Genius Engineering Inventions: From the Plow to 3D Printing by Matt Turner and illustrated by Sarah Connor makes pretty much tells us everything you need to know in the title. It’s just that—a listing of inventions over human history in a host of areas. Those areas include agriculture, medicine, food, time measurement, materials, and several others. Bookending these specific areas is an opening section generally describing the march of technological progress and its impact and then two closing sections, one on accidental inventions (penicillin, potato chips) and one on inventions that didn’t pan out (gelatin mold houses, armored baby strollers). Each invention gets a paragraph or so (a few get more), and therein lies the strength and/or weakness of this book. If you want quantity, then Turner runs though a large number of examples of helpful technology. But if you want a sense of discovery (how these were invented) or context (how they worked, problems they solved), then there’s almost nothing there. My own personal preference is for diving more in depth (for an excellent example of this check out Engineered by Shannon Hunt); otherwise it feels a bit like a trivia contest kind of text. If you’re OK with quantity over depth, this might work fine. Illustrations are colorful, clean, and easy to follow.

A quick look at a variety of inventions that have mostly--but not all--improved our lives. The book moves quickly from invention to invention, so there is little chance of seeing the impact of the invention. Nevertheless, the book can serve as an introduction to the overall idea that inventions have changed society and are continuing to do so.