Incredible Cross Sections (1992)

Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections, 1992 Biesty slices a whole machine or building open like a loaf of bread, from a galleon to a 747 jumbo jet and a car factory, and fills it with tiny figures going about their work. That crowd is the point: instead of a static diagram you see the parts being used, so it becomes clear why each space sits where it does. Richard Platt's captions are short and precise. It has more than a million copies in print, and it is the one to put on the table when a child and an adult want to pore over the same page and keep finding new details.