Stephen Biesty's More Incredible Cross-Sections (DK Stephen Biesty Cross-Sections)

Bought for fun birthday present for an engineer. Proved great entertainment for all at birthday party.

My son used to love these books and now his son is entralled too.

I like this for the price and it’s very educational. Loads of colourful pictures to keep younger ones interested. My daughter loves it

This is such a wonderful book and one that I lost myself in for quite a while. Never mind that it is aimed at children, this adult loved it. This is a hardback book and quite a large-sized book that has 32 fully coloured pages. It shows what the inside of various things looks like. The cross-sections are of - Traction Engine. Fire. Space Station. Airport. Windmill. Cross City Section. Movie Studio. Venice. Tower Bridge. Human Body and Grand Canyon. Each diagram has a brief introduction and then more details for various sections. The City Cross-section opens out into a very large spread and shows a timeline from the Big band and progresses through major timelines. This is such an interesting book to look at. I would suggest that this is for older children and the age range suggested of 7-11 I think is about right. A brilliant and very colourful eye-catching book that I think young readers will love, I know I did and for that reason, I would definitely recommend it.

This book is aimed at children (I’d say 9 and upwards) but it’s fascinating for adults too! Detailed layers of the human body to Tower bridge make this book so absorbing! It’s quite a large square book and some of the pictures are so large they are on fold out pages! There is so much detail in each picture it’s takes a while to take it all in. There is plenty to go back and see! The only thing I would say is that because it’s so detailed, the layers are a bit small and you really have to get up close to see them!

This is one of those books that just absorbs you for any amount of time - so much to look at and notice - and the level of detail is amazing. The whole family has enjoyed this and I suspect will continue to do so for some time to come. Love it.

I've never read / looked at one of Stephen Biesty's books before and I found it extraordinary - the level of detail in the pictures and how they are drawn is fascinating. I could look at the illustrations for ages without getting bored, and I wanted to read all the labels and work out what everything did. I think this 25th Anniversary Edition is a revised edition originally published in 2017 - it isn't clear from the information at the front. The book features 12 cross-sections - Traction Engine; Fire!; Space Station; Airport; Windmill; City Cross-Section; Antarctic Base; Movie Studio; Venice; Tower Bridge (my daughter loved the fact we could see where the gnomes were trapped in Sherlock Gnomes); Human Body (not one to linger on if you don't like anatomy) and the Grand Canyon. I think our favourites were Tower Bridge and I really liked the Windmill. Although the age range is given as 7-11 years, this is a book that I think anyone would want to read, if you have an interest in how things work. Definitely one where you'd get it for the children but the adults would be interested too. It's also thought-provoking to think about how the (modern) illustrations have aged following the passage of time - and how much our lives have moved on in twenty-five years. My only niggle is that on every page you are meant to be able to find an alien / alien landing site, and on the windmill page there are ten mice to find - but we couldn't find them, or in the case of the mice all of them - they are tiny, magnifying glass required. It would have been nice if an answer page had been included. Overall though a fascinating read.

My five-year-old and I have both enjoyed pouring over these extremely-detailed, exploded drawings. The attention to detail in the artwork is amazing to behold. The subject matter is wide ranging - almost excessively so, as I might have preferred a whole book on engineering, or on the human body, or buildings, rather than jumping around so much. But being left wanting more is hardly a criticism! Some of the exploded views are easier to follow than others, especially when he combines multiple designs into the same drawings (e.g. showing both canvas sails and spring sails on the same windmill). The human body is the only one that I think is too exploded to be very intelligible. The text boxes are as eclectic as the choice of subject matter, ranging from relevant technical explanations to random trivia. If you just want highly detailed technical drawings, patents might suit you better, but these colourful and sometimes humorous drawings are much more fun!