Larry Gonick

Larry Gonick is a New York Times Bestseller and has been creating comics that explain history, science, math, and other big subjects for more than forty years. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide and been translated into over twenty-five languages. He has been a calculus instructor at Harvard (where he earned his BA and MA in mathematics); a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT; and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College.

The Cartoon Guide to Geometry

What’s so funny about a trapezoid? Plus, what is a trapezoid? Cartoonist Larry Gonick unlocks the formula to understanding geometry in the latest entry in his New York Times bestselling Cartoon Guide series.

For years, Larry Gonick’s Cartoon Guide series has helped struggling high school and college students thrive in the most challenging courses. His books on algebra, calculus, physics, history, and many other subjects have sold millions of copies across the globe. Now Gonick turns his attention to the last big mathematical subject he has not yet covered: geometry.    

Moving from the most basic precepts of geometry—planes, lines, and points—to elaborate proofs, The Cartoon Guide to Geometry is a comprehensive primer on all the essential ideas of the subject: angles, triangles, area, similarity, and yes, the Pythagorean theorem. As with Gonick’s other books, the material is carefully tailored to the curriculum standards and standardized testing guidelines of the subject, ensuring that students emerge from The Cartoon Guide to Geometry with a deep grasp of the key ideas. And Gonick’s lively storytelling, wit, and beautiful art ensure that students will stay engaged with the material, as complex concepts are made clear.

The Cartoon Guide to Biology

Did you faint when your middle school science teacher asked you to dissect a frog? Do you think DNA stands for “Don’t Know the Answer”? Do you still cling to the belief that osmosis was the name of Ozzy Osbourne’s last tour? If you said yes to any of these questions—or even if you didn’t—then you need The Cartoon Guide to Biology.

The latest from New York Times bestselling author Larry Gonick—writing with Davidson College biology professor David Wessner—is a hilarious and informative handbook to the science of life. From the inner workings of the cell, to the magic of gene expression, to the Krebs and Calvin cycles, to sexual and asexual reproduction, The Cartoon Guide to Biology uses simple, clear, humorous illustrations to make biology’s most complex concepts understandable and entertaining. Whether you’re peering into the microscope for the first time or brushing up after decades of de-evolution, this book has you covered.

The Cartoon Guide to Algebra

A comprehensive and comical illustrated guide to algebra

Do you think that a Cartesian plane is a luxury jetliner? Does the phrase "algebraic expression" leave you with a puzzled look? Do you believe that the Order of Operations is an Emmy-winning medical drama? Then you need The Cartoon Guide to Algebra to put you on the road to algebraic literacy.

The Cartoon Guide to Algebra covers all of algebra's essentials—including rational and real numbers, the number line, variables, expressions, laws of combination, linear and quadratic equations, rates, proportion, and graphing—with clear, funny, and easy-to-understand illustrations, making algebra's many practical applications come alive. This latest math guide from New York Times bestselling author Larry Gonick is an essential supplement for students of all levels, in high school, college, and beyond. School's most dreaded subject has never been more fun.

The Cartoon Guide to Calculus

“In Gonick’s work, clever design and illustration make complicated ideas or insights strikingly clear.” —New York Times Book Review

Larry Gonick, master cartoonist, former Harvard instructor, and creator of the New York Times bestselling, Harvey Award-winning Cartoon Guide series now does for calculus what he previously did for science and history: making a complex subject comprehensible, fascinating, and fun through witty text and light-hearted graphics. Gonick’s The Cartoon Guide to Calculus is a refreshingly humorous, remarkably thorough guide to general calculus that, like his earlier Cartoon Guide to Physics and Cartoon History of the Modern World, will prove a boon to students, educators, and eager learners everywhere.

The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry

If you have ever suspected that "heavy water" is the title of a bootleg Pink Floyd album, believed that surface tension is an anxiety disorder, or imagined that a noble gas is the result of a heavy meal at Buckingham Palace, then you need The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry to set you on the road to chemical literacy.

You don't need to be a scientist to grasp these and many other complex ideas, because The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry explains them all: the history and basics of chemistry, atomic theory, combustion, solubility, reaction stoichiometry, the mole, entropy, and much more—all explained in simple, clear, and yes, funny illustrations. Chemistry will never be the same!

The Cartoon Guide to Sex

From the first eye contact to the therapist's couch, from the throes of ecstasy to the nitty-gritty of safer sex, from the world's sexiest animal to the dating jungle, The Cartoon Guide to Sex covers everything you've always wanted to know about sex. Frank, informative, and written with Larry Gonick's characteristic comic verve and scientific accuracy, this book gives a comprehensive discussion of the spectrum of human sexuality, including sexual structures and functions, gender roles and sexual identity, sexual arousal and response, sexual communication, love, marriage and other arrangements, contraception, and sexual health -- without the fig leaves.

The Cartoon Guide to the Environment

Do you think that the Ozone Hole is a grunge rock club? Or that the Food Web is an on-line restaurant guide? Or that the Green Revolution happened in Greenland? Then you need The Cartoon Guide to the Environment to put you on the road to environmental literacy.

The Cartoon Guide to the Environment covers the main topics of environmental science: chemical cycles, life communities, food webs, agriculture, human population growth, sources of energy and raw materials, waste disposal and recycling, cities, pollution, deforestation, ozone depletion, and global warming—and puts them in the context of ecology, with discussions of population dynamics, thermodynamics, and the behavior of complex systems.

The Cartoon Guide to Statistics

If you have ever looked for P-values by shopping at P mart, tried to watch the Bernoulli Trails on "People's Court," or think that the standard deviation is a criminal offense in six states, then you need The Cartoon Guide to Statistics to put you on the road to statistical literacy. The Cartoon Guide to Statistics covers all the central ideas of modern statistics: the summary and display of data, probability in gambling and medicine, random variables, Bernoulli Trials, the Central Limit Theorem, hypothesis testing, confidence interval estimation, and much more--all explained in simple, clear, and yes, funny illustrations. Never again will you order the Poisson Distribution in a French restaurant!

The Cartoon Guide to The Universe I

Larry Gonick's celebrated series The Cartoon History of the Universe is a unique fusion of world history and the comics medium, a work of serious scholarship and a masterpiece of popular literature. Praised by Jonathan Spence in the New York Times Book Review as "a curious hybrid, at once flippant and scholarly, witty and politically correct, zany and traditionalist," Gonick's clever illustrations deliver important information with a deceptively light tone, teaching us about the people and events that have shaped our world.

The Cartoon History of The Universe II

The second installment of the phenomenal bestseller that Publishers Weekly selected as one of the twelve graphic books of all  time. Spanning ages and continents from Ancient India to Rome and China in A.D. 600, Volume II is  hip, funny, and full of info.

The Cartoon History of The Universe III

An irreverent survey in comics spanning world history from the birth of Islam to the Byzantine Empire to the Italian Renaissance.

This long-awaited third volume covers the Middle Ages around the globe, including the multicultural Middle East, West Africa and the cross-Saharan trade, Central Asia and the Byzantine Empire, the European Dark Ages and the Crusades, the Mongol conquests, the Black Death, the Ottoman Empire, the Italian Renaissance, and the rise of Spain, leading up to Columbus's departure for the new world. Gonick offers an historical survey that is at once multicultural, humanistic, skeptical, and laugh-out-loud funny.

The Cartoon History of the Modern World 1

Terry Jones of Monty Python said of the first volume of this series, “Obviously one of the great books of all time.”

Volume I of The Cartoon History of the Modern World picks up from Gonick's award winning Cartoon History of the Universe Series. That series began with the Big Bang and ended with Christopher Columbus sailing for the New World. This book starts off with peoples that Columbus "discovered" and ends with the U.S. Revolution.

The Cartoon History of the Modern World 2

“From the Bastille to Baghdad,” The Cartoon History of the World Part 2 is the conclusion of Larry Gonick’s award-winning and bestselling annals of humankind presented in graphic novel form. Picking up after the American Revolution, where Part 1 left off, Part 2 opens with the Enlightenment and rolls across Napoleon, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, World War I and II, and all the way to our recent imbroglios in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 2 is a monumental, one might say “historic” achievement, at once edifying, irreverent, and wildly entertaining.