to know more about, and I had to “decode” the simple words to get something I could look up. But I think that’s deliberate – part of the point is to show how specialist terminology can be when useful at times. Simple language is good, up to a point.

Because of the density of information, I could only read a few pages at time, but I enjoyed them as I did.

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