I 'm unusually attached to this book: I laid my hands on the earlier edition as a very young child, and it probably shaped my interests more than anything else - ultimately setting me on a very interesting and rewarding life path. I've gotten the 1998 edition for my eldest son when he was perhaps four, and it's been his favorite for many years now.
In the end, "The Way Things Work" is quite simply spectacular, packed with information about the world around us, funny, accessible, and inspiring. While there are one or two illustrations that aren't as clear as they should have been, and a minor error creeps up here and there, it's still a magnificent piece of work born out of true passion and skill. If you have a technically inclined young kid, chances are, you will not regret buying them this.
As for the updated 2016 edition: compared to the 1998 version, the changes are incremental but fairly substantial, with a treatment of e-paper displays, digital cameras, accelerometers, and so on. Some of this may make you nostalgic - say, a mechanically simpler optical mouse takes place of the rolling ball design - but overall, it's a much-needed and worthwhile reboot.
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