How Things Work (2019)

Theodore Gray, known for The Elements, swaps drawings for photographs here, and Nick Mann's pictures of real mechanisms on black backgrounds make the insides of machines look as handsome as jewelry. What saves it from being a coffee-table book is Gray's tinkerer's text, which walks through the mechanical underpinnings of dozens of machines, from the cotton gin to the wristwatch to an industrial loom, along with the history behind them. It suits adults and confident teenagers who want to know why a mechanism was designed the way it was, not just what it does.